New Hope Ministries has every right under the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom to turn down a funeral that would involve imagery of a gay life that it does not endorse.
But if the church had deliberately set out to cast itself in the worst possible light last weekend, it couldn’t have done a more effective job than by shutting down a service after mourners were in place.
Wouldn’t the most authentically Christian reaction have been to let the ceremony proceed rather than shock hundreds of friends and family with the news that it was canceled — forcing them to move the funeral, including the casket, to a nearby mortuary?
that led to the moment when mourners were told the funeral wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. Both sides seem to have dropped the ball.
But to cancel the service after mourners had gathered? “Who has ever heard of anything like that happening?” a friend of the deceased declared.
Amen.
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