Why do we celebrate Pride Month in Church?
Monday Ministerial Musings
By Rev. Mark William Ennis
2026 Blog #18
June 1, 2026
Why do we celebrate Pride Month in Church?
For the past two years, the Community Church of Glen Rock has been honoring the Pride Community of our town each June. To let the town know that we are doing this, we put a rainbow flag on the grass outside of the sanctuary. This is not new for this congregation. The Community Church has had a long history of acceptance of the Pride Community. In recent years, this has been discontinued, but now we have brought this tradition back.
We honor the Pride Community during our worship, and we also staff a table at the town’s pride event which is held on an annual basis. This is a good opportunity to let the Pride Community, and the whole town, know that we are allies of this community. I think that it is an important endeavor for the church of Christ to participate in these activities.
Once upon a time, at another congregation in another town, I was asked why I was interested in doing a Gay Affirmation. I was asked why we don’t affirm everyone else what makes the Gay Community so different that we need to publicly affirm them? For me, the answer is simple. No other group has been so historically estranged by the Christian Church. We owe this community an affirmation and an apology for how this group has been excluded from many of our Christian Communities. I have seen more mercy toward gay folks in the secular world than I have from those of us who represent God on Earth.
I’ve been to many restaurants, hospitals, and businesses where the employees are evaluated by their job performances, not their sexual orientations. I don’t recall asking waitstaff, my doctors or nurses what their orientations are before allowing them to wait on me or to treat me. Science has taught us that our orientations are genetic, not choices that we make. Can any of us straight people remember a day when we “chose” to be straight? No, just like gay folks have a natural tendency toward attraction, so do we straight people.
So, what should our evaluation be of whom we are in Christian fellowship with? Do we have any standards that we require of ourselves? I think that Saint Paul laid the answer to this question quite clearly in his letter to the early churches of the Greek province of Galatia:
Galatians 5:22-23
The Fruit of the Spirit
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
These traits, not someone’s genetic sexual orientation, must be the standard by which we evaluate those in our fellowship. I have met people in various congregations over the years who were in leadership but had none of these traits. It is another story as to why such people were put into leadership positions. Congregations suffer when they fail to use the fruit of the spirt as the evaluation for fellowship and leadership.
I’ve met a fair amount of gay people over the years who are clearly full of the Holy Spirit and who show the fruit of the Spirit, but who have been excluded from Christian fellowship despite possessing such fruit. This wasn’t right. It is time that we in the Christian Fellowship apologize for these past sins and establish communities where such people find acceptance, respect, and love.
This is why I believe that we must affirm and be allies with our brothers and sisters in the Gay Community. From our past history, we owe these people our alliance. I hope that you will join the Community Church of Glen Rock as we do this.
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