By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
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, 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), each meet to 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 with which they disagree.
Most people (72%) have stayed with one religion all their lives, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup survey of 1,002 adults June 9-11. 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 his church because what truly matters is the “way it talks about Christ, about God.”
It may mean they must decamp for a church more fitting to their current faith. The survey found 15% say they’ve switched religions. Many of these switchers (40%) say disagreement over church teachings was the major reason for moving, another 24% say that is a minor reason.
The Rev. Jo Gayle Hudson, 52, had no choice. She was outed as a lesbian and booted from her post in the United Methodist Church just days before she was to be ordained as an elder. Now, she’s a United Church of Christ pastor at the nation’s largest gay church.
Some walk away to pursue a personal spirituality - about 10% say they now have no religious denominational preference.
Others struggle with their choices.
Perhaps, like 26% of switchers, they are unhappy with the local church’s actions - or inaction. Or, like 25%, they like the faith but not the squabblings of national leaders.
Architect Jim Cullion, 52, is halfway out the door of Trinity Church in Boston. He’s “very hurt, very sad” that the historic Episcopal church didn’t take a stand for gay men such as him during Massachusetts’ same-sex-union battles.
Barbara Brown Taylor, 55, left the Episcopal priesthood, observing that “human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.”
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 or 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.
“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,” says Ammerman.
“They can leave the farm, and they can leave the faith.”
Surveys have shown that most of the growing denominations and non-denominational community “Bible churches” are theologically conservative, 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 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 colorblind. 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.
“Most people just want to get on with thinking about Jesus.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060613/ts_usatoday/godandgayschurchgoersdivided
