Happy Sunday.

I hate to only use this blog to vent about things that aggravate me, but here we go again.

Last Halloween there was a firestorm of press about a woman who let her son dress as a female cartoon character for his preschool costume party. She was insulted by some of the other mothers at the daycare who claimed that she was going to 'turn her son gay' by allowing him to dress like this. She wrote a very well-thought out and eloquent blog post about it that was picked up by the national media. No where in the blog did she name names, the mothers were A, B, and C. In my opinion, she was not being vindictive in writing what she felt on her own blog, and she was actually very kind in the ways that she hid identities and details that would implicate any person to the public.

So, that was November, and you'd think that the whole thing would have died down by now. Now it's come out that her church has been bullying her to remove her blog, apologize to the mothers, and repent her sins for breaking the 8th commandment (I will get into this later, but 'not bearing false witness' is the Lutheran/Roman Catholic 8th commandment) or else she could be refused communion and not allowed to switch to another congregation within her district. This came from her pastor (which is the second clue that this is probably a Lutheran church, since pastor is a protestant term, and that's the only protestant denomination to have the 8th commandment as mentioned above), and barring a congregant to take communion or switch to another congregation seems like it would be one of the highest levels of punishment a pastor could administer. The woman is upset (rightfully so) and is now unsure what to do because she is faced with a pretty harsh slap from the church she grew up in and the church that she has chosen to raise her family in. There are a lot of comments running around the blogosphere on this, of course, but I thought I'd add my two cents to the pile...because why the hell not?

I was raised in the Lutheran church, Missouri Synod side, and the initial blog about the women insulting her and her son was powerful not only because it was offensive, but because I could see it happening in the community that I grew up in. I don't know what side of the Lutheran church this woman is a member of, although I feel pretty sure from the details in the story that she is dealing with a Lutheran pastor in this situation. What galls me about this whole thing is that this entire situation highlights the problems that people of all denominations and beliefs have within organized religion and Christianity in particular. Even those people who attend church regularly and consider themselves strong believers have doubts and troubles when it comes to the actions of their church leaders. When you spout off unconditional love and forgiveness and mercy in an effort to attract followers to your church and then, once you have them, you preach intolerance and freely pass judgment on others within your own church, you're going to have a problem. It is this feeling of intolerance, not from the other congregants, but from the leaders of a church that is what will divide a church and its community, and society as a whole. People who don't believe in organized religion see those who do as hypocrites, sheep, bigots, and any other number of negative things. For the most part, I have found that the believers and Christians that I know are not like this and they struggle with the same issues and doubts that non-believers shout from the rooftops. But, with this woman and her son's situation, as a pastor and leader of a congregation, the man should have worked to mediate the situation in a way to not pass judgment on either side, but to work to bring the two sides to a better understanding of each other. This started because a little boy wanted to dress up as a female cartoon character for a daycare costume party. How many little girls at that same party were dressed as male characters? How many children go as devils every year on Halloween? Is the church supposed to respond to all of these parents with hand-slaps and warnings about 'turning your children gay' or allowing evil to seep in? No. This whole thing was blown out of proportion but rather than the pastor taking a step back and allowing his training as a religious leader and counselor to help him in this situation, his knee-jerk reaction was to condemn her and demand that she meet certain requirements or else he would take actions against her and her family that could make it impossible for them to stay within the denomination in that community. This not only makes Lutherans look bad (which, believe me, they don't need the negative press), but it makes the entire organized religious community look like they can't mediate a simple situation, but can only overreact and drive people away.

As an aside, homosexuality has been at the forefront of Lutheran leadership over the last few years. The more liberal sector of Lutherans is the ELCA and they voted within the last year to allow openly gay pastors to be called to lead congregations. They already allowed women to serve in pastor roles and have some other more liberal-leaning views. Lutherans were already split between this progressive ELCA group and the uber-conservative Missouri-Synod side, but now there are other groups splintering off of ELCA. So, while this is a topic that is controversial in the nation as a whole, it is also something that a lot of church leaders within the Lutheran denomination have been facing and trying to deal with. Maybe by having this woman's blog and this situation within his congregation come up in the middle of this new split and change in religious thought among certain followers, this particular pastor let his emotions overrun him and he overreacted in this way. But it's a shame, because he could have used this situation to help bridge some gaps rather than creating a wider crevasse.