The Sanctuary Interfaith Community Center

With humble beginnings in houses, basements, and coffee shops, The Sanctuary Interfaith Community Center is the most current iteration of The Church Within. Founded over three decades ago, this space is one with many homes, many faces, and many different possibilities. The Church Within was founded a spiritual refuge for those hungry for more connectedness and community. These thinkers and seekers forged lasting bonds and fierce relationships as they established The Church Within.

With the retirement of a long-term pastor in 2024, The Church Within began the deep contemplative work of future forecasting. With roots in anti-oppressive theology, our congregation set out to clarify what our community feels like versus what our name says about us. This year-long project has produced The Sanctuary Interfaith Community Center, a space rooted in love, growing in spirit, and cultivating community.

We believe all are born for belonging. That we are all an integral part of all spaces in which we arrive. We understand that for marginalized, oppressed, and traumatized peoples, the intersection of care and religion can feel suspicious and uninviting. To offset what we know about mainstream faith spaces and their ability to do harm, we worked to consider how we may become irresistible to those who seek a spiritual home traditionally left out of mainstream faith spaces.

Our community invites all. We seek to be a space of welcome and of celebration to anyone who walks in the door. Especially those who struggle to feel at home in traditional faith spaces. We believe that practicing connection to the Divine requires the diverse constellation of the human experience within our walls and within our community.

We believe that Black Lives are Sacred. That Queer Inclusion is the only path to liberation. We believe that all abilities and all bodies reflect the Divine within. We support immigrants and their work to build our country - past and present. We long for ways to integrate the vastness of all into the walls of our community center. In a time where what makes us unique makes us a target, we hope The Sanctuary Community Center becomes a place of communal refuge and spiritual reconciliation.