Eureka O’Hara hugs Pastor Craig Duke during the filming of We’re Here

f you are, like I am, a fan of We’re Here on HBO, and if you also, like I did, grew up “in the church” (regardless of which church), when you saw Pastor Craig Duke recently on We’re Here, you were touched and inspired by his faith and his courage.

Pastor Craig, as he’s known, was lead pastor at the Newburgh, Ind., United Methodist Church. He was known to his town’s LGBTQ community and a strong and loving ally, and when the River City Pride organization nominated him for the We’re Here episode set in nearby Evansville, Ind., Pastor Craig agreed. He did it for the LGBTQ community, but especially for his daughter, who is pansexual.

So when the We’re Here crew arrived in town, Pastor Craig was paired with Eureka O’Hara, and he appeared in drag in the fundraising show the group put on.

“Welcome to church!” he declared as he stepped on to the stage in a pink wig, boots with four-inch heels and a white choir robe. Pastor Craig then delivered a message of love, hope and acceptance before ripping away the white robe to reveal a sparkly, short black dress beneath. Eureka then joined the pastor onstage for a lip-sync performance to Kesha’s “We Are Who We Are” (including the line about “Jesus on my necklace”).

It was a transformative moment — for Pastor Craig, for Eureka and for everyone watching who had ever felt shunned and condemned by their church. I remember thinking, “This is what bravery looks like. This man is risking his home, his job — all of it — to do this.”

Eureka herself, on the show and in comments posted to her Instagram page praised the minister: “Pastor Craig, aka Joan of Arc O’Hara, made a really big dent in my spiritual insecurity. Sending love as a man of God and being willing to walk in someone else’s shoes sounds pretty damn Man of God Leader type shit to me,” Eureka wrote. “I can’t tell you how much I wish a man of the church would have said, ‘It’s ok to be you’ [when I was] growing up and how much that could have changed my life and how I treated myself. [It was a] true honor to work with this man and his beautiful family.”

In a separate post, Eureka added, “Having the opportunity to work with Pastor Craig still warms my heart and soul. Being raised in an area that is primarily Southern Baptist, I faced a lot of similar issues as the folks in Evansville. Seeing a pastor come forward and want to make change within his church and community is something a lot think is unfathomable. Pastor Craig broke that mold!”

Pastor Craig and Eureka onstage

But some in Pastor Craig’s church didn’t feel anywhere near the same way. And this week, we learned that the Rev. Craig Duke has lost his job and is losing his home because he appeared in the HBO series.

In a written statement to Religion News Service, UMC’s Indiana Conference said Pastor Craig had “stepped away from his duties at the church and entered a time of renewal, reflection, and recovery. The statement clarified that the pastor did not resign, nor was he fired, but that “He and the Conference felt that he was no longer able to effectively serve in parish ministry with the Newburgh congregation.”

But while Pastor Craig and his family were traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday, RNS reports, Mitch Gieselman, superintendent of the South and Southwest District of the Indiana Conference, told the congregation via email that Pastor Craig would be “relieved from pastoral duties” beginning Dec. 1. He will receive a “significantly reduced” salary from the church through Feb. 28, but will not perform any pastoral functions there. His wife, Linda, who was youth minister at the church and has also lost her job, will be allowed to remain in their church-owned home through Feb, 28.

Pastor Craig knew going in that there would be some church members would not approve of him doing drag, he told RNS. But he didn’t think it would cost him his job. “Clearly, there were folks that were more displeased with my participation than I was aware of, or, at least, the group that was unhappy continued to work together,” he added.

It was, he said, a “negative, bullying, attacking email from a church person” that came in on 14 that “flipped the tide,” He told RNS, “It just got to the point where the conflict, the anger grew too much, and so for my mental health, too, I started to back away, and I told my district superintendent that the conflict was so much, it was at such a level from some, that I was unable to be an effective leader.”

Pastor Craig has mentioned the possibility of starting his own ministry, something that the folks at the Reconciling Ministries Network hope to help him with, according to RMN board member Pamela Curry of Dallas. According to a message Curry sent Dallas Voice today (Tuesday, Dec. 7), , RMN Communications Director Ophelia Hu Kinney is in touch with him about :amplifying his voice and helping in an overall Communications strategy.”

Curry added, “we are working with him on other ways RMN may be of support to him and his family. A GoFundMe has been set up and we are also working with a pastor in IGRC on getting a method set up for individuals to donate to him” via a tax-exempt nonprofit organization.

RMN President Jan Lawrence said, “Please keep Pastor Duke and his family in your prayers. I found him to be very gracious and [I am] looking forward to the next steps in his ministry. I was angry enough for both of us at the latest example of harm in the church.”

North Texas’ drag superstar Shangela, who stars on We’re Here with Eureka and Bob The Drag Queen, was angry, too. In a video posted to her Instagram, Shangela said, “I just got off the plane and found out they have fired, or let go, Pastor Craig. … Turns out they church where he works out, they bullied him right on up out of his job because he is a person who believes in love and in faith and inclusion

“Being a faith-based person, he decided to step out on faith and join our show We’re Here, and they let Pastor Craig go. And that is wrong. … Our show is about bringing people together.It’s about love; it’s about acceptance. .. When we [in the LBTQ community] don’t agree with somebody, we don’t go get them fired. Not primarily. But they’ve been doing it to us for years. And now they’re doing it to our allies as well.”

Urging her fans to donate to the GoFundMe established for Pastor Craig and his wife, Shangela added, “Let’s stand together and show Pastor Craig, a man who is all about love, that if they don’t take care of us, we will take care of each other. It’s not about the money;  it’s about showing love and solidarity. We are the change we want to see in the world.”

As if 5:18 p.m. today, the GoFundMe page for Pastor Craig and his family had far surpassed its $30,000 goal, standing at $50,765. Supporters are urged to take to social media with #IStandWithPastorCraig, and, as one person commenting on Shangela’s Instagram post said, “We ride at dawn for Pastor Craig,”

— Tammye Nash