Durham Memorial UMC goes viral playing Chappell Roan church bells for ‘Pride Month’

By Sydnee Scofield

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    DURHAM, North Carolina (WTVD) — Duke Memorial United Methodist Church is going viral after one of their bell ringers played a song by queer artist Chappell Roan on the first day of “Pride Month.”

Katelyn MacDonald didn’t expect anything to come of it when she started playing Roan’s “HOT TO GO!” on the morning of June 1.

“I did it primarily because I thought it would be a fun song to play,” MacDonald told ABC11. “Also, I mean, you can’t like, practice on an instrument like that. You play a note and the whole city hears it. So, I did it because I thought it would be fun, but also because it might put a smile on faces in Durham.”

It did, but her notes reached much farther than the Bull City.

Someone captured her playing the anthem on video, and posted it to TikTok . It blew up, with more than 14 million views now. Roan’s account even reposted it.

Though the attention has been unexpected, the messages MacDonald has started to receive have moved her the most.

“Saying like, ‘Oh, this really healed me.’ Or ‘Oh, I didn’t expect to get so emotional, like why am I crying on a Saturday morning?’ And I got these DMs from people that were just beautiful and said like ‘this really healed something in me, like I’ve dealt with a lot of religious trauma, the church has pushed me away, and this like really helped me come to terms with some stuff’.”

MacDonald said people have started coming into the church after seeing the TikTok video. She said it’s been beautiful to see one small video bringing people into its doors.

“That’s hard to do for a queer person, or for anybody, but especially somebody who has been marginalized by churches in the past, specifically harmed by churches sometimes, but also just broadly having your existence questioned by the church can just be exhausting,” MacDonald said. “So to see something that says unequivocally, ‘Oh, like they’re playing a song that I see myself in that might be a place for me’, I think is really powerful.”

She said that since such a simple act had such a profound effect, it meant there was work left to be done.

“What can we learn from that to serve our communities better, to reach out to the people that the church has historically pushed away? I think there’s a real opportunity and a challenge for the church in that,” MacDonald said.

The UMC in particular is making strides.

Just last month, the UMC voted to lift the ban on same-sex marriages and LGBTQ clergy. It also removed “homophobic” language from their teachings.

MacDonald said she’ll continue to try to find ways to let people know they’re welcome.

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