The Rev. Bill Miller-Zurell was recently presiding at Communion, moving from congregant to congregant, offering the body, offering the blood, until he got to a little boy who, seeing the piece of bread, stopped the pastor short.
"He asked me if there were any nuts in it," said Miller-Zurell, who leads New Hope Lutheran Church in Columbia. "His mom, who was standing behind him, made him. And he only took it after I assured him that there were no nuts."
In an increasingly susceptible world, where more and more people are realizing that things like nuts and wheat and even certain pungent scents can make them quite sick, religious organizations are reconsidering the most time-honored of traditions.
Communion wafers are now available in rice and soy. Religious supply stores are offering hypo-allergenic incense. Churches are banning cologne and cutting way back on Easter lilies. Fresh pine boughs for the holidays are often out. A group of nuns in Missouri have invented a host with only a trace of wheat so that the gluten-sensitive could digest it.
"I've just been amazed - there's more and more and more," Miller-Zurrell said. "I suspect it's an increase in allergies, and certainly an awareness on my part."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 8 percent of children suffer from a food allergy. And every year, the organization reports, allergic reactions are responsible for 30,000 cases of anaphylaxis, 2,000 hospitalizations and 150 deaths.
The Rev. Sue Montgomery, a Pennsylvania pastor who works on a national level to help the Presbyterian Church become more accessible for disabled parishioners, insists that as more people get diagnoses of allergies, the clergy must bend to meet their needs. "The invitation to the Lord's Table is for everyone," she likes to tell people, "even those with food allergies."
Montgomery says religious organizations must provide for worshipers with certain dietary needs, just as they build ramps for those in wheelchairs or offer Braille Bibles for the blind.
"We're moving toward seeing disabilities as diversity rather than an aberration or something abnormal that needs to be cured or fixed," she said. "The church is just beginning to wake up to that."
