c. 2007 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Fellowship time during the early Sunday service at Morning Star Baptist Church brings smiles to worshippers’ faces from the moment they are told to “hug one another this morning. Show some love.”

For several minutes, men and women, young and old, move about the sanctuary and embrace. Some exchange kisses on the cheek. A few women give especially long hugs and rub the backs of their older friends.

No matter whether you are a first-time visitor or a longtime member, you are hugged. Before the service resumes, an older woman tells a young man: “Give me a kiss. I didn’t get my hug.”

From Morning Star Baptist Church in Cleveland to New Life Episcopal Church in Uniontown to Euclid Lutheran Church, a whole lot of huggin’ is going on at religious services across Northeast Ohio.

A practice that once was more common in Pentecostal and black and Hispanic churches is moving into the mainstream as churchgoers find hugging meets both a basic human need and builds a stronger sense of community in their congregations. Not all churches embrace hugging _ shaking hands is still the norm in most Catholic parishes _ but the practice is gaining in popularity.

Margaret Paloma, a sociologist at the University of Akron, said the church provides a safe place for human contact in a society where more people are living and playing alone and the culture “is almost sterile” with regard to touch, unless the subject is sex.

“We need that touch,” she said. “It’s part of a need we have as human beings, and it isn’t easily satisfied in our culture.”

Church leaders who embrace hugging say it follows the biblical example of Jesus, who embraced disciples and healed people with his touch, according to Scripture.

“Jesus touched people in every single way imaginable,” said the Rev. Patricia Hanen, assistant to the bishop for congregational development for the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio.

Paloma said the wider use of hugging in contemporary churches is in part an indication of the growing influence of Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Those churches, she said, were always more in touch with the body, encouraging clapping, dancing, weeping and other physical expressions of faith.

Embracing is particularly welcome today, when more people live alone and when concerns about sexual abuse and harassment have further limited casual hugs, Paloma said.

“We’re all in America operating out of a hug deficit,” Hanen said.

The Rev. Earl Preston Jr., pastor of Morning Star Baptist, remembers a man coming to him in tears after a service, saying, “I haven’t had a hug in I don’t know when.” Preston, who hugs everyone after the second service at Morning Star, tries to keep in mind the only hug a person may receive in a week is in church.

“If we are one body, how can we be one body if we don’t touch each other spiritually as well as physically?” he asked. “Christ tells us to love one another. How can we love if we don’t touch?”

The bottom line in many mainline churches is that once people try hugging, they like it.

Deaconess Judy Hoshek, an assistant to the bishop for congregational life for the Northeastern Ohio Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said she has watched the “passing of the peace” go from people nodding to one another, and perhaps extending their hands, to up to five or six minutes of congregants moving through the church embracing one another.

She remembers one older woman telling her, “I live alone, and I love it when somebody passes the peace and gives me a hug.”

Similarly, Hanen said, churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio have been “working on robust passing of the peace for the last 25 years.”

Today, once the passing of the peace begins, “what you have trouble with is getting them to stop,” she said.

Hugging also tends to be a characteristic of many growing churches.

“The way candle flames attract a moth, the way light brightens the darkness, people are going to go in the direction of what actually energizes them and brings them together as a congregation,” Hanen said. “Peace passing is … one manifestation of the church operating as a whole community of care.”

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Not everyone is comfortable with hugging, and church leaders emphasize it is important to respect the wishes of those who do not want to be hugged. Some people prefer to shake hands, or to hug only people of the same sex or of similar age.

The “sign of peace” shared by the community was reintroduced into the Catholic liturgy after the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, according to what was acceptable to the culture, said the Rev. Michael Woost, assistant professor of liturgical theology at St. Mary Seminary in Wickliffe.

In India, Catholic worshippers bow to one another. In Hispanic and black churches, it can be natural to hug one another. But for the vast majority of Catholic churches in Northeast Ohio, he said, shaking hands is the most comfortable form of sharing the sign of peace.

Church leaders also said it is important to set boundaries to prevent abuses.

It should be clear, they said, that a sign of peace is not a group grope, or an occasion for an older man to embrace young women. Hanen and Paloma said inappropriate touch should be addressed immediately.

Adhere to those ground rules, however, and religious communities can be a place for healthy, affirming touch, church leaders said.

During a service Sunday at Christ International Church, a predominantly Hispanic congregation on the West Side of Cleveland, Bishop David Maldonado encouraged people to “come out of your seat, give four or five people a hug.”

For many congregants, four or five hugs quickly became eight or 10.

“I believe that a lot of people come here with a lot of burdens, a lot of problems,” said Dr. Norbert Seda, a member. “When you hug them, you’re embracing them. They feel that love and secureness that’s hard to get out in the world.”

His wife, Dolimary, said hugging is a way to demonstrate the love members have for others. “It’s a way to transmit the love God placed in our heart, to share it with one another.”

Being on the receiving end also is nice, she added.

“It feels great,” she said. “Sometimes I’m the one that needs the hug.”

(David Briggs writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

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