Pastor Apologizes For Parade Controversy

The pastor of one of the churches involved in the Cookeville Christmas Parade controversy apologized Sunday.

River Community Pastor Steve Tiebout said he should not have agreed to take part in organizing the parade without properly looking into the recent history of the event. Tiebout also apologized for the rules surrounding the parade, which he said were meant to require those in the parade to honor Christian beliefs without forcing them to agree with those beliefs.

“We thought that made sense,” Tiebout said. “But I’ve even had people in our church call me and say, ‘I read that and that’s not how I read it. I thought it even said that we needed to sign a statement of faith.’ So I failed there. It wasn’t clear. It wasn’t done in a way that built unity.”

Tiebout said he takes responsibility for the mistakes but said anyone claiming the churches did what they did out of hate, is lying. Tiebout said their goal was to prevent another incident similar to last year’s Christmas parade but they never wanted to exclude those who disagree with them.

“What hurt the most is I had people that I love saying, ‘I can’t believe that we’re being this hateful, that we’re requiring this,'” Tiebout said. “And I just want you to know it’s always been our intention to build unity. It’s always been our intention to love our community.”

Tiebout said that Cookeville did not restrict the original plans for the parade and would have let the churches go through with it if they wanted to.

“The problem was when we took those steps forward we were told that the schools could not participate if we had a statement of faith in there or if we excluded anybody from the parade,” Tiebout said. “And I said, ‘Well, I’ll be very clear, if we do this there will be groups excluded if they have a non-family friendly float or something that opposes Christianity. I can’t have our church pay for the parade and then have other people in the parade that are opposing. We can’t have hate groups on that spouting hate.’ We just don’t need that. This is a time for children and love.”

Tiebout said they met with city and county officials to figure out a new solution as soon as they realized that schools would be excluded from the parade.

“(Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton) went back to the city council, they met, and they decided they would take it on and that they would lead that,” Tiebout said. “And honestly I think that’s the best solution at this time. It’s a citywide event. We want the schools to participate.”

Tiebout said anyone who has further questions should call him and set up a meeting to discuss the issue with him in person. Tiebout said they have received many explicit messages online over the past week as well as a thank you letter from the Satanist Church after someone donated in the name of Cookeville Christian Christmas Parade, LLC.

“Basically it got blown up with porn sites and all kinds of junk like that,” Tiebout said. “I literally read the first one, I was like, ‘Oh my.’ I read the second one, I was like ‘Oh my my.’ And I took my phone and I handed it to my wife and said, ‘You deal with that, you’ve got to get that stuff off there.'”