The Gospel of Welcome

I grew up in New York state as a conservative Baptist in an evangelical fundamentalist church. My mom first brought me to church when I was less than a week old. As a child, I loved it. I loved the Bible and the stories.

My grandmother was the first woman to teach a mixed-gender Sunday school class. At first, when the boys realized what was going on, they walked out, but they eventually made their way back, and then it was OK—because that’s how change happens.

Almost everyone I knew was Jewish or Catholic. I went to everyone’s bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. I saw people of other faiths who were devout, good people, loving God, and respecting their parents. But as a Baptist, I was taught that anyone not “saved” went to hell. The idea that they weren’t saved—but I was—created a cognitive dissonance in me that was deeply troubling. My first inclination was to be uber evangelical and try to convert everybody, but the more I did that and got to know people, the more it felt wrong.

For a young fundamentalist evangelical, Smith was a real culture shock—but in the best possible way. It rocked my worldview—broke it wide open. I had to let go of stereotypes, and that was wonderful.

As an English major and a medieval studies minor, I had great English professors like Craig Davis, Patricia Skarda, and Nancy Mason Bradbury, who taught me about the medieval women mystics. They were not allowed to be religious leaders, yet they had deep spiritual experiences that they documented.

Sometimes their works were burned; sometimes they were burned, literally. But seeing the depth of faith and wisdom these women demonstrated stirred something in me. And then I had great Bible professors like Karl Paul Donfried and Bruce Dahlberg—a member here at the First Churches of Northampton, where I now pastor.

I came to Smith with a fundamentalist mindset, taking the Bible literally. Professor Dahlberg was able to connect with me respectfully and say, “You can maintain your own beliefs, but just demonstrate that you understand the scholarship.” He created a safe space for me to deconstruct the Bible, and that was important. Between that and women mystics, I was finding my way intellectually.

At Smith, I was part of a parachurch college group called Campus Crusade [now known as Cru], which, in my experience, offered a way for evangelical Christians to find each other and preserve their worldview. When I was a senior, I attended a meeting where I couldn’t help but raise questions regarding eternal salvation for some but not for all. I wasn’t being disruptive, but the questions I was asking were making some people uncomfortable.

I was finally taken out of the meeting, and the leader said, “Sarah, your problem is that you love people more than you love God. If you just loved God, you would trust that God’s got a plan, and just let go of your concern for these other people.”

I couldn’t do that.

I went back to my room, got down on my knees, and prayed. I renounced my salvation. I said to God, “I believe in you, but I will not go to heaven if it means all these other people go to hell. I can’t do that. It doesn’t feel right. I stand outside with them.”

And that’s when my call to ministry came. I felt God say to me, “I want you to tell whoever has been told they are not loved by me that they have a place in the heart of God.”

The next day, I started applying to divinity graduate schools and eventually graduated from Harvard Divinity School.

Today, I am pastor at the First Churches of Northampton, the result of a 1988 merger between the First Congregational Church and the First Baptist Church. Our vision is to welcome all people and to make God’s love real in the world. We’re very justice-focused, environ-mentally focused—all the things that the kids these days call “woke.” But I tell my congregation that we are not progressive despite Scripture; we are progressive because of Scripture.

We’ve got about 250 members—a lot of LGBTQ+ folks finding their way here from out of state, seeking sanctuary and spiritual community. It’s not a wealthy congregation, but it is a congregation of very generous people who show up for each other.

This is a very overwhelming time. In the greater Northampton area, the need for meals, affordable housing, and help with rent and utilities is going up and up, and local churches are trying to meet the need. We do a free breakfast every Friday. We support the Manna Soup Kitchen and a weekend nutrition program that provides kids who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch with backpacks full of food to take home every Friday. We work in close collaboration with the other churches and synagogues, and we have a strong connection with the Muslim community in Hadley. We stand with our neighbors of many faiths and feel we have a responsibility to each other. As clergy, we are stronger together.

As hard as things get, in many ways people still have the same basic wants and needs: Babies are born, people get sick, people die. Sometimes you’re the one bringing the casserole; sometimes you’re the one who needs the casserole. We’re doing the essential stuff churches have always done, but this is an extraordinary time.

You can read the Bible from many perspectives, but we believe Scripture should lead us to a place where you are empowering people to do what is right, not exercising power over people. My job is to help us see a way through the words that enable us to love God and love our neighbor—and to be honest about what that looks like.

I just want to continue the work we’re doing, building a community where people can come and find strength and inspiration through their faith to then go out and—as we say—make God’s love and justice real. Be good neighbors, be peacemakers. There’s a lot that’s broken right now, so we need to equip people to do the repair work, to go out and heal the world with love and in service.

The church is a place where we organize. The church is a place where we find the resources we need to go out and make a difference for the good. We need church right now. I think we really need places where we can come together, where we know we are seen, where we belong, where we have people who are going to show up for us in our time of need, and we’re going to show up for each other. A place to exhale for at least one hour, to know you’re in a safe space. I want to use my words to call people in, not just call people out or be about what’s wrong with people. Because there’s a lot of brutality in the world right now, but there’s also a lot of beauty.

The Rev. Sarah Buteux ’95 is the first female senior minister at the First Churches of Northampton, where she has led the congregation since 2021. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, she has more than 20 years of ministry experience, including creating Common Ground, a farm-to-table ministry.