Fountain Street Church welcomes the Reverend Mariela Pérez-Simons as the new senior minister of the church. She is the first woman and person of color in the role.
Reverend Mariela Pérez-Simons is originally from Cuba but has been living in the United States for over two decades. Since childhood she has been interested in seeking for the spiritual and religious outside of a traditional church entity or building.
“My religion was being in nature. I have this experience when I was four years old (and) I am in the middle of a hurricane in the hut of a home where I lived in poverty in Cuba and this hurricane is going by and I am looking at the hurricane through a hole in the wall in my house and I just fell on my knees with reverence for that life force…that powerful life force of that hurricane and that I felt that the life force in that hurricane is the same life force that ran through my veins and it is life.”
That memory of that life force is what led Pérez-Simons to seminary and eventually to Fountain Street Church where she serves as the senior minister. She says she’s excited about the possibilities to create what she calls a 21st century multicultural spiritual community.
“It means that we in here do the work of dismantling white supremacy culture—the idea that there is one way, one right way of doing things, and one way of seeing the world and then outside of the institution it’s the community building, the bringing people in addition to systemic changes in the way that we run our government and our institutions.”