After leaving the United Methodist Church over its restrictive policies on the LGBTQ+ community, Rev. Anna Blaedel co-founded Sacred Collective, a multi-denominational spiritual community in Iowa City. Now, as Iowa lawmakers pass sweeping legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights and education, Sacred Collective blends spirituality and activism, offering a space for action and belonging.
Blaedel, an openly queer former ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, disaffiliated in 2019 after church leaders voted to uphold and strengthen the ban on LGBTQ+ clergy and same-sex marriage. That same year, they also stepped down as director of the former University of Iowa Wesley Center, a campus ministry previously affiliated with the church.
“There was this deep history within Methodist tradition of social justice,” Blaedel said. “And I think the United Methodist Church really lost its way.”
Sacred Collective, located on Linn Street in Iowa City’s Northside, is the successor to Blaedel’s work with the Wesley Center and is jointly operated by Blaedel and Rev. Sean McRoberts, who also disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church in 2019.
Blaedel said the nonprofit sustains its space through reduced rent from a friend who owns the building and relies on small-dollar donations, which can be made in person or online.
“Rather than independent, we think of ourselves as interdependent,” Blaedel said. “Wanting to collaborate with anyone, whether it’s an organization or individuals, who can do good creative work for the common good.”
Raised in the United Methodist Church, Blaedel said they were inspired by their church community’s social justice work from an early age. Since disaffiliating, they have not formally joined another denomination but have instead shaped Sacred Collective as a home for what they call “spiritual misfits.”
“Misfit-ness is a point of coalition and solidarity across individual identity,” Blaedel said. “Everyone knows what it feels like to be an outcast or an outsider and not belong — and to create belonging.”
In addition to a monthly free community meal, Sacred Collective hosts various events that blend social justice and spirituality. Blaedel said the organization welcomes people of all faith backgrounds who share its core values of authenticity, courage, community, justice, sustainable leadership, and hospitality.
“Anyone who shares some of those core values, whatever the religious, cultural or spiritual tradition, feel like our people in community and connection,” Blaedel said, adding that another core value of Sacred Collective is providing the space for free will, trusting that those who can afford to donate will do so.
Most recently, on March 9, Iowa City residents gathered at Sacred Collective for a letter-writing campaign to contact state politicians about various laws proposed and passed in the current legislative session. One particularly controversial measure, Senate File 418, was signed into law by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds last month, removing gender identity as a protected class from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
“Kind of full-on assault of everything precious and dear and sacred,” Blaedel said of the new law. “It’s not surprising, but it’s shocking. And I don’t want to stop being shocked.”
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Blaedel said they and McRoberts traveled to the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines to join hundreds of Iowans protesting the legislation, which they described as a beautiful experience.
“That doesn’t mean that the devastating violence that’s being reaped in the local community, in this country, and internationally isn’t devastating, genocidal, destructive,” Blaedel said. “I don’t mean to minimize that at all, but I really do believe in what happens when we practice together the world that we believe in.”
As transgender Iowans face increased discrimination in housing, finance, employment, education, and public accommodations under the new law, Sacred Collective continues to provide a welcoming and supportive space for all community members, regardless of income or identity.
“Every trans person I know is exhausted and terrified,” Blaedel said. “Someone described it as walking around like a raw nerve end.”
The current legislative session included several bills affecting education — such as restrictions on LGBTQ+ topics in grades K-12, introducing Bible study and fetal development courses in public schools, and expanding state funding for private school tuition. Iowa City resident Jennifer New said she attended the letter-writing event at Sacred Collective to express her concerns about these measures.
“There’s so much gray area. And I think partly what it does to any educator is it can really put you in this place of total fear,” New said.
Beyond education, Iowa City resident Claire Buchanan shared the personal impact of Senate File 360 — a proposed bill that would ban health care providers from administering mRNA vaccines.
“I had leukemia when I was three, and I would not be alive without an mRNA vaccine,” Buchanan said.
She emphasized her view that the proposed bill will have no positive outcomes if passed.
“Whether it be cancer survivors like myself, anybody that’s high risk for COVID, anybody that is disabled [and] needs this form of treatment, it serves nothing except to kill those people,” Buchanan said. “So, I’m writing to these people [to ask], ‘Why are you passing legislation that exist only to kill your constituents?’”