Hurray! Hubby and I had our first date seven years ago tonight. He’s at work, and I’m thinking deeply and fondly of him.
Last night, he and I were shopping for groceries and, in frozen foods, the conversation turned to our Easter observances. To tell the truth, I was thinking of a lo-cal or vegetarian answer to my question: “What do want to get or do for Easter?”
Without pausing, he retorted: “Go to flower communion at a church that doesn’t mention Christ.” Ouch: that service he attended — long before we met — several years ago certainly made an impression . . .
We have a couple of irreducible needs in a church, even in our current quasi-churchless state.
- It has to be Christian (and not just Christian on occasion).
- It can’t degrade our relationship as a gay couple.
The second is the stickier to define, and I mention it because of the running comment at Surviving the Workday about not getting your needs met at church. (About which I’m not even close to exhausting.)
While the attitude of a local congregation is important, we’ve chosen to make polity a disqualifying factor. So an episcopal polity church is judged by its hierarchical structure and a presbyterian polity church by its various courts, while a congregational polity church would be judged strictly by local decision making. This means a way-gay Episcopal parish gets dinged by the national church’s current spinelessness. (Other than that Bp. Robinson, how was the show?) It also means a Unitarian Universalist congregation cannot lean on the merits of a General Assembly resolution, and so forth. And frankly, any lingering patience I had for the bigger Lutheran or Presbyterian churches has dried up.
Follow the power. Pay attention to who can make decisions.
I’ll let you know next Monday where we went, if indeed we went out at all.
While Baltimore may be a bit of a drive, you’d certainly be welcome to join us at First United Evangelical (UCC)/St. Sebastian’s Independent Catholic: we share a building and a pastor as well as several congregation members. Despite the distance, I think we’d fit both of your criteria. Following the money, the only denominational community we’re affiliated with is the UCC. Our catholic eucharist is at 4:30 (blissfully late in the day), and is usually followed by open invitations to join us for dinner.
First United: http://www.firstuniteducc.com/home.html
St. Sebastian’s: http://www.saintsebastiancatholic.com/
Congratulations on your dating anniversary. 🙂 And those seem like good criteria for church.
Who would you like to see with the power?
I confess I’ve never been quite sure what your polity preference is, although I sense that it’s extremely congregational.
@Philo. Actually, I skew to “presbygational.” But they all have their problems.
Congratulations on the anniversary of your first date! Hugs to both of you!