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Religion


FINDING FAITH BEYOND FUNDAMENTALISM


UNITY CHURCH IN HOUSTON EMBRACES DIVERSITY AND WELCOMES ALL.

Brandon WolfOctober 3, 2024
141 6 minutes read
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Pastor Michael Gott (Image courtesy)

Houston’s Unity Church is one of the largest New Thought congregations in the
nation. Their progressive attitudes are perfectly demonstrated by the fact that
their pastor, Michael Gott, is openly gay. Gott has been senior pastor since
2017.

Gott sees Unity Church as a place where people can begin new spiritual journeys
and see religion in a whole different light. Coming from a fundamentalist
religious background, he knows personally about such a journey. A former lounge
singer who struggled with alcohol addiction and found recovery, he is now the
beloved pastor of a church that welcomes all and embraces diversity.

The New Thought Movement 



Gott explains that the Unity denomination takes its name from their belief that
everything and everyone are connected, and the presence of the divine is in all
of us. By focusing on the good in life, we can grow to create that goodness in
our own lives. Dating back to 1889, Unity is part of the New Thought movement,
which looks to the teachings of many other religions with a definite focus on
Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. The movement does not accept
the Christian Bible as literal. “It’s a great collection of spiritual writings.
It has great wisdom. But we do not accept it as the inherent word of God,” Gott
explains.




The movement also does not accept the concepts of a devil or hell. Rather than
seeing Jesus as a “savior,” it believes that the historical Jesus was a great
spiritual teacher who fully realized his potential and preached kindness and
compassion.



> “Transphobia today is out of control. We honor all paths that lead to God, but
> don’t honor some of the things certain religions do.”
> — Michael Gott

Gott says that a lot of people come to Unity from fundamentalist backgrounds and
find a great relief in Unity philosophies. The denomination places a high value
on human rights and has a great appeal to members of minority groups.
“Transphobia today is out of control,” Gott says. “We honor all paths that lead
to God, but don’t honor some of the things that certain religions do.”

Unity has a wide array of programs. One of the Sunday morning services is
devoted to their Spanish-speaking ministry. A millennials group is growing, and
several men’s and women’s groups are available. There are study groups on gay
people, but the LGBTQ community has been very well integrated into the church
and its board.

The church has several 12-step recovery programs, classes in spiritual
education, and the extremely popular Course in Miracles. Unity has hosted such
nationally known speakers as Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson.

During the 1980s, a Houston Chronicle article noted that then-mayor Kathy
Whitmire often attended the church. Just recently, Gott was asked to give the
invocation at the mayoral inauguration of Kathy Whitmire’s brother-in-law John
Whitmire.

A Country Boy Who Was Different

Gott was born in 1966 and grew up in a small rural town near Tulsa, Oklahoma. He
was the middle of three sons, and his mother was a homemaker while his father
worked in a local wax factory. “They had strong work ethics,” he says.

Throughout his childhood, Gott always knew he was different. He recalls watching
Barney Miller one night on television. The plot of the episode included two
rather flamboyant men, and he heard the word “gay” mentioned. His father asked
him if he understood what that meant, and then explained it to him.



By the time Gott hit puberty, his sexuality was undeniable. He had strong
feelings of attraction to men, but he had been raised in a Pentecostal family
and couldn’t talk about it.

In school, he involved himself in anything musical. He studied theory,
composition, piano, and voice. He played tuba in the band and sang in one of the
choirs.

Although he was offered scholarships at a variety of colleges, he chose the
nearby Oral Roberts University, a Pentecostal school. He had to hide his
sexuality because he would have been expelled if that fact had become known. He
stayed in the closet successfully, encouraged to do so by a supportive piano
teacher. He graduated in 1988 with a major in music.

Gott came out to his family at age 19. His father was supportive, but his mother
struggled with it. He says he was willing to change if he could, but reality
told him differently. He discovered that one of his uncles was gay and had come
out in 1940 and moved to San Francisco. The two became close friends.



A Musician in Dallas 

Gott moved to Dallas to attend graduate school in nearby Denton, although he
eventually dropped out. “At the time, I had a girlfriend who knew I was gay.
Today she is married to a woman,” he says, noting the irony. He began
exclusively dating men. He also began singing at local gay bars in Dallas—John
L’s, Bill’s Hideaway, and Michael’s Piano Bar.

Gott supported himself as a full-time waiter and musician. For 13 years he
performed regularly in the Mansion Bar at Turtle Creek. “I provided whatever the
room needed, including requests. At the peak of those years, I had memorized
over 400 songs.”     

During those years, Gott became addicted to alcohol. Looking back, he feels that
at the core of his addiction was an inability to accept being gay. His sexuality
was so strong, and yet he still had a sincere belief in the religion of his
childhood. “The pain went away when I drank,” he admits. Eventually, he found
recovery and has been sober for 25 years.

Finding a New Spirituality

Houston’s Unity Church

One night when Gott was entertaining at Michael’s Piano Bar, a man asked to talk
with him during his break. “He asked me to sing at his church, the Center for
Spiritual Living.” Gott took him up on the invitation and soon got a job at the
church.

Gott wasn’t greatly interested in that church at first. “It was very different
from what I grew up in, and I wondered if it was a cult,” he recalls. He did
like the fact that the church was gay-affirming. He had been looking for a
spiritual community and was ready for something new in his life. Within a year,
he had tuned in to the church’s core beliefs.

When the minister of the church suggested that Gott go to seminary, he felt
conflicted. Eventually, he devoted three years to earning a master’s degree
through the Holmes Institute of Consciousness Studies. At the end of his second
year, when Gott still wasn’t sure of his choice, he was asked to conduct a
memorial service. “I felt something shift. I realized there is a great need for
someone to do these kinds of things,” he says—a realization that led to
accepting an associate music director position in Reno, Nevada.

For several years during that period, he provided the music for a Montana
spiritual retreat. That’s where he met Howard Caesar, the pastor of Houston’s
Unity Church. Caesar invited Gott to visit his church and perform. During that
first visit to the Houston church, Gott was amazed as he looked out at the
congregation while he was singing and realized how diverse the membership is.

Gott happily accepted the offer of a music minister position at the Houston
church. Then in 2017, Caesar retired after 34 years of ministry in Houston and
named Gott as his replacement. Gott’s amazing spiritual journey, from
guilt-ridden conservative Christian to  belief in the universal presence of the
divine, has led him to the position of ministering to the flagship church of the
New Thought movement.

Endless Possibilities

Trey Yates has been a member of Unity for the past 23 years and served on the
board for seven years. “If I had had an openly gay minister growing up, my life
would have been so different,” he says.

Yates considers Gott to be a good friend, and sometimes on Saturdays they walk
and talk together in Memorial Park. “Michael has such an open soul,” Yates says.

Mike Wick, who has been a Unity member for 38 years, says, “Like a lot of folks,
I grew up with an image of God that talked about judgment and sin. I was in a
particularly low point in my life, and Unity was exactly what I needed. I was
introduced to a God that was loving and compassionate. It was like a breath of
fresh air,” he says. “The possibilities of life are endless, just like the
universe that we are blessed to be a part of. I can’t wait to see what the rest
of the journey brings.”

For more info, visit unityhouston.org.







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Brandon WolfOctober 3, 2024
141 6 minutes read




BRANDON WOLF

Brandon Wolf is a regular contributor to OutSmart Magazine.

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