All it took was one cup of water to change my mind about organized religion. And it wasn’t even holy water.

Years ago I was marching in a blisteringly hot Pride. We passed a Baptist church with parishioners carrying signs saying we were going to hell. I remember looking at them and thinking, “If Christ saw you people, he’d get off the cross and beat you with it.”

The church across the street had an even more shocking display of Christianity: kindness. Instead of holding up signs of sin, the parishioners were holding up glasses of water.

A church offering gays and lesbians refreshment? Clearly it was a trap.

I was too thirsty to walk away, but too suspicious to drink. “It’s poison,” I thought to myself as I held up a cup to the light before putting it down. “Like the rest of their religion.”

“You look so thirsty,” an old woman said to me, concerned. “Here, have a glass.”

I looked at the big sign draped across the church: “We Welcome Everyone.”

It was testament to the distrust I had of organized religion, the fear I had of it, that I could not accept a Christ-like gesture from a sweet old lady.

My dog jumped up on me, panting from the heat, practically begging me for water. Could I take the chance? Well, I thought, they might kill a queer, but they wouldn’t kill a dog. Even Christians have some sense of proportion.

So I asked the lady if she’d pour some water in a bowl. My dog lapped it up, and to my shock, didn’t keel over. I took a tiny sip myself, but only after making sure she poured the water from the same pitcher she’d served my dog from.

The water felt so good I couldn’t help but think that maybe church phobia was as wrong as homophobia. I was so used to Christian cruelty that, when faced with kindness, it threw me off. Most of us are so used to mainstream religion bashing us, it’s disorienting when they don’t.

Out of reflex, a lot of us don’t just hit back, we hate back. And that’s what baffled me that day at Pride so many years ago. How was I supposed to defend myself against someone offering me a glass of water on a hot day? How was I supposed to hate back six ounces of relief?

That day, I looked at two churches separated not just by a street but by a consciousness. One side spit at us with hate, the other showered us with love. How can the same religion that produced Jerry Falwell produce that woman serving us water?

GK Chesterton once said, “Christianity hasn’t been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried.” Well, there’s a whole lot of trying on both sides of the aisle, and personally, I’m with the side serving beverages.

Kindness has a way of changing the giver and the receiver. Hundreds of us took the chance of drinking the church’s water and ended up changing our minds about religion.

Mainstream religion is changing. Their shaking fists are slowly morphing into offering hands; hands that offer not just a cup of water to the thirsty, but a hint of hope to the alienated.