Religion and LGBTQ equality are often portrayed as opposing forces, but the fact is, there are many queer people and families of all faiths—and many congregations that welcome them. This picture book offers children a colorful and festive look at an inclusive church.
The story is another joyous book from Gayle Pitman, author of This Day in June, a celebration of Pride that won the 2015 Stonewall Book Award for children’s literature. “Sunday waking/Day is breaking,” begins her latest work. “Let’s go to our church for all!” The rhymes continue as a diverse community of same- and different-sex couples, people of various races, ethnicities, ages, gender expressions, and physical abilities, gets ready and gathers to worship. Colorful illustrations by Laure Fourner capture the happy spirit of the people and reaffirm the church’s welcome through rainbow banners and signs on its walls like “Open and Affirming” and “Love – Peace – Joy.”
In an Author’s Note, Pitman explains that she was inspired by her own encounter with Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. She gives a short history of the church, including its commitment to social justice and welcoming LGBT people. She also explains that many congregations now embrace the same vision and are often called Inclusive Churches or Open and Affirming Churches. The church in the story is shown as non-denominational, however, making it widely applicable.
Adults reading this with children should be aware of one thing, however. On several pages, Pitman lists the contrasting types of people who attend the church, including “Weak and healthy … Poor and wealthy.” For the first couplet, the focus of the page is a man pushing a child in a wheelchair, who is happily greeting a standing friend. It’s true that those who are weak from illness may need wheelchairs—but people with disabilities, even in wheelchairs, can be very strong. I don’t think Fournier or Pitman would disagree—but it’s not clear from the picture whether the boy is sick (and might thus be “weak”) or has a disability and could still be strong. Readers can, of course, make their own determinations of who is weak and who strong in the picture—but given the way people with disabilities are often portrayed in our culture, I worry that many will jump to the conclusion that it is the boy in the wheelchair who is “weak” and contrasted with “healthy.” Additionally, the page also shows a woman with a headwrap indicative of cancer treatment. (She’s shown with a cane on another page.) She could thus be the “weak” person in the image—but many people fighting serious illness are the strongest people I know—albeit not physically. I think “Sick and healthy” or “Ill and healthy” (to avoid pejorative connotations of “sick”) might have been a better wording (along with an image of someone blowing their nose, rather than someone in a wheelchair). This isn’t a showstopper for the book, because it’s all open to readers’ interpretation of the images, but parents and teachers might want to be prepared to discuss the images with children and have them question their assumptions about what it means to be ill, healthy, weak, and strong.
Also, in the first edition in 2018, the author’s note refers to “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people.” “Transgender” is the preferred term these days. Pitman, when notified about this on Twitter, called her book’s usage a “serious glaring error” and apologized. She said it was a word she would never use, but that somehow got through without being caught by either her or an editor. [Update, 12:49 p.m., 5/1/2018: A publicist from Albert Whitman & Co. tells me “it will be fixed in the next reprint…. And we’re working to get a note from the author/editor posted on our blog asap, as well as an errata placed in all stock in our warehouse.”]
A Church for All nevertheless fills a gap in LGBTQ-inclusive children’s literature with its celebration of diverse Christian families and the welcoming churches that offer them community and spiritual sustenance. For children, it will convey a sense that these churches can be affirming and fun places to be; for adults, it joyously undercuts religious conservatives’ argument that religion and LGBTQ identity are incompatible, and it may help alleviate the pain from churches that have not been so accepting. Families of all faiths and structures should welcome it onto their shelves.
