Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

Story

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church is a welcoming, inclusive, progressive-minded Baptist church located in Raleigh, North Carolina, US, right beside North Carolina State University. Pullen, called "a fiercely independent Baptist church" whose traditions have "earned it a reputation far and wide as the South's premier liberal church," has a long history of civil rights activism, and is currently a leader on key issues of the day, from LGBTQ rights to activism in Moral Monday protests to alliances with like-minded people in distant places from Cuba to Nicaragua to Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains and Black Sea.Led by the Dr. Reverend Nancy Petty, Pullen has been a long-time sanctuary for everyone from the marginalized in society to community leaders and role models. Pullen is not only a place to worship but a place to practice the meaning of one’s beliefs, religious or otherwise.In the last two decades, social issues have included Pullen Memorial's stance on sexual issues. In 1992 the Southern Baptist Convention expelled the church for its blessing a same-sex union. In 2002, lesbian minister Nancy Petty was selected to be co-pastor with Jack McKinney, making Pullen the first Baptist church in the South known to have chosen an openly homosexual person as lead clergy. Pullen has been marrying and blessing the unions of same-sex couples ever since.