God, Gays and Paperweights

[August 9th, 2006] Jeanne Hawthorne vividly recalls singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and crafting Jesus paperweights at summer vacation bible school when she was about 10 and visiting her grandparents in small-town Colorado.

But as a teenager growing up Methodist, Hawthorne gave up on organized religion for decades because she felt her own spirituality didn't connect with what she was hearing in church. Yet something about that childhood summer experience stayed with her. Today, at age 51, she and her female partner, Cory Madey, are active members of Metropolitan Community Church, Portland's house of worship for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered churchgoers.

And when they attend Sunday services at the Northeast Portland church, they of course bring their 5-year-old son, Aharon.

Starting Sunday, Aug. 13, the family will step back into Hawthorne's past when they go to their church's first Queer Family Vacation Bible School.

What's being termed the "unVBS" is the brainchild of the church's new assistant pastor, Rev. Wes Mullins. The VBS is a longstanding tradition at churches around the country, where children gather to share Bible stories and make Christian crafts. You see signs advertising them outside churches all over Oregon in the summertime. But the schools are relatively new to "queer" churches.

Mullins, who was hired earlier this year at MCC to expand youth outreach, says the church is holding its unVBS in an effort to stay relevant to its congregation, which includes a growing number of families with children.

"We wanted something for families built off the concept of a VBS," Mullins says. "What we didn't want was the right-wing fundamentalist 'Come to Jesus or Go to Hell' type of thing."

Many queers blanch at the thought of Christianity, which has many denominations that preach that homosexuality is a sin. And then there are Bible passages such as in Leviticus: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination" (a dictum long known to women as the lesbian loophole). Of course, Leviticus also lays down rules about making animal sacrifices and stoning sinners—none of which anybody takes literally in modern times.

Mullins says queer believers know to read and interpret Holy Scripture in the historical context of the times. "All views of Scripture are interpretation," he says.

In fact, many queers are devout Christians. And with more gay and lesbian couples embarking on parenthood, churches like MCC have responded with kid- and family-friendly services for the increasing numbers of queer moms and dads who want to introduce their kids to church traditions from their own childhoods.

The number of children attending services at MCC has grown from a handful to 20 to 30 on any given Sunday, out of a total attendance of 250. (About 90 percent of the church's congregation is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.)

"Queer families needed a place to be able to come together in a spiritual context, to share the idea that we're all traveling this road together," Mullins says.

MCC aims to attract the whole family to its four-night unVBS series. The event kicks off Sunday with a spaghetti dinner and continues through Thursday with games and frank talk about faith and family. The sessions will tackle issues that most families grapple with, such as sex and video games, and some that are audience-specific, such as how to cope with looking different from mainstream families, whether that's feeling different or dealing with teasing.

To open up discussion about family issues, Mullins plans to highlight the Old Testament story of Jacob, a dysfunctional family saga featuring revenge, murder and polygamy—the stuff great HBO series are made of. "Jacob's story breaks down the image that Christian families have to be perfect," Mullins says. "Throughout the Bible, the opposite is true. Look at Jacob's family—and that's the family that Israel is founded upon!"

Queer Christians such as Hawthorne and Madey find strength in the Bible and look to Scripture as a guide to making their way in the world. They teach their son that all families are holy, regardless of how they are configured.

"There's something bigger than ourselves out there," Hawthorne says. "And the way you connect with that as a child a lot of times is through crafts, and singing, and stories."

"I'd like the experience to be a memory marker for Aharon," Madey says. "I believe that if you raise a child in the way of the Lord, when they grow up they will never stray too far from God."

Both hope the unVBS will let them share laughs and tears, hear a few thought-provoking stories, play a few fun games, and get to know themselves and other families a bit better. And maybe, if he's lucky, Aharon will get to make a cool craft project to take home.