Marks 55 Years of Ministry and Two Decades of Leadership Under Bishop Durrell Watkins, DMin and Bishop Robert Griffin, DMin
Sunshine Cathedral was founded in Fort Lauderdale just two brief years after Stonewall. Today it is known as the world’s leading progressive Queer church and this October it celebrates its 55th Anniversary while it also raises a glass to Senior Minister Bishop Durrell Watkins, D.Min. and Executive Minister Bishop Robert Griffin, D.Min., the married couple who have led the congregation for the past 20 years.
Here’s the Church
“We’re in vestments, we have a sermon, it starts at one time and ends an hour or so later,” Watkins said. “It looks like a church, and it is a church, but it isn’t your grandma’s church. We are culturally Christian, but spiritually unlimited. And our openness is not just about sexual orientation. It’s openness to the diversity of humanity.”
The majority of the congregation is made up of progressive Christians who enjoy weekly fellowship alongside those from many religions including Muslims, Jews and even agnostics.
“We’re not trying to make you believe anything in particular other than in yourself and in the goodness of human potential,” Watkins stressed. “We are happy to help you on your journey discovering, embracing, celebrating or even doubting the God of your understanding. We’re not going to give you one. We’re going to create a safe space where you can find yours and celebrate it and then change your mind about that if you need to.”
Historically and predominantly an LGBTQ+ community, the church embraces same-gender loving people as well as transgender and gender non-binary people. In addition, heterosexual and cisgender people can be found in every area of service and leadership.
It is remarkable that Sunshine Cathedral has continued to thrive and grow when a Pew Research Study found 46% of lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans say that religion does more harm than good in American society.
“We agree with them,” Watkins surprisingly said. “Their experience is valid. They’ve had a horrible experience with religion. If they say it’s just too broken to fix and it hurt me too badly that I don’t ever want to go back, who can blame them? But people like me, I’m just religious. It’s like queer is part of my identity. I need religious community, but I also need it to be sane, kind, compassionate, pluralistic and open to other people’s experience of the sacred. That’s what we try to offer.”
Featuring nondogmatic sermons and often showtunes instead of hymns, Sunshine Cathedral holds services both in person and online every Sunday at 9:00 and 10:30AM.
“We’re offering spirituality your way,” Watkins said, trying out a hamburger chain’s well known pitch to customers. “Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce and we’ll give you the rest.”
Here’s the Steeple
Church steeples can serve as a beacon helping people navigate their way to worship. Sunshine Cathedral traces its roots as a queer church to the living room of Rev. Troy D. Perry, who would go on to become a leading gay rights and human rights activist. Defrocked as a priest for being gay, Perry held the first service on October 6,1968 in Huntington Park located in Los Angeles County, CA. The coffee table was the altar and a vinyl record of the Mormon Tabernacle served as the music.
“Troy Perry had sort of a religious revelation or a spiritual transformation where he realized we’re who we’re meant to be,” Watkins said. “We are the queer children of God. Not just people who can be accepted or even rejected. Who we are is our gift to the world. He gets that and he starts the Metropolitan Community Church.”
Soon other major cities wanted to replicate Perry’s mission and what is now Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) began.
“From 1968 to 1972, it was super radical to say there is a church that not only accepts gay people, but it was founded by gay people, it celebrates gay people,” Watkins recalled. “It says the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are blessed by God to be who they are. Since it was the only one doing that, people said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’d like to be part of that.’”
Sunshine Cathedral was established in 1971 as the Metropolitan Community Church of the Holy Spirit in Fort Lauderdale by a group that had been worshiping at an MCC in Miami. Services first began in the home of Bob Horton, the original organist and first deacon. It would change its name to Sunshine Cathedral around the time of the new millennium.
Sunshine Cathedral honors its history as a progressive beacon by its associations with the Metropolitan Community Churches, Divine Science Federation, International Council of Community Churches, the International New Thought Alliance and the Center for Progressive Christianity as well as new partnerships with the Global Justice Institute, the Execution Intervention Project, Latin Pastoral Ministries of the Anglican Free Communion International, and St. Oscar Romero Old Catholic Church in Little Rock, AR.
Following early years led by different pastors, trailblazer John Gill became the first longtime pastor in the mid-70s. Trained as a Presbyterian minister he was ordained by Metropolitan Community Church. He was succeeded by Grant Lynn Ford, a Pentecostal minister who had become a priest in the independent Catholic tradition.
“He was here for 22 years and I actually thought that was an eternity,” Watkins confessed. “Except now I’m here at 20. So, okay, that happens.”
Holding degrees from Henderson State University, Goddard College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Episcopal Divinity School, Watkins joined the staff in 2006 as the Canon Precentor before being elected as the senior minister the next year.
One of the appeals of the job was that he would be able to serve alongside his partner and future husband, who also joined the staff in 2006, first overseeing the religious education program, and then the social justice ministries before finally becoming the Executive Minister. Previously, Griffin had managed chapels on military bases for a decade as a Religious Programming Specialist, established a church in Hagerstown, Maryland, spent two years as the HIV field coordinator for MCC and served as the Assistant to the Presiding Moderator of MCC.
Open the Doors
As a biracial couple who are both HIV-positive and who have parented a boy born in Brazil, the two bishops are uniquely qualified to welcome people into the diverse community of Sunshine Cathedral.
