Courtney Crowder

ccrowder@dmreg.com

Sandra Zapata renewed her faith just outside the Blazing Saddle, a gay bar in Des Moines’ East Village.

Shivering against the biting cold, she closed her eyes and cupped her hands as Rev. Jen Hibben used a finger to draw the sign of the cross on her forehead in glitter ashes, traditional Ash Wednesday ashes mixed with purple glitter to show support for the LGBTQ community.

For Zapata, the glitter was more than added ash sparkle; it was a symbol that maybe she, a lesbian and LGBT advocate, could be accepted as herself in Christianity, the childhood creed to which she’s longed to return.

Connecting in faith with new and different communities is exactly what Hibben, a pastor at Thrive United Methodist Church in West Des Moines, hoped these sparkly ashes would do on Ash Wednesday, a holy day in the Christian faith that marks the beginning of the six-week season of Lent. But not all clergy agree with this new ash option. Some faith leaders in Des Moines saw glitter ashes as a distortion of the Bible’s clear message on homosexuality, while other clergy members saw it as an unnecessary politicizing of a traditional religious event.

Part of the nationwide “Glitter Ash Wednesday” movement and the growing trend of Christianity becoming more LGBT-inclusive, churches across the metro handed out glitter ashes, including Hibben and Ashes for All, a group of ecumenical faith leaders, who doled out the sparkly ashes during lunch Wednesday at Blazing Saddle.

“The glitter ashes are our effort to acknowledge that we in the Christian tradition know there has been oppression of the LGBT community,” Hibben said. “And we wanted to, in an intentional way, say, 'That’s not us; that does not represent us — and we welcome you.'”

Rev. Sam Fisher of Indianola’s First United Methodist Church dispensed ashes at Simpson College in the morning before joining the others at the Saddle. Fisher’s colleague was inundated with requests for glitter ashes while he had a slow morning giving out traditional ashes. “I wasn’t very popular,” he joked.

“Young people want spaces that are inclusive, and they want that from their faith, too,” he said. “They want to be able to ask tough questions and be accepted as themselves in a safe space when they do that.”

Ritual changes should be carefully thought out

Others say the Bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin. “Church history is littered with efforts to conform God’s Truth to our human ways,” said Drew Zahn, spokesperson with the Family Leader, a Christian conservative group.

“The FAMiLY LEADER would encourage people, especially on Ash Wednesday, to look to the Word of God for guidance on sexuality, repentance, and religious observances,” he added.

The tradition of Ash Wednesday is a practice as old as the church itself and any changes to the ritual should be carefully thought out, said Richard Pates, bishop of Des Moines Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. For him, the glitter ashes are unnecessary as the traditional ashes are already for those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, he said.

“We prefer not to separate out ashes for one group or another,” said Pates. “The ashes that we distribute are intended to be fully inclusive to all those who feel victimized or are victims of prejudice, so certainly those in the LGBT community, all the immigrants, refugees, all the poor and all those suffering religious prejudice.”

The glitter ashes, like the traditional ones, are for everyone, too, Hibben said. But there’s a difference between just saying everyone is welcome to take ashes and offering them a sign that they are valued, she countered.

For Zapata, the symbol that glitter in the ashes provided is what pushed her to be outside the Saddle.

“The LGBTQ community needs to know that they are welcomed in a new and different way when it comes to religion,” she said, beginning to tear up. “It makes a difference to know that someone didn’t just say this is a safe space, but went out of their way to make it a safe space.”

As a Mexican-American, she was raised in the Catholic Church “with hardcore, old-time religion,” she said. When she came out as lesbian, the churches rules on homosexuality were ironclad, so she walked away.

Since then, she’s wanted to get back into faith, to again have a Sunday ritual and a community of people who gather for no other reasons than trying to be better people. The glitter ashes marked the start of her journey to find that.

“I want to feel validated as myself in religion and this was the beginning,” she said.

Nationwide trend toward inclusivity

Glitter ashes are the newest wave in a recent trend of Christian denominations changing or adapting their mission statements to be more inclusive to LGBT congregates or clergy members. Although only a few denominations ordain LGBT clergy, many others have a branch or sister organization that welcomes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members.

The Methodist Church, of which Hibben is part, believes that “all persons are of sacred worth” and “shall be eligible to attend its worship services, participate in its programs, receive the sacraments,” according to the denomination’s website.

But the Methodist Church doesn’t allow LGBT clergy and doesn’t perform homosexual marriages. Lindsay Drake, a lay person in the Methodist Church, said these issues are being grappled with at a national level, calling this moment of “limbo” in which the church is figuring out how to be inclusive.

“Even though we are in this limbo time, we don’t stop the ministry,” she said. “We reach out to and care for and love on all of God’s children no matter what, and I will always do that.”

In the Catholic tradition, where Ash Wednesday is especially revered, the catechism calls homosexual acts “intrinsically disordered.” But recent statements by Pope Francis have taken a different tone.

“If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge them?” the pope said in response to a question about LGBT Catholics in 2013.

Parity, the New York-based advocacy group distributing the sparkle ashes, has made efforts to keep the connotation of the glitter version similar to that of the traditional ashes, according to its website. Like the plain gray ashes, the glitter ashes are placed on the forehead in the sign of the cross and are meant as a very public reminder to repent, to look inward and to understand our own mortality.

Similarly, as the mark of traditional ashes is meant to put one's faith on display, the glitter ash is meant to publicly proclaim faith and unity with the LGBT community, Parity’s website says. The additional sparkle is “an inherently queer sign of Christian belief, blending symbols of mortality and hope, of penance and celebration.”

Meet people where they are

For Hibben, the glitter ashes were just a part of the “holy disruption” she and her group brought to the metro Wednesday.

Armed with ashes, the group fixed themselves in high-traffic locales — at interstate exits, in coffee shops and along bus routes — throughout the day. They wanted “to catch people just a little off guard,” Hibben said, and remind them “that God is present at all moments in our lives.”

Meeting people where they already are is important, she said, as Ash Wednesday is about celebrating the deep connectedness that we have as human beings. The ashes may be there to remind you that from where you came, you shall return — but she likes to look at them in a different way.

“The ashes also work to remind you that we are made out of the same stuff — literally,” Hibben said. “When you get right down to it, we are just not that different, and I think — I hope — that message resonates a lot, especially right now.”

Hope is what Zapata is looking for from religion. Reconnecting with faith dredges up bad memories of feeling left out and alone, but with glitter on her forehead, Zapata is the opposite of abandoned, she said. She feels like a part of a movement greater than herself.

She wants this feeling to stick, but she’s put a guarantee in place just in case it starts to slip: For Lent, she’s giving up excuses not to follow-through.

And she’s starting with religion.