stumblewyk

I've written here previously about my involvement with my church's Reconciling in Christ committee and our attempt to guide our church through the process of formally adopting a public stance of being both welcoming and affirming of LGBTQI+ and BIPOC members of the community.

Over the previous 18 months+ or so, we've addressed our church family during “Temple Talks” (where one of us would directly speak to a relevant topic – Juneteenth, ally-ship, pronoun use, etc), by bringing in outside speakers, speaking to other church groups when invited to do so, and by the publishing and posting of literature inside the church.

It's been an uphill battle, to say the least. I live in a fairly rural part of one of Philadelphia, PA's famed “collar counties.” Our county is thoroughly purple, but our area is very much red. We're surrounded by farms, by hunters, by families that have lived in this place for multiple, multiple decades, and in some cases, actual centuries.

Certainly, there have been many fellow congregants who have made their solidarity with us very apparent and clear. And, somewhat to my surprise on many occasions, overwhelming so. Yet, there are stalwarts who are firmly opposed to anything that doesn't look white, doesn't act straight, and isn't thoroughly anti-woke. This process has been, by turns, both uplifting and very, very disappointing.

We've been at this for almost 2 years and now we're looking to see where we stand as a congregation. To be formally recognized as an RIC church we need to hold a congregational vote and where 75% of voters elect to join the mission. But it's a scary proposition to call for a vote, so we asked our fellow church members to complete a survey giving us an idea of where they stand on the ideas we've presented, and on our committee's work as well. We got the surveys back this week and we've started doing some analysis of the responses.

In total, 58% of respondents indicated a strong belief that the RIC mission aligns with our church's mission and values of community support and love for all. About equal numbers of respondents indicated that they broadly supported the mission but had some concerns, as those who indicated that they did not believe that the RIC mission aligned with the church's values. That's...honestly, that's pretty crazy to see. I'm certainly glad, and I wish that “strong belief” cohort was larger, but overall I'll take it.

AND YET. And yet there's a very vocal segment of respondents who trotted out the usual litany of pearl-clutching tropes:
* “What about the children?”
* “Marriage is between a man and a woman.”
* “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
* and on, and on, and on...

But my favorite genre of response, by far, was the “I don't know anything about this, and I don't want any information on it either, but I have very strong opinions” surveys. Those, those are the ones that make me scream into the Void. You admit you're uninformed, you don't want to become informed, but you do want to have a very strong opinion on the subject.