SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) — You can’t possibly miss it when you drive into downtown Sioux Falls from the east — a giant, colorful Pride flag raised high on First Congregational Church tower. It’s not just up there for this week’s Pride Week in the city, or just for Pride Month around the globe.
It’s up year-around, all the time.
”I think it is important to this community to be a community that has the message that God’s love is for everybody. No one is excluded,” said First Congregational Church pastor Becky Pagone.
It’s up there for people who may think there aren’t people in the faith community of Sioux Falls, or in the city, in general, who accept them or love them or affirm their gender identity or sexual orientation. Some don’t. Plenty do.
“A lot of people have been harmed by the church and the way the church has shown up and not accepted them and not made them feel loved, and so they may never come inside a church because of the harm that has been done to them,” Pagone said. “To see that (banner) on a church, especially such a big historic church, feels validating to them.”
In Mitchell, fellow Congregational ministry United Church of Christ shows similar LGBTQ+ support with a sign — much smaller that First Congregational’s banner, but still prominent. The sign was simply UCC’s logo with rainbow Pride ribbon draped behind it.
Last Thursday, two days before the start of Pride month, that building was vandalized with graffiti sprayings. Bible verses regarding repenting and same-sex relationships were written on its walls and sidewalks in red spray paint.
Asked Monday about the defamation of a fellow LGBTQ+ “ally” church, Pagone said it hurt her heart.
“We prayed for them yesterday in church, and I promised the congregation that I would reach out to Matt (Richards), the pastor there, and offer anything that we could do,” Pagone said. “We would love to be a congregation that could show up and help clean up or support them any way that they need so that they will be ready the rest of Pride month, too.”
A GoFundMe page has been launched to help the Congregational United Church of Christ in Mitchell remove graffiti.
That vandalism is part of the reason First Congregational Church hangs its Pride banner so high on its tower, although Pagone wanted to make it clear the No. 1 reason is so as many people can see it as possible.
Still, her church has applied for a Hate Crime Grant from the Department of Homeland Security to assure prevention of vandalism, and she has seen plenty of online threats to her congregation because of its overt support of LGBTQ+ inclusion.
But Pagone does not live in fear and continues to see how love for that community continues to conquer hate as the years go by.
The giant banner is one display. Another powerful one is First Congregational Church’s members marching in the Pride Parade every year. The church has done this every year and will be one of five Sioux Falls ministries marching in Saturday’s 2024 Parade.
The others are the Episcopal Church, Mt. Zion Congregation, Shepherd’s Table (ELCA), and Spirit of Peace, which for over a year has alternated with First Congregational as a venue for practices performances of the Rainbow Chorus of Sioux Falls.
Pagone remembers fondly the first Sioux Falls Pride Parade in 2019. How there was so much fear of both a low turnout and a potential atmosphere of protest or impending violence for the largest public display of LGBTQ+ support the city had seen.
“There were so many people there that it was overwhelming and it is such a beautiful reminder that in a state where it can feel like we want limits on people’s rights that that’s not everybody’s view,” Pagone said. “It’s a beautiful celebration of the ways in which the state can show up in other ways.”
The pastor of Shepherd’s Table — South Dakota’s first LGBTQ2S+ ministry — calls the Pride parade and festival “a huge celebration of creation, of who God created, people to be and its just a beautiful display of diversity and welcome and joy.”
Sawyer Vanden Heuvel is also the openly gay associate pastor at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls. He grew up in a small town and shed many tears of shame from a conservative church background that taught him being gay was a sin. He’s gone from banker to marketer to devoting his life to preaching what he says his Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) has taught him — that God loves all people, all the time.
“There are some deep wounds that people carry, some trauma that people carry from past religious experiences with the church of being forced out or pushed away for a variety of reasons,” Vanden Heuvel said.
“But, to see the church show up does provide some sense of healing and of joy and love that goes with it.”
But, to see a church like United Church of Christ in Mitchell be defamed with Bible verses denouncing homosexuality is the kind of thing both gay people and the LGBTQ-friendly churches — and all allies — continue to deal with in a conservative “red” state.
“It has come a long way, but we have a long way to go,” said Pagone, who has been a First Congregational member for 27 years. “I know that in the Methodist church right now, they’re having their conversations and struggle through what that means and people making hard decisions about where they might go and how that might look.”
And the Catholic church?
“Oh, yeah, I think that will be their own challenge of how that’s going to be lived out for them,” Pagone said. “I don’t know how that will ever change, and a lot of Catholics, recovering Catholics is what they call themselves, end up here.”
The weapon that anti-gay Christians continue to most commonly wield is an Old Testament verse, which was exactly what was prominently spray-painted on the cement doorstep at United Church of Christ in Mitchell:
“Leviticus 18:22 — Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: It is an abomination.”
As a proud Christian and now-ordained clergy member, Pagone has been confronted with this line many times. Her response?
“I think it is important to know that the Bible was written by humans and inspired by God, and I think there is a lot in the Bible that is created out of the limits that humans have — of our own understanding, of our own ability to want rules and comfort and security, and God doesn’t need any of that. The inspiration by God is expansive, and the limits are created only by humans.”
Those who have refuted the legitimacy of Leviticus 18:22 have associated it with a couple other Leviticus verses, like 11:7 — “And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.” This has been widely translated to mean that God forbids his people from eating pork, including all forms of pork products such as bacon, ham, and sausage.
Leviticus 19:19-28 forbids people from planting a field with two different kinds of seed, and also wearing clothing woven from two different kinds of thread.
“That is the perfect example of humans are comforted by rules, right,” Pagone said. “And, there’s just a long list of them there of all kinds of things that we mostly still still do — eating certain things, wearing certain things.
“God isn’t about rules. God is about being expansive in all the ways that love can show up.”
And that, Pagone said, goes back to the message First Congregational Church and the other ministries who will be at Pride events continue to convey.
Sure, there are other denominations who are either overtly against an existence on the LGBTQ+ spectrum (although many who prescribe to that will also say they pray for LGBTQ+ people). And, far more churches in Sioux Falls will not represent themselves at the Pride parade and festival. And, indeed, South Dakota is considered one of the worst states in the country for LGBTQ+ inclusion, based on its laws.
But, Pride Week in Sioux Falls is proof of how much support there is out there, particularly from the faith community, for those who are struggling — maybe even depressed or suicidal — with their identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgener, pansexual, non-binary, two-spirit, questioning, queer, or any spot on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
On June 12, Vanden Heuvel will preside over a “Pride service” involving several other Sioux Falls churches. Before that, he will march in the parade with fellow members of Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America (ELCA) and represent that group and Shepherd’s Table in a booth at the festival. They want to be there for people of Faith hoping to find a same space to still pray, believe, and shared God’s love.
Their banner in the parade, and their merchandise at their festival booth will prominently display three words:
“God Adores You.”
“The church wants people to know they are loved, not only by the church, but more importantly by God,” Vanden Heuvel said. “No matter what, whatever other people might say or do, we are still out there showing that God loves you, and nothing can separate you from that love. And, that’s an important message for people to hear, I think.”
—
Here is a list of the events for Sioux Falls Pride Week 2024.
Copyright 2024 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.
