A few weeks ago a Georgia legislator announced that he was going to introduce the “Pastor Protection Act.” Specifically the act was going to protect pastors from having to compromise their religious beliefs and perform same-sex marriages.

The first thought I had was how silly this was. Pastors have been refusing to marry people for a variety of reasons for years and will continue to. Some won’t marry people who have been divorced. Some won’t marry people of different faiths or races. The pastor who performed my daughter’s wedding wouldn’t marry a couple unless they completed a series of counseling sessions with him. He figured that there were questions that needed to be answered before two people committed to spending their lives together.

The second thought I had was that obviously he didn’t know the same pastors I did, the ones I grew up with and the ones I’ve known since I was grown. They were an assorted lot.

The first pastor I can remember was Reverend Calcolt. He was a farmer six days a week and a preacher on the seventh. It was rumored that the Reverend spoke harshly to his mules, sometimes using words that preachers probably shouldn’t use. I never heard him do that. All I really knew was that he shepherded his small flock until the Presbytery moved him to Broadway. We were sorry to see him go.

He was replaced by Reverend McMahon. Reverend McMahon read his sermons from a book, and it was rumored that Mrs. McMahon picked them out for him. During the week he was a civil servant, and on Sunday, he was a preacher. About once every two months, it was my family’s turn to provide Sunday dinner for Reverend and Mrs. McMahon. My father was amazed at how much fried chicken the Reverend could eat for a man who didn’t seem to put a lot of energy into his work.

Then, because most of my friends and all of the girls went there, I jumped ship and went to the Baptist Church. Thurmond Stone was the pastor, and whether it was because of my age or because of his dedication, he became something of a hero to me. He preached a good sermon, was respected by his congregants, and seemed to live the life he preached. He baptized my dad and me on the same Sunday. It was Dad’s first baptism and my second.

Eventually Reverend Stone was called to another church and was replaced by Reverend Lanning. Reverend Lanning had had, according to the stories he told frequently in his sermons, a wild youth. He told of weekends full of drinking and carousing, of drinking beer, whiskey, and wine (which led my uncle Ray to observe that, mixing alcohol as the pre-Reverend did, it was no wonder he woke up feeling lousy). Then one night he told his friends to let him out of the car; that he would walk the rest of the way home. They let him out on a corner and took off. Shortly afterwards, they wrecked the car, and they were all dead. Reverend Lanning decided that this was a message that he had better things to do with his life than drink and carouse.

One of the better things he did was perform our marriage ceremony, just before he left for another church.

Over the fifty-plus years since then there have been a number of others. Some were better preachers. Some were better pastors. Some were young. Some were not so young. Some, like Bobby Jenkins who was a revivalist and had no congregation, had been preachers since before they could see over the pulpit. And some, like Reverend Lanning, had been jerked forcefully into the ministry. They were of all different stripes, but the thing I believe that they all had in common was this: they were sincere in their calling and wouldn’t be threatened by either public sentiment or public policy.

Somehow, the idea of these men (and one woman) in the tradition of Stephen, Peter, Andrew, and a great crowd of others needing special legislation passed to keep them from violating their consciences was just funny. I suppose the legislator doesn’t have as much respect for the clergy and their commitment as I do.

I do have one modest suggestion for him though. There’s a group of people in Georgia that do need his help. They are not called to their current condition nor are they respected for it. They’re simply in it. I’m talking about the 20% of our state’s children who are, as the bureaucrats say, nutritionally insecure. They are hungry. If the legislator can do something to help them, he’ll be supporting the clergy as well as the religion that they preach.