June 13, 2006
USA Today

God and gays: Churchgoers divided
By Cathy Lynn Grossman

Every Sunday there's an intense struggle in the souls of some believers as one religious denomination after another battles over the rights and roles of homosexuals.

Gay or not, progressive or traditional, those who disagree with their denomination's stance wonder:

Should they leave their church?

Has their church left them?

Is this any place to find God at all?

The questions are as fresh as the headlines: lesbian Methodist pastors defrocked, or conservative Episcopalians distraught over a gay bishop.

And they're as old as Christianity itself. Early fathers of the church ruled on which teachings were heresy and which were "true."

"Denominations have fractured since Day One. The very word 'denominated' means divided," says Boston University sociologist Nancy Ammerman.

This week the national governing bodies of two mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church USA and the Presbyterian Church (USA), debate their views on gay clergy and same-sex unions, and whether the denominational rulings or local churches should have the final say.

But while leaders argue, ordinary people soldier on.

Many, gay or straight, seek a community of souls that welcomes them and shares their sense of the scriptures and the sacred.

It may mean staying in their church of a lifetime, finding ways to accept -- or overlook -- teachings or practices with which they disagree. Or decamping for a church more fitting to their current faith. Or walking away from any church to pursue a personal spirituality.

Boston architect Jim Cullion, 52, is halfway out the door of Trinity Church because, he says, the historic Episcopal church didn't take a stand for gay men such as him during Massachusetts' same-sex marriage battles. "A lot of Sunday mornings now, I just walk in the arboretum and reflect... I'm very hurt. I'm very sad."

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, 55, not only left the Episcopal priesthood but also wrote a book called Leaving Church on why she hardly attends. One reason: In religious disputes, "human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God," she says.

The Rev. Jo Gayle Hudson, 52, had no choice but to switch. Once a Methodist deacon, she was outed as a lesbian and booted from her post just days before she was to be ordained as an elder. Now, she's a United Church of Christ pastor, rejoicing in the Dallas pulpit of the Cathedral of Hope, the nation's largest gay church.

Brian Flanagan, 28, a cradle Catholic, openly gay and studying to be a theologian, says not even an unbroken line of rulings from the Vatican can drive him from this church. "What's central to me is how this church talks about Christ, about God," he says.

There it is, the three-letter word that makes all the difference.

Not S-E-X or G-A-Y but G-O-D.

"Gay Catholics, like women who don't like the church's stance on ordination, tend to place those things on a lower level of authority than the church's teachings on fundamentals such as the resurrection and the Eucharist," says the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of My Life with the Saints.

A familiar faith

They want to stay with the family, the songs and prayers of a lifetime, because it's a familiar road to the divine, because they have hope for change, even if it's not in their own lifetime.

"They say to themselves, 'I accept the most important part -- the creed -- and the other things I will strive to change and hope they will change.' It's like being a proud American but disagreeing on foreign policy," Martin says.

Still, about 16% of Americans say they have changed their religious identity during their lifetime, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey. They may have switched denominations when they married or moved or just because they didn't like the music or a new preacher, Ammerman says.

"The openness of American culture encourages people to feel they needn't stick where they were brought up. They can try something new if they are dissatisfied," she says.

"They can leave the farm, and they can leave the faith."

Most of the growing denominations and non-denominational community "Bible churches" in that 2001 survey were theologically conservative denominations with no openly gay clergy or no same-sex unions blessed.

When the Rev. Mark Coppenger, a Southern Baptist, started a new conservative Evangelical church in Evanston, Ill., in the heart of Chicago's liberal North Shore, he soon found students switching in from liberal Protestant churches "where they didn't find what they later came to cherish in biblical teaching and preaching," he says.

Doctrine does play a role in the ways religion reflects and shapes society and culture, experts say.

"Whether it's the 1840s and slavery, the 1960s and '70s and women or the 1990s and 2000s on homosexuality, what is on people's minds in their communities will show up in their churches," Ammerman says.

Once, black people, women and homosexuals were viewed the same way by the leading theologians of the times: "They were all cursed by God in Scripture, inferior in moral character and willfully sinful and deserving punishment," says the Rev. Jack Rogers, former head of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and author of a new book, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality.

Eventually, most churches found a biblical basis for changing their stance on race and gender but not on homosexuality.

Churches slow to change

The largest U.S. denominations -- Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) and Lutherans in the Missouri Synod -- clearly proclaim that homosexual behavior is a sin.

They don't allow a different theological direction, however welcoming individual congregations may be. Change is not on their agendas.

Ammerman forecasts it could take another generation before mainline Protestant groups set a clear direction.

Last summer, the United Methodist Church voted down all proposals to liberalize its views on homosexuality, including a motion to acknowledge that "faithful Christians hold differing opinions," but the issue is sure to return to the 2008 agenda.

And the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America began a four-year process of examining its views on ordaining gay clergy and blessings for same-sex unions.

Rogers wonders whether churches can afford the wait, particularly when some, such as the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, are losing members at a rate of 40,000 a year, he says.

"Young adults today can't understand what the fuss is all about. Their lives are color-blind. They have gay friends and straight friends. They have good values, but they don't stay with the church," he says.

"The gay rights battle isn't the main reason, but it's one of them. They don't see in their church a lens to see the world."

And people of all ages "are really tired of all this" fighting, Rogers says.

"Most people just want to get on with thinking about Jesus."