PARK RIDGE, Ill. (RNS) — In February 2024, the Rev. Carol Hill of Park Ridge Community Church got news that a group of LGBTQ teens who met at Hill’s church wanted to do something for Pride month in June.
Shelley Flener-O’Brien, who had created the group, called Connections, to give LGBTQ teens a safe space to gather and feel supported by adults in the community, reached out to Hill asking if the church could help put on a Pride event. Hill said yes, but added, “It needs to be bigger than just cookies on the lawn.”
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On Thursday (June 5), the second annual Pride in Park Ridge celebration, held in the town’s Hodges Park, outside City Hall, included food trucks, vendors giving out rainbow stickers, speeches from local leaders and a drag show — all considerably more than cookies on the lawn, and all the work of the teen group and five churches in town.
When the teens first asked if a Pride festival was possible in Park Ridge, a quiet suburb of about 40,000 residents near O’Hare International Airport, Hill took the idea to the Park Ridge Ministerial Association, a clergy group in town. Very quickly, First United Methodist Church of Park Ridge, Park Ridge Presbyterian, St. Mary’s Episcopal and St. Luke’s Lutheran jumped on board.
The Rev. Carol Hill, left, and signage at Park Ridge Community Church, June 5, 2025, in Park Ridge, Ill. (RNS photo/Rachel Berkebile)
The first year, in June of 2024, Flener-O’Brien figured that between the Connections teens, their families and friends and the people she invited, it was reasonable to hope 20 people would come. Instead, despite a torrential downpour, more than 200 people came to Park Ridge Community Church’s lawn, where food trucks were stationed, and the mayor and another local politician spoke. The festival’s organizers were thrilled.
“There was a lot of hope in that,” said the Rev. Amanda Joria of Park Ridge Presbyterian.
Both Joria and St. Luke’s pastor, the Rev. Kyle Severson, said that after last year’s event, the prevailing sentiment from the community was, “We never thought we’d see this in Park Ridge.”
Park Ridge, said Hill, “has in its history been more conservative leaning, (emphasizing) traditional family values that perpetuated an understanding of heteronormativity.”
One church in town, St. Andrews Lutheran Church, which belongs to the non-LGBTQ-affirming Missouri Synod Lutheran denomination, held a family outdoor worship service and cookout on the same date and time as the Pride festival last year.
The five churches had not ignored Pride in years past; they had hosted Pride worship services that were open to the wider community, but they weren’t well attended. They wanted Pride in Park Ridge to look like any other Pride event, with the five churches organizing it out of a conviction of their faith, but as an invisible network.
“The church has not always been a place where LGBT people are welcomed, celebrated or loved — much too often, it’s a place where those individuals feel condemned,” Hill shared. “The position of the churches needs to be a lot more gentle and in the background.”
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Hill said she learned how to be involved as a church in Pride events from an out-of-state colleague, whose congregation tried to be part of a local Pride event several years ago but had been denied. But, feeling it was still important that their church be a part of their community’s Pride event, the church helped pay for the portable toilets at the festival that year.
Indeed, this is how many LGBTQ-affirming denominations participate in Pride events — as sponsors who have a table or provide a necessary service. Churches taking the lead has been less common, but that may be changing. According to the LGBTQ advocacy organization MainStream, faith-based groups are leading or hosting nearly two dozen Pride events across Illinois and Iowa this June.
Asked what she would say to churches in communities that don’t celebrate Pride, Joria said, “You might not know if you need Pride events, but you need Pride events. You can start right where you are.” Even if it’s cookies on your church lawn.
A crowd watches the drag show at Pride in Park Ridge, June 5, 2025, in Park Ridge, Ill. (RNS photo/Rachel Berkebile)
