Cathedral of Hope

Cathedral of Hope was founded in 1970 as the Dallas chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church — the world's first Christian denomination founded specifically to serve the LGBTQ+ community, established by Rev. Troy Perry in Los Angeles in 1968. It has operated continuously for 55 years and is the world's largest LGBTQ+ congregation, with a Sunday attendance regularly exceeding 4,000 and a total membership over 6,500. The congregation's current cathedral building at 5910 Cedar Springs Road was consecrated on 12 November 2005 — a purpose-built modernist glass-and-steel structure by architect Philip Johnson (posthumous — Johnson designed it before his 2005 death) seating 900 in the main sanctuary. It was the largest church building specifically commissioned for an openly LGBTQ+ congregation anywhere in the world. The chapel behind is a smaller intimate space seating 100. Cathedral of Hope's significance to LGBTQ+ Christianity extends past the specific building. The congregation's Sunday services — broadcast nationally since 2005 — are the most widely watched openly-LGBTQ+ Christian services in the world; its Rev. Neil G. Cazares-Thomas has been an internationally-cited progressive Christian voice through the 2010s and 2020s. The congregation's AIDS-era history through the 1980s and 1990s produced the first residential AIDS-care facility in Texas (opened 1988) and one of the country's earliest openly-LGBTQ+ ordained clergy programmes. Sunday services 09:00 and 11:00; sanctuary open weekdays for prayer 09:00-16:00. Free entry to services and building. Cedar Springs Road light rail is a 10-minute walk. On the standard Cedar Springs Road queer heritage walk this is the natural northern anchor — combine with a walk south to the Round-Up Saloon and Legacy of Love Monument for a full-day heritage circuit.