COMMENTARY: Church Fire Reveals Two Kinds of Christians

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Any person who’s found solace in a house of worship knows why this is a wound that hurts an entire congregation. St. John’s Reformed United Church of Christ is a 225-year-old church in rural Middlebrook, Va. On Wednesday (July 13), the outgoing message on the church phone still invited […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Any person who’s found solace in a house of worship knows why this is a wound that hurts an entire congregation.

St. John’s Reformed United Church of Christ is a 225-year-old church in rural Middlebrook, Va. On Wednesday (July 13), the outgoing message on the church phone still invited you to buy tickets for May’s spaghetti supper, but that has to be the last thing on the minds of its grieving congregation.


Vandals set fire to St. John’s just five days after the United Church of Christ’s General Synod met in Atlanta and passed a nonbinding resolution to endorse gay and lesbian civil marriages. News reports called it a “small fire,” but there’s no such thing when the flames are in your sacred home.

A church member was about to mow the lawn on Saturday (July 9) when he spotted graffiti on the outside of the church declaring that UCC members are sinners. When he went inside, he found a fire in the sanctuary.

The vandals burned a stack of hymnals, the same books that members opened week after week for funerals and weddings, Sunday services and urgent prayers. The fire damaged the choir loft, too, and one of the pews where sleepy children used to lean against patient parents, and folks in trouble listened hard for what God had to say.

Why, church members asked. Why would they do this to us?

They found their answer in the anti-gay graffiti left behind.

After the Associated Press reported the fire, one Web blog led with the headline, “Christians Prefer to Burn Churches Than to Let Gays Marry.”

What Christians might these be?

It reminds me of recent coverage of ABC’s decision to cancel its ill-conceived reality show “Welcome to the Neighborhood” after both liberal and conservative groups complained that it promoted prejudice. Neighbors in a quiet cul-de-sac near Austin, Texas, voted on which household of the following would be allowed to move in: a black family, Wiccans, Latinos, a white family with a stripper mother or a white gay couple with an adopted black infant.

Apparently, for some this is quite a quandary.

Much of the coverage, including that of The New York Times and The Washington Post, described those neighbors willing to cast judgment as “Christians.”

Again, I ask: What Christians might these be?

“Clearly, there are at least two competing versions of interpreting our Gospel,” said the Rev. John Thomas, general minister and president of the UCC. “There are those who are Jesus-centered, focused on outreach to those in the margins with a message of inclusion, and there are those who are real judgmental, more rule-bound with boundaries for who is welcome and who is not.”


Both, he said, can find biblical text to support their brand of Christianity, and he has heard from plenty on both sides since the General Synod’s vote. His voice sounded weary as he recounted some of the ugly mail. In the face of such vitriol, he said, it is best to take the long view.

“In 1833, we ordained the first woman,” Thomas said. “It caused deep divisions in the church back then. Now it’s not even an issue. If you think only in weeks, it can be very difficult.”

Thomas first heard about the fire at St. John’s. “I had this stunned, sickened feeling. I said, `My God, is it starting?’ Part of your mind tells you it is an isolated incident. But still, you worry.”

Less than 48 hours after vandals tried to destroy their church, about 100 members of St. John’s gathered on the lawn to celebrate its 225th anniversary.

The Staunton News Leader described the scene: Children used discarded strips of yellow police tape to bind their legs for a three-legged race. The Rev. Dorcas Lohr urged her congregation to remember their long history, including the church fire they survived in 1978.

The latest act of vandalism, she said, wasn’t personal, but “a symptom of what is happening in our nation.”


When she was done, the congregation sang “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”

There was no music, no choir in the loft. No pews, even.

And still, these Christians sang.

KRE/JL/LF END SCHULTZ

(Connie Schultz is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)

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