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The Presbyterian Church's bitter warfare over the issue of homosexuality threatens to rip the church apart. Erin Findlay parachutes into ground zero for a report.

November 18, 1998, Denver, Colorado:
Dumbfounded, I stared at my program. I was sitting in a hotel conference room with 350 other Presbyterian churchgoers and activists, all gathered to inaugurate the Covenant Network, a group we hoped would act as a national lobbying arm for the growing number of gay Protestant groups and queer-friendly churches that have sprung up over the last 20 years within America's third-largest Protestant denomination.

I was expecting a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.-like "We Shall Overcome" address; only this time, if we had a dream, it was about equal rights for lesbian and gay ministers and members in the 2.6 million-member organization. But what we got instead was Dr. Douglas Oldenburg, who, as Moderator of the national Presbyterian Church's General Assembly, acts as the Church's spiritual head, a kind of Pope for the Presbyterians. The title of his keynote address read, "When You Don't Know What To Do."

How disappointing. I had not flown to Denver to be told, after all this, to pray and wait. And that, in essence, was what Oldenburg implored us to do. "Remain united and turn your eyes to the Lord," he concluded. "The solution will come...eventually."

In the meantime, all of us were acutely aware of the need to do something -- anything -- fast. Like nearly every other major Christian denomination in the United States, over the past few years the Presbyterian Church USA had witnessed declining membership, shrinking budgets, and a bitter internal war between conservative and liberal church leaders. As is the case with the Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, and Anglican-Episcopalians, at the center of this theological battle was the hotbed issue of homosexuality. Are same-sex acts sinful? Should the church hierarchies approve the ordination of "practicing" lesbian and gay clergy? Should they support "welcoming" congregations that make a special effort to support their gay members -- even to the point, in some cases, of marrying lesbian and gay couples?

In the case of the Presbyterian Church USA, progay activists had recently suffered a series of major defeats at the hands of the ruling body of the national church, the General Assembly. In 1997, the General Assembly approved the notorious "Amendment B," an addition to the church's Book of Order, which functions like a theological constitution for the 2,000 Presbyterian congregations across the county. By restricting ordination to those who show "fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman" as well as "chastity in singleness," Amendment B essentially prohibited the election of practicing homosexuals to church office.

Adding insult to injury, the Assembly approved additional language in Amendment B specifying that any Presbyterian "refusing to repent" his or her sins, including homosexual acts, "shall not be installed" as a minister. When it met again the following year, the Assembly voted down Amendment A, an attempt by progay activists to soften the church's prohibitions against lesbian and gay clergy.

Behind these spiritual issues lies a political struggle for control over the 300-year-old religious institution, which last year took in donations of more than $1.6 billion. On the one hand, conservatives are blaming liberals for the church's declining membership. On the other hand, gay Presbyterian activists and their supporters are growing in number, lesbian and gay ministers are beginning to speak out, and gay-friendly congregations are increasingly facing the possibility of being "disfellowshipped" -- that is, denied political and financial support from the national church.

In the face of all this, all Moderator Oldenburg could say to us was "wait." And he never once mentioned the words "lesbian" or "gay."

"Too white, too straight."
Perhaps I had expected too much from the Covenant Network. I'd heard of the Network while attending a meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of That All May Freely Serve, an advocacy group for Presbyterian gay ministers founded by the maverick minister and out lesbian Janie Spahr. I was impressed by the new organization's attempts to overturn Amendment B.

The Network was founded by two well-respected ministers and former moderators of the General Assembly, Robert Bohl and John Buchanan after Amendment B was passed in 1997. The first official meeting attracted 500 participants, whose first task was to unite a bitterly divided church and gain enough votes among the nearly 200 presbyteries -- the geographical divisions of the Presbyterian Church USA -- to pass a more inclusive amendment at the next General Assembly meeting.

When the Network presented the kinder, gentler Amendment A to the 1998 Assembly, gay activists cheered. The language about "fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman" and "chastity in singleness" had been dropped in favor of "fidelity and integrity in marriage or singleness." The new amendment also relegated to the dump heap the archaic standard, "Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be installed [as officers]," and replaced it with, "Candidates for office should acknowledge their own sinfulness, their need for repentance, and their reliance on the grace and mercy of God to fulfill the duties of their office."

Even though a huge proportion of the Presbyterian Church's deacons, elders, and ministers could have been challenged for failing the "chaste in singleness" standard, Amendment A was tossed out by a 60-40 percent vote of the General Assembly.

Disappointed supporters of the new amendment claimed the Covenant Network was "too white, too middle-class, and too straight" to be effective. Defenders argued that the Covenant Network was the perfect, non-threatening voice to speak for the Presbyterian tenets of inclusiveness and diversity that seemed to have the ear of the Assembly.

Low Down in the Mile-High City
Reassured by a hearty Presbyterian potluck and cheerful table partners, I tried to approach Dr. Oldenburg at the welcome reception later that evening. The embattled leader was surrounded by conference organizers and activists from the various progay Presbyterian groups, including That All May Freely Serve. I also recognized members of Presbyterians for Lesbians and Gay Concerns, the primarily "lay" (that is, nonclerical) activist group that had been sponsoring support groups and demonstrations since 1975. A few pastors from "More Light" churches -- the Presbyterian church's network of gay-friendly congregