Finding Faith Beyond Fundamentalism

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.

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

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.