Meet the United Methodist pastor featured on HBO’s reality show ‘We’re Here’

(RNS) – “Welcome to church,” said pastor Craig Duke before taking the stage.

But it wasn’t the usual Sunday service that Duke oversees as senior pastor of Newburgh United Methodist Church. It did not take place within the walls of his church near Evansville, Indiana. And Duke doesn’t normally deliver his sermons wearing a big pink wig and 4-inch heeled boots — or follow them by lip-synching to Ke$ha’s “We Are Who We Are.”

This service was part of a drag show that aired on Monday night’s episode of “We’re Here” on HBO.

The Emmy-nominated reality show follows renowned drag artists Eureka O’Hara, Shangela and Bob the Drag Queen as they travel to small towns and villages across the United States, turning locals into drag queens. This week the show came to Evansville — and to Duke.

“It was an incredibly wonderful, refreshing, profound and powerful spiritual experience,” Duke told Religion News Service.

“I was surrounded and immersed in a culture that I’ve never been immersed in, and one of the things about ministry, if you want to involve people different from you in your ministry, you have to go where people different than you are. The invitation to be part of the program allowed me that.

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Duke had never heard of the HBO show until he was contacted by the Evansville Pride board asking if he would be interested in participating.

Although he acted in theater as a young man, he said, he had never done drag — something he described as well outside his comfort zone.

However, he said during the episode, he knew there were LGBTQ people in his community and he wanted to learn how to be “empathetic, not just sympathetic.” He also wanted to show his support for his daughter, who came out two years ago as pansexual.

Drag artist Eureka O’Hara, left, and pastor Craig Duke rehearse on HBO’s ‘We’re Here’. Photo by Jake Giles Netter/HBO

“I hope this is a bridge – for my daughter, for the church I serve, for the denomination I love, and for me – and I hope my voice will get louder,” he said. he said on the show.

Duke is a pastor in The United Methodist Church, which is currently at loggerheads over the inclusion of its LGBTQ members, including whether LGBTQ United Methodists can be ordained and whether clergy can perform same-sex marriages.

United Methodist leaders have presented a proposal to split the denomination ahead of the 2020 meeting of its global decision-making body, the General Conference. But that meeting — as well as any action on the proposal — has already been postponed twice by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The General Conference is currently scheduled to begin in August 2022.

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HBO poster “We are here”. Courtesy Image

Before the episode of “We’re Here” aired Monday night, Duke said his congregation, like many others, includes people who support LGBTQ inclusion within the church and others. who don’t. There are people in his pews who he thinks will watch the show and people he knows won’t.

These differing opinions within his congregation made his appearance on the show a “difficult experience”, he said.

Still, Duke said, he’s talked about the show with his bishop, his bishop’s executive assistant, and his annual conference superintendent since filming his episode. “There is nothing I did in my participation that can be formally charged,” he said.

More than that, he said, his experience was nothing compared to what many people face every day just leaving their homes.

“When the episode is over, I go straight back to my home, my neighborhood, my church, my experiences as Craig where my pronouns, my race, my sexuality and the way I express my faith are completely accepted,” said he declared. “Some people think I risked so much, and I appreciate that. I’m humbled by that. But I would say that’s not the case.”

Attending the episode of “We’re Here” turned out to be a “lovely” experience, Duke said.

Pastor Craig Duke, center left, performs with drag artist Eureka O’Hara, center right, on HBO’s “We’re Here.” Photo by Johnnie Ingram/HBO

“Whenever there is a community of people who are ready to welcome other people, with a commonality of asserting themselves, helping each other to seize the opportunity and adding to that a concern and sincere love for one another has the trappings of a church,” he said.

The pastor recalled O’Hara – his ‘drag mother’ on the show, who helped him develop a performance inspired by a line from the Ke$ha song that says ‘I’ve got Jesus on my necklace’ – asking to pray with him before their show in Evansville. At first, Duke said, he thought O’Hara was asking “in character.”

Duke quickly realized the offer was serious — and how much he needed that prayer himself at the time, he said.

RELATED: UMC is closing in on a historic split over LGBTQ inclusion. This church has shown the way.

For O’Hara, it was moving to hear someone considered a religious authority affirm that God loves them, a message Duke repeated throughout the episode.

It’s something O’Hara wished he’d heard growing up, they said.

O’Hara was raised in East Tennessee, a Southern Baptist, attending “every Bible school known to man during the summer,” they said in an email to RNS. Their grandmother was a Pentecostal and taught them “how to be spiritual even though I was different”.

Drag artist Eureka O’Hara, left, and pastor Craig Duke, on the HBO show ‘We’re Here.’ Photo by Jakes Giles Netter/HBO

That stuck, O’Hara said, even after they were expelled from their church.

“I’m such a spiritual person and I believe in God. For a long time I hated myself and who I was because I had been taught all my life that I was going to burn in hell and that I was a horrible person,” O’Hara said.

It’s not an uncommon experience for many in the LGBTQ community, they said.

“I think it’s really hard for gay people to get over the trauma that was inflicted on them by church members growing up. To be treated like a monster and to be mistreated is unfair,” O’Hara said.

“We deserve to know that God loves us (too). Because God loves everyone, God loves all their children. I think that’s an important message for people to hear.

Duke said he also hopes anyone who identifies as LGBTQ or struggles with their sexuality takes away from the episode that “God really loves you for who you are, period.”

And he’s hoping he’ll get phone calls about it, if only to assure people he’s serious.

“When I said, ‘Welcome to church,’ I really meant that to the people who were sitting there, because God was present. I never denied the presence of God throughout this experience,” Duke said.

“The truth is that God is always present.”