Toilet Theology

Toilet Theology

Everything I need to know about a church I can learn from visiting the restroom—or, as it is so delicately referred to here in Britain, the toilet.

This is not something I studied at my seminary (which had standard institutional facilities that were kept spic and span, and I know this because as a student I worked part-time on the grounds crew and occasionally assisted the custodian in cleaning the bathrooms). To my knowledge it’s not taught at any seminary although it should be: Congregational Systems 101—Flushing Out the Works.

One of the churches in which I trained for the ministry did not have lavatories on the main floor. The architects had planned for them, but the space had been left to serve as a long, narrow study for the pastor, leaving able-bodied people to go downstairs to relieve themselves. I understand the situation has since been rectified, with able-bodied pastors having an office on the lower level. How the rooms in a building are used by a congregation indicates who is valued and what activities are deemed important.

The first church I served after being ordained had one potty on the main floor for all to use. It was the size of a small closet, just big enough for an adult my size to squeeze by the small hand sink and sit down on the commode without my knees touching the closed door. It was sufficient if all I had had for breakfast was coffee, but anything more required me to flush, wait until the water tank filled up, flush again, wait, and so on, until that which “goes out into the sewer”—as Jesus put it (Matthew 15:17b)—did so completely. Only at a meeting of the session did I learn that the elder in charge of the building had reduced the water in the toilet tank in order to reduce the water bill—without factoring in the water wasted on multiple half-way flushes. This was the same elder who referred to me as “Little Girl” and called another elder “Princess,” until the other elder and I asked the session clerk to tell the offending elder to cut it out. After a short while the session cut me out.

The second church I served also had just one lavatory. It was inconveniently located downstairs and off of the kitchen, so on those few occasions when I as a menstruating minister had to duck out of worship during a hymn to take care of business, I prayed the hymn was a long one. Like in the first church, every expense was spared; they stocked one roll of toilet paper at a time and kept the rest under lock and key because, they explained, one person in their town was known to come to funeral services at the church in order to steal paper goods. The single roll of toilet paper hung by a string—and so did my tenure with this congregation. Yet this time I was prepared, and I ended up leaving on my own terms.

The next church that would have me had modern women’s and men’s rooms on every floor, each with multiple stalls, a bank of sinks, and a generous supply of paper products. They were good people and they treated me well. I went through my second divorce while serving this congregation, and after I announced it during worship one Sunday, one of the revered men of the church pulled me aside and told me he needed to speak to me. I steeled myself for The Lecture—ministers aren’t supposed to divorce and all that—and went with him outside the fellowship hall, where he proceeded to rail about “that s.o.b.! I want to punch the guy!”—as Jesus would’ve put it. There were a lot of Christ-like people in that church, and unbeknownst to them I had found refuge there, attending worship during a season of Lent and unemployment, while going through my first divorce.

Here in the Church of Scotland it’s typical for the minister to have her or his own loo connected to the office. Equipping it with heat, or soap, or a clean towel, or a spare loo roll qualifies as separate miracles, and all four is an act of God. Of the ten churches I’ve served in the States, only one had a bathroom designated for the minister, but you had to pass through it to get to the minister’s study—which took the privacy out of the privy. And because the bathroom-study was situated across the hall from the sanctuary, the bathroom part was usually occupied by non-ministers right before the call to worship when this minister needed to answer the call of nature.

The congregation presently enduring my gifts and talents, Anderston Kelvingrove Parish Church in downtown Glasgow, are good stewards of an urban renewal building that serves as the neighborhood hub. Several para-church organizations have office space, city and national elected officials meet regularly with members of the public, a hot lunch and an afternoon tea are offered weekly for local residents, folks of all ages come to exercise classes and dance lessons, folks of all needs come to 12-step groups, and folks of different faith traditions come to do their thing. Needless to say, the gents’ and the ladies’ stay busy—and, I have to say, pretty clean.

As if there’s not enough going on already, the church’s elders, supported by the members, recently decided to welcome some people who need a place to sleep at night, every night. Each one of the newcomers is currently without a country and thus without a home, and because they aren’t officially residents of the United Kingdom, they aren’t allowed to work and provide for themselves. They are labeled as “asylum seekers,” “political refugees,” “illegal aliens.” Who they are, really, is “brother,” “father,” “son,” “fellow human being.” Inviting in this group of about a dozen men changes things for everyone, including myself. Our space is no longer ours—but then, it never was ours. It has always been God’s house, and that means God’s kitchen and God’s halls and God’s washrooms and God’s toilets.

As God puts it, courtesy of the Leviticus Holiness Code (19:33, New Revised Standard Version), “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”