Tempe Open & Affirming Congregation Experiences Anti-LGBT Hate

A man stopped by the Tempe Community Christian Church office last month to make sure the church knew he didn’t like the rainbow flag flying in front of the church.

Pastor Doug Bland posted this description of the interaction on Facebook:

A man stopped by the Tempe Community Christian Church office this morning on a rant about the rainbow flag we have in the cross tower…. The man was using inflammatory, graphic language about gay people and his “righteous” hatred for them. He threatened to pay people to protest in front of our church. He said that he was not above spreading lies about pedophilia in our church. He told [us] that if Hilary had won he would have driven right on by, but since Trump won he felt empowered to speak and act out because the country agrees with him.

You can read more and see a video news report about this event and Pastor Bland’s response here.

In another Facebook post a week after the incident, Pastor Bland shared this reflection:

It has been a week since an angry man came into our church office to spewed his homophobic rant because of the rainbow flag we have flying in our cross tower…. A reporter called to ask me what I’ve learned from the experience: First of all, I’ve learned that I’m not as loving and open as I would like to think of myself. When the incident happened, I asked people to pray for Keeley, our Administrator, who took the brunt of this man’s bile. Second I asked people to pray for our congregation, that we would respond with courage and love and continue to be a safe place for LGBTQ friends and neighbors. Third, I asked people to pray for our nation that is so divided and polarized, and a democracy that is under threat.

But there were at least two that I left off the list for prayer that were major oversights, revealing my own God-awful blind spots. First, I didn’t ask for prayers for this angry man filled with such poisonous hate. That can’t be an easy burden for a heart to carry. I was too angry and too afraid to pray for him.

But, second, and most painfully revealing to me as a cis, heterosexual man: I didn’t ask prayers for LGBTQ friends, church members and total strangers, who have put up with this kind of hatred and prejudice on a regular basis all of their lives. I hardly thought about them at all. In my mind I made this incident too much about a majority, privileged community of recovering homophobes: “Aren’t we brave and loving?” All we did was hang up a rainbow flag in our cross tower and give a too-weak welcome to people who have experienced hatred, ignorance and prejudice from Christian communities for way too long. I and the other straight people in my congregation are only a secondary target that came stumbling into the crosshairs of hate and prejudice because we finally couldn’t ignore Jesus’ simple call to love others and welcome our neighbor. I am the “solo-pastor” of this congregation, but I’m learning how inadequate my single voice is in telling the Story of radical grace. More than a rainbow flag, we need to be a rainbow people to tell the whole Story adequately.

Tempe Community Christian Church has been an Open & Affirming Congregation since 2013.