Allan Appel Photo
Pastor Jack Perkins Davidson in the tree in front of Spring Glen Church.
With kids in colorful masks and skirts, praise of God as the “womb of life and source of being,” and a pastor high up in a sugar maple helping to secure a long gauzy rainbow banner, Spring Glen Church marked both Mother’s Day and the 25th anniversary of becoming an “open and affirming” congregation within the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination.
About 100 people took part in the festive gathering Sunday morning at the church on Whitney Avenue in Hamden
The UCC’s uses the formal designation for congregations that affirm and welcome the LGBTQ community. Spring Glen Church in 1997 was the 14th in Connecticut to do so and 225th nationally.
Longtime congregants Carol Shank and daughter Susan Hawthorne.
Pastor Jack Perkins Davidson -– the fellow in the tree -– said the congregation’s Protestant nondenominational founders back in 1929 plunked their church in a neighborhood where it was known people of color had been excluded.
In a passionate review of the history, he said the church has been a force in the progressive direction on racial justice, economic equity, and sexuality ever since.
Bill Hobbs, the pastor who implemented the four-year process and vote for the open and affirming declaration in 1997, had sermonized that “openness is another of the building blocks that quickens the spirit and deepens and expands each of us.”
In another mini-sermon for a reporter while he was in the tree, Davidson said he had been up there once before.
The occasion was during the months of Covid when there were no in-person services. Davidson had been trying to find interesting places -– a balcony, his kitchen, the beach, the summit of East Rock, the tree in front of the church — from where to Zoom services and homilies.
His text for the tree then, and once again this Sunday, was the Gospel of Luke story of the Zaccheus, the much despised Roman tax collector, short of stature, who had climbed a tree to see Jesus coming down the road on the way to Jerusalem.
“Jesus saw him in the tree and invited him to dinner,” said Perkins. “A tax collector for Rome was not a beloved figure, and Jesus was modeling what an inclusive community could look like.”
“My wife grew up Catholic, and I a Methodist,” said Caitlin Slattery, a five-year member, who was waiting with her two kids Julian and Pauli before entering the church. “Both those churches struggled with queerness, so we got to UCC and found a place where we didn’t have to fight every Sunday.”
Because Spring Glen adopted the “open and affirming” policy back in 1997, “they really figured out how to welcome and to celebrate queer families,” she added.
“There was a lot of discussion, for years, before the final vote,” recalled longtime member Susan Hawthorne. “There were a lot of unknowns. People wanted to be sure the church would stay friendly and family-oriented.”
Carol Paul at Sunday's gathering.
Bill Hobbs’ wife, Barbara, who remains a leader and a deacon, recalled that back in 1997 some congregants had anxieties, however unfounded, about the move.
“It took us four years. For older people it was difficult, the labeling, for it to be called out. It was a foreign idea to older people. There was a fear of change. Change was hard. And some feared buses [of LGBT newcomers]. The younger people said, ‘What’s the big deal?’ It has all worked out.”
Only one family departed at the time, remembered another congregant, Carolyn Paul. Today the church is stable and thriving, added her husband Chuck, the treasurer.
New members are continually joining Spring Glen, even as other churches, such as the Church of the Redeemer lower on Whitney close down. Spring Glen Church now has about 175 families, many with young children.
“As a queer person of faith and a mother,” said Karis Slattery, the church’s care coordinator and wife of Caitlin, “a part of me wants to rest in what we’ve accomplished . And yet my body is full of rage, fear, and grief at this time [of national anti-LGBT pushback], and I know I’m not alone.”
She said her kids need to hear each week “how loved they, and we, are by God. There are decades of violence so we need to be affirmed. We all need to be reaffirmed in who we are.”
She called the 25th anniversary, and Mother’s Day, an invitation “to affirm one another, knowing there are always others waiting to be affirmed just as they are.”
The Sunday service and celebration featured a message of congratulation from Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett and words from Andy Lang, who heads the UCC’s Open and Affirming Coalition:
“You are part of the largest LGBT church-affirming movement on earth,” he said via video. “Whether you know it or not, you have saved lives.”