Bishop Kwabena Albert ‘Rainey’ Cheeks (Photo courtesy of UCC of Fredericksburg)
Bishop Kwabena Albert “Rainey” Cheeks, the founder and former senior pastor of D.C.’s LGBTQ supportive Inner Light Ministries church and founder of Us Helping Us, People Into Living, which provides services for D.C.-area residents with HIV with an outreach to the Black LGBTQ community, passed away on Aug. 11 at Georgetown University Hospital. He was 74.
Statements released by Inner Light Ministries and Us Helping Us describe Cheeks as a pivotal leader in the advocacy for supportive and welcoming religious services and support for the LGBTQ community and for helping to establish HIV treatment and prevention services for LGBTQ people most at risk for HIV/AIDS.
“In 1985, Bishop Cheeks founded Us Helping Us with a vision rooted in love, community empowerment, and the belief that our people deserved to live healthy, whole, and dignified lives,” Us Helping Us says in a statement announcing Cheeks’s passing.
“What began as a vision became a movement – one that has touched countless lives and continues to serve communities today,” the statement says. “His leadership, courage, compassion, and commitment to our community helped lay the foundation for the work we carry forward. While we grieve the loss of the man who started it all, we also celebrate the extraordinary legacy he leaves behind.”
“For over 30 years, Us Helping Us has been providing innovative care and services to improve the health and well-being of Black, gay men,” the organization says on its website. “We work every day to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS in the entire Black community by providing care to anyone who walks through our door,” the statement says.
In a separate statement on its website, Inner Light Ministries says Cheeks founded the LGBTQ supportive church in 1993 and served as its senior pastor. One of his former assistants, Rev. Darryll Moch, said Cheeks retired as pastor in 2018 but remained active in the church in the role of Pastor Emeritus until the time of his passing.
“His work as an outspoken advocate for the LGBT community and the inclusive nature of spirituality and ministry extends to everyone and the Love of God is not exclusive of anyone,” the church statement says. “This work has fueled ministers and ministries around the country and the world,” it adds.
It says Cheeks graduated and was ordained in 1982 from the National Spiritual Science Center of the Nation’s Capital and received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree from the St. Andrews Theological Seminary in London, England.
The Inner Light Ministries statement and others who knew Cheeks point out that he played a lead role in helping to open in 1975 the Clubhouse nightclub that operated until its closing in 1990 as a mostly Black LGBTQ social club. Although the Clubhouse became known as a Black gay bar, it only served alcoholic beverages during special events, according to a 2021 article about the popular venue by the D.C. History Center.
The article says Cheeks and four others arranged for the Clubhouse to operate at 1296 Upshur St., N.W. in the city’s Petworth neighborhood “as a place where anyone 16 and over could go and have the house party they couldn’t have in their own house.”
The Inner Light Ministries statement says the Clubhouse, under Cheeks’s leadership, became a place where “hundreds in D.C.’s LGBT community flocked in the doors for both community and spiritual refuge, dancing and celebrating with each other weekly.”
The statement says Cheeks was also designated as a Grand Master in the Korean form of martial arts and karate known as Tae Kwon Do. It says he was rated in the top 10 in that martial arts category in the U.S. and won a silver and bronze metal in the first world championship competition in Soul, Korea, where Tae Kwon Do originated.
“In 2002, he was inducted into the Tae Kwon Do International Hall of Fame and received the rank of Grand Master 9th Degree,” the statement says.
As if that were not enough, the statement says Cheeks was certified in grief and bereavement counseling and had served as a teacher in the subjects of meditation and world religion.
It says he has received numerous awards for his service to the D.C. community, including from the D.C. LGBTQ Rainbow History Project, former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’s Community Service Award, the Whitman Walker Health Community Service Award, and the Episcopal Care and Response Community Award.
In an updated statement released on Aug. 13, Inner Light Ministries calls Cheeks a dedicated leader whose work and impact “extended far beyond the pulpit.”
“Bishop Cheeks was more than a religious leader,” it says. “Bishop Cheeks was a builder of bridges, a voice for the voiceless, and a constant reminder that service is one of the highest callings,” it says, adding, “Through both word and deed, Bishop Cheeks inspired others to stand for equity, care for one another, and work tirelessly for a better tomorrow.”
A Celebration of Life for Cheeks is scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, at D.C.’s First Congregational Church at 945 G Street, N.|W.
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