CIOP

STATEMENT February 25, 2026

Our hearts are breaking over and over, but our resolve and our courage is strong and unwavering!

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This is not our first rodeo.

In 2017, white supremacists came to the Committee for Racial Justice to shut us down. It did not work. They came in masks, with hateful rhetoric, some pretending to be Christian, and also tried to break into our Child Care room. It did not work.​

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Profaning the Sacred

This past week someone showed their hatred on our building, and again called it Christianity. That is appalling! This hate crime was at The Church in Ocean Park, The People’s Church, The Community’s Church, the place where Liberty Hill started, where Sojourn and the People’s Concern was birthed, where Climate Action Santa Monica was formed, where The Committee for Racial Justice had its’ beginnings, where Girl Central was transplanted, where Kids With Disabilities danced, where singers of every background harmonize, where The Encouragement Group has been saving lives and so much more! This is the place where the Queer Prom began 15 years ago and where the Queer Collective comes together.

They try to shut us down.
It will not work~~ Not then, not now, not ever.

What you believe is Important

Loud, prominent churches have embedded anti-gay theology into our culture and into our psyches. It’s a theology that has produced exclusion, shame, family rejection, harassment, murder, mental health crises, self-hatred, and, in too many cases, suicide. What they teach is not life-giving doctrine. It is harmful. This exclusionary theology consistently results in broken families, depression, and violence. Queer people have good reason to stay away from the Church. And even still, the people of the Queer Collective and the Queer Prom have somehow courageously and remarkably opened the door to this place and walked in. What they found at The Church in Ocean Park was a safe place, a place where they could be themselves and know that they are sacred, just the way they are. A place where nobody tries to fix you because they know you aren’t broken. What they found at The Church in Ocean Park was a community of people of different faith traditions, different backgrounds, different abilities, different cultures, and different gender expressions who come together to try to make a positive difference in the world.But Friday morning, they found something different. Nasty messages were spread all over the walls of their sacred, safe home. This hate crime is even more egregious because of the hurdles people had to overcome in order to open the doors in the first place. They came in spite of their trauma- trauma that had been caused by this very theology.

The Community Comes Out

Last Sunday, the community came out in solidarity, embodying love that is stronger than hate.

Your Invitation

We will come together again this Sunday at 10:15am. And again and again. We won’t stop, particularly for a coward who comes out in the dark of night, too scared to speak with us in person.

 

On Sunday, March 22nd, we invite you to gather with us in community. Let’s infect this community with so much love that it even reaches the one who wrote immature theology on our buildings. On March 22nd, we will gather in our strong community at 1pm to take the hateful words down and replace them with joy-filled community.
Please Save the Date and plan to join us! Your solidarity means a lot to us.

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Note: Matthew Hall of the Santa Monica Daily Press wrote a beautiful article about this: https://www.smdp.com/church-in-ocean-park-responds-to-vandalism-with-renewed-sense-of-community/