DILLON — Some of the ecclesiastical stoles on display at Lord of the Mountains Lutheran Church bear names. Many are anonymous, donated by religious leaders afraid that being named would cost their jobs.
“Those are the ones that really get you,” said Doris Koneman.
Slight, with a cloud of white hair and a handshake as firm as her faith, Koneman helped organize the Shower of Stoles Project exhibit.
She is among the church congregants who support a proposal, to be discussed this August by the national Evangelical Lutheran Church, that allows individual congregations to elect gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender ministers.
The issue of gender identity has divided congregations here and throughout the country, and inspired the Shower of Stoles Project.
Of the 1,000 or so liturgical stoles in the project collection, more than 300 represent anonymous clergy members afraid to risk their positions by being forthright about their orientation. The Lord of the Mountains display features a little over two dozen traveling stoles pulled from the main collection. Among them is one from a United Methodist Church deacon who remained anonymous because “it could cost my appointment or my career, or both,” to identify herself.
Another stole was contributed anonymously by a lesbian whose brief essay summarizes the split between her faith and her identity:
“Throughout my entire life, I’ve been incredibly supported by my church family, and had great experiences in seminar and the candidacy process, but they didn’t know who I am, or the woman I so dearly love.”
Members of Lord of the Mountain Church know how emotionally fraught this issue can be. Last summer, prior to the regional synod hosted here, congregants knitted and crocheted more than 300 rainbow-hued scarves to distribute in a show of loyalty to the church’s non-heterosexual members.
“Most people wore them,” Koneman said. She remembers one man who angrily refused a scarf, and then complained of “feeling too conspicuous” without one.
The rainbow scarf giveaway begat the church’s Shower of Stoles Project, which went on display several weeks ago. Koneman, who’d braced herself for objections to the display, has been surprised by the positive reaction.
“It might be because it’s like preaching to the choir,” Koneman observed. Since 2005, Lord of the Mountains Church has been a Reconciling In Christ church, whose literature welcomes “believers of all sexual orientation and gender identities.”
“A lot of people who aren’t church members have come over to look at the stoles,” she said.
