As a parent of preschool-age children, I face this all the time. But in the sacrament?
The Rev. Bill Miller-Zurell was recently presiding over 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,” Miller-Zurell said. “His mom, who was standing behind him, made him. And he only took it after I assured him that there were no nuts.”
With more people realizing that things such as nuts and wheat and even certain pungent scents can make them sick, religious organizations are reconsidering time-honored traditions.
Wheat communion wafers are now available in rice and soy. Religious supply stores are offering hypoallergenic incense. Churches are banning cologne and cutting back on Easter lilies. Fresh pine boughs for the holidays are often out. A group of nuns invented a host with only a trace of wheat so the gluten-sensitive could digest it.