PERRY, Troy

PERRY, Troy (b. 27 July 1940), religious leader, minister.

Troy D. Perry was born in Tallahassee, Florida, the son of Troy D. Perry, Sr., and Edith Allen Perry. After his father's death in an automobile accident in 1952 and his mother's subsequent remarriage, Perry's family moved to Daytona Beach. Shortly thereafter, Perry ran away from home and spent two years living with relatives in southern Georgia and El Paso, Texas. He returned after his mother's separation from her husband, and lived with the family in Winter Haven, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama.

Perry was drawn to religion from childhood. Though his parents attended their Baptist church only on special occasions, Perry attended frequently, and his commitment only increased upon his arrival in Georgia. There, he lived with relatives who were involved in Pentecostal and Holiness churches, including a particularly fervent aunt who handled serpents as part of her worship practice. When Perry was thirteen, this aunt prophesied that he had been called to the ministry. Her congregation, believing the prophecy to be the direct word of God, encouraged Perry to begin preaching in their church. In Texas he continued to preach, this time in his relatives' congregation of the Assemblies of God, and upon his return to Florida at the age of fifteen, he was licensed to preach by the local Baptist church.

Believing preaching to be more important than formal schooling, Perry dropped out of high school before his senior year and became a traveling evangelist for the Church of God. After marrying a woman from his local congregation, he relocated to Chicago, where he attended Bible college (after passing the General Educational Development exam as an alternative to his high school diploma) and served as pastor to a small Church of God congregation. It was also in Chicago that Perry's sexual orientation, of which he had been aware since childhood, began to be known to those around him.

Recounting his childhood in Don't Be Afraid Anymore (1990), Perry recalls his first sexual experience with another boy his age as "magical," characterized by "wonderful pleasure and happiness" (p. 2). By his later teenage years, however, he found his attraction to men "troublesome and very disturbing" (p. 14). Nevertheless, before marrying he had a clandestine relationship with another young man from his Alabama church. A few years later, this lover told Perry's superiors in the church about their relationship, and Perry was summarily excommunicated from the Church of God. He appealed the following year and was denied, but soon thereafter he became involved in a rival denomination, the Church of God in Prophecy. When the company where he worked during the week offered him a job in the Los Angeles area, he agreed to go and concurrently applied and was accepted for the pastorate of a congregation in that area.

Moving to the Los Angeles vicinity in the early 1960s gave Perry greater access to information about homosexuality, and he soon came to the conclusion that he was gay. Though his district overseer advised him to destroy the books he had been reading and return to his congregation, the local bishop defrocked him. Perry's wife returned with their two sons to her family in Alabama.

Following this crucial turning point in his life, Perry became increasingly involved in the gay social world of 1960s Los Angeles. A two-year military tour from 1965 to 1967 (Perry was drafted despite his avowed homosexuality) only reinforced his identity further, while continuing to keep him marginally connected to Pentecostal Christianity through services and prayer meetings at his base in Germany. Upon returning home to Los Angeles, Perry was less involved with the church, but an unsuccessful suicide attempt after the unexpected end of a relationship renewed his "acquaintance with God" (Perry, 1990, p. 30) and affirmed God's love for him as a "practicing" gay man. Soon after this, a conversation with a friend who had been arrested in a bar raid convinced Perry that his call to the ministry was still valid, and that his mission was to found a church that would minister to gay and lesbian (and later, bisexual and transgender) Christians. The first service of the Metropolitan Community Church was held on 6 October 1968, with a conregation of twelve people in attendance.

As of 2003, the Reverend Elder Troy Perry heads an international denomination that claims over forty thousand members. Encompassing from its first service a diverse group of Christians, the denomination is characterized more by doctrinal flexibility than by any particular teachings—aside from the truth of Christianity and the equality of LGBT people, and heterosexual in the eyes of God.

Bibliography

Perry, Troy D., with Thomas L. P. Swicegood. Don't Be Afraid Anymore: The Story of Reverend Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Churches. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Perry, Troy D. "Gays and the Gospel: An Interview with Troy Perry." Christian Century 113 (1996): 896–901.

Perry, Troy D., as told to Charles L. Lucas. The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay. Los Angeles: Nash, 1972.

Melissa M. Wilcox

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