Watkins, who identifies as nonbinary, has been HIV positive since 1991, and Griffin tested positive for HIV in 1987 while he was in the military and before there were any medical treatments. Of 42 people in a group Griffin joined at that time, he and only one other are still alive.
“I think that being positive helped shape or craft my ministry,” Griffin said. “I think it helps people to identify that there are people who have lived experience such as HIV, such as depression, such as high blood pressure. We’re part of all this and it puts us into the thick of things in a different way when we advocate for the AIDS walk and things like that.”
The couple also has a personal understanding of the many ways in which immigration laws can fracture families. Their son, Mario, came to them as an exchange student from Brazil only to have to leave to attend college abroad because he couldn’t come back to the U.S. Now, at age 25, he has graduated from film school but has remained in the U.K. due to immigration difficulties in returning to be with them.
“We tried to adopt him at 17, but it wouldn’t have helped with his immigration status,” Watkins shared. “Eventually we will make it official, just for personal gratification, in an adult adoption. I mean, he’s our kid.”
While Mario’s father wasn’t in the picture, his mother was supportive of her gay son and was grateful that he found a family with the two men.
“She swears it’s an answer to a prayer,” Wakins said. “We have all bonded together like an extended family. She calls us The Dads. Robert and I met in 1996, got together officially in 2000, and were married in 2015. We’ve been a couple the whole time, long before it was legal. It’s the same thing with Mario. He’s been our kid long before we make it official.”
Watkins says it a miracle that he and Griffin now work together and insists that it never gets old.
“Our relationship basically took place on Amtrak,” Watkins recalls. “I was in Central, he was Eastern. Then we got to live together for one year before we were separated. I had a church in New Jersey and he was in Maryland and then he moved to Massachusetts and I moved to New York. It’s such a gift to work together even after all these decades. We were made bishops on the same day. Sometimes people forget that we are individuals, they just think of us as ‘us.’”
See all the People
From those the world over who enjoy the services online, to the unhoused LGBTQ+ Youth in Fort Lauderdale who find a safe haven at The Sunshine Pride House, to the many facing food insecurity in our community served by the Loaves and Fishes Ministry, the Sunshine Cathedral makes a lasting impact.
“We do a whole food pantry that has a brown bag program and delivery component taking food out to various people,” Griffin said. “On average we’re serving over 1,000 people a week. We served 55,000 people last year and I think we’re pretty much close to it again already at the end of July. We just recently learned that $17 million has been cut from a lot of the feeding programs provided by the state or by the federal government and we can see the impact here locally. The unique thing about our feeding program is that we don’t ask for proof of residency or income. We don’t do that.”
Countless other people have been touched by Sunshine Cathedral without ever attending a service by going to an event at the Sunshine Cathedral Center for the Performing Arts which will soon launch its 18th season.
“When the renovations happened at the cathedral back in 2006, one of the things they wanted to elevate was our performance presence in the community,” Griffin remembers. “We still have bragging rights in that our stage is one foot larger than the Amaturo Theater stage at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. We’ve had a lot of performances over the years from organ concerts to people like Leslie Jordan, Vickie Shaw, Varla Jean Merman, Randy Rainbow, Sharon Gless, Margaret Cho, and Judy Gold. It may be a comedy show, a Gay Men’s Chorus concert or the Symphony of the Americas and people will experience that in a space that’s non-threatening and welcoming. When we have performances, that is also a way of worship .”
The Sunshine Cathedral’s reach has extended into Russia, China and other conservative anti-LGBTQ+ countries through the online streaming of its Sunday services.
“We went online in COVID at the very beginning, and I think that shifted a whole lot of people’s accessibility to worship and to connection,” Griffin said. “Our footprint in the global community or even in the social media world is much larger than what it was. The biggest thing that shifted for us is the realization of how quickly everything went to social media when COVID happened. That’s when I noticed a significant shift in people who want bricks and mortar versus people who prefer online viewership.”
In fact, one of Sunshine Cathedral’s major supporters, Gen Hickey, has never been to the church. A heterosexual with a Roman Catholic background, she found the church online when she was in New Jersey and has stayed through moves to Georgia and North Carolina. She is just one of the people who has found the church through its many open doors.
“What we are trying to achieve is community,” Wakins added. “We are not pushing dogma. We’re not trying to convert anyone. If what you want is to come to a luncheon, a film showing. a performing arts event, a worship service or a special event like Christmas Eve, if we’re offering it then you’re part of it. It is just one more way to gather people together to affirm them and to experience joy which, for us, is completely on brand.”
Anniversary Celebration
The anniversary celebration will take place at the Coral Ridge Yacht Club on Saturday, October 3, 2026. It begins at noon with a gathering reception followed by a seated dinner at 3:00PM.
“There’s going to be some community celebrities there, some old timers who are still around, and new people who joined along the way,” Watkins previewed. “Religious participation is on decline and then COVID accelerated that. Along with financial issues, churches are merging, closing and declining daily. Fifty-five years into it, we’re still around. That’s something to celebrate and we’re going to do it up pretty big.”
From 1971— with rampant homophobia, no legalized abortion and an unpopular war — to today, it may seem that the more things changed the more they stayed the same. Yet, no matter the year or the challenge, Sunshine Cathedral has been at the forefront of leading and serving the community.
“We’ve had all different kinds [of leaders], from Presbyterian to Pentecostal to Episcopalian, but the queer-focused justice seeking, inclusive vision has remained constant through all these years and I’m very proud of that,” Watkins said.
