Cheri DiNovo nominated for United Church moderator

Rev. Cheri DiNovo, former Ontario politician and former minister of Trinity-St. Paul’s United in Toronto is hoping to be The United Church of Canada’s next moderator.

Nominated by the Shining Waters Regional Council Executive, DiNovo, 74, says her bid for moderator is “kind of a love letter” to more than 30 years of being involved in the church.

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As MPP for Parkdale-High Park from 2006-2017, DiNovo passed the most pro-2SLGBTQ+ bills in Ontario’s history, producing laws that banned conversion therapy, protected trans rights, established parent equality for queer parents and introduced a private member’s bill to establish Trans Day of Remembrance.

Before entering provincial politics, she served at Emmanuel-Howard Park United (now Roncesvalles United), where she performed Canada’s first legalized same-sex marriage in 2001. Her 2021 memoir The Queer Evangelist: A Socialist Clergy’s Radically Honest Tale recalls her life as a queer, street-involved teen and activist. DiNovo, who calls herself “semi-retired,” is a voluntary associate minister at College Street United and a prolific public speaker. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 2022.

“We’re in a time where the United Church and our moderator needs to be speaking truth to power,” DiNovo says.

“Being a voice to the world” is a critical call upon the denomination, she says. Having hosted the radio show and podcast The Radical Reverend since 1998, she believes that the United Church can accomplish that by upping its media presence.

“We need to be in the mainstream [and social] media in a way that we haven’t been in the past, because that’s where people are,” she says.

Inside the church, DiNovo believes that operational support for congregations “should be priority number one.”

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“It’s a crying shame that we are closing so many churches,” she says, noting that churches must remain churches, not just buildings, because they are sanctuaries for youth in crisis. Her Lambda Literary Award-winning book and doctoral thesis Qu(e)erying Evangelism: Growing a Community From the Outside In was based on how to grow a congregation by being inclusive of all races, sexualities and income brackets.

Other priorities for DiNovo include “real autonomy” for the Indigenous Church, more funding to support equitable hiring and increasing democracy within the new organizational structure.

“By ‘democracy,’ I mean one person, one vote,” she says, explaining that all United Church members should have a vote for moderator and general secretary.

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Leslie Sinclair is a freelance journalist in Toronto.

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