An Edgewater man who went for dinner at a weekly soup kitchen hosted by an Uptown church said that he came away upset by anti-gay remarks made during the sermon preceding the meal.
The man said that diners at the soup kitchen hosted each Monday by Uptown Baptist Church, 1011 W. Wilson Ave., had no choice but to attend the service if they wanted to eat there that night, and that remarks from the service left him feeling "judged." The church's pastor, in turn, said that no offense against gays was intended, but that the remarks were in keeping with the Bible's teachings and the church's beliefs.
The diner, who asked that only his first name, Eric, be used, is gay and struggling financially. He picks up work where he can, but depends on soup kitchens to provide him with much of his food. Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, he ran a massage therapy business with both a storefront on Broadway and 20 employees.
However, the housing bust brought business to a trickle and Eric shuttered his store in 2011. Since then he has been paying off two mortgages on his homehe took out the second one to meet payroll obligations to his employeesand trying to stave off bankruptcy. He does massage therapy work regularly, but needs outside assistance to make ends meet.
"If I had to buy food, I wouldn't have money left for the mortgages," he said.
He had been going for some time to the food kitchen at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church, 4827 N. Kenmore Ave., and was told by a friend there about the Monday night dinners at Uptown Baptist.
Eric went to the dinner held on the evening of March 30. Diners began lining up in the late afternoon, and were issued a meal ticket. Before they could eat, however, they had to sit in on a half-hour church service.
"I have not heard of anyplace else that does it like that," Eric said, noting that he initially wasn't paying much attention to the service, and was just relieved to find food assistance from someplace relatively close to his home in Edgewater.
Congregant Steven Glover administered the service that night. He opened with a discussion of discrimination and then proceeded to ask the audience how many had been guilty of various sins. Then, according to Eric, Glover said, "And don't even let me start on homosexuality."
"At that point, I started to really listen to him, because I got an emotional response," Eric said.
Glover made two other disparaging remarks about homosexuality during his sermon, he added. "I was so filled with rage and sadness. I don't think it was a 'call to arms' to go and kill gays, but it was being very judgmental of them."
When the service was over, he booed Glover but that was drowned out by applause from the rest of the audience. He returned his meal ticket to the greeter and told him why; Glover was then summoned.
"I told them I would probably choke on the food if I ate it," Eric said. "I was visibly shaking."
Much to Eric's surprise, Glover spoke with him for about a half-hour, but Eric said the conversation, while cordial, was not particularly fruitful. "It was just semantics about the bible. After a while, I realized I wasn't going to change his mind."
Glover excused himself to lead a second service that evening. Eric listened in and said that it was the exact same sermon, with the references to homosexuality omitted. Glover had given him his contact information to discuss the matter further, which Eric planned to do. But he decided to research Uptown Baptist online first, and found articles about the church protesting both the Gay Games and the Steamworks bathhouse in Lake View in 2006. After that he wanted no further contact.
Glover referred calls for comment to Senior Pastor Michael Allen, who told Windy City Times that he was "saddened" to hear of Eric's experience. Allen was not present for Glover's sermon.
"We don't like to hear of anyone being turned away, or leaving angered or upset by one of our services," Allen said, maintaining that Glover's remarks were not calculated to take offense.
"I'm not sure of what the context [of Glover's remark] was," he added. "Certainly, there may have been a better way to say that, or make the point he was trying to make. But there's no question that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin. Having same-sex attraction is not a sin, but acting on that, according to the Bible, is sinful. Just like, if I have anger in my heart towards somebody, Jesus said that murder comes from an angry heart, so we can't be angry to the point that we commit murder. So, it's listed as a sin, like many others, that we are all guilty of."
Allen said that church officials would be meeting with Glover and lay preachers about the incident, to emphasize that when homosexuality or other controversial subjects are brought up, "We need to speak the truth, but we need to speak the truth in love. ... Obviously there's a difference of opinion, because there are people with same-sex attractions that are members of our church, that choose to be celibate, but they can't deny that they have same-sex attractions. They are part of our church. We love them and they love us."
The church pays for hosting the fellowship dinner itself, without outside assistance, according to Allen. Greater Chicago Food Depository, which coordinates a great deal of food distribution to impoverished Chicagoans, for example requires church soup kitchens to either end worship at least an hour before food service begins, or begin worship at least an hour after food service ends.
Uptown Baptist used to separate the worship from the food service, but Allen instigated the requirement that diners must attend the worship service in order to get the meal.
"I wanted to share the hope that we have in Christ with everyone who comes through our doors," he explained. "So we make that a requirement: If you want to be served, come to the services that precede the meals. I don't think we're going to reconsider that at this point. There are many other places people can go. They don't have to come to our meal. We consider two meals servedone is spiritual and the other is belly food."
That choicelistening to a sermon with the remarks about homosexuality or not eatingwas one that Eric did not appreciate having to make, however.
"I grew up Catholic in Poland, one of the most anti-gay countries in the world," Eric said. "Even there, I don't remember condemnation [of gays] from the pulpit. One of the reasons I've loved America so much is because of how much more liberated and enlightened I thought it was. So this was a shock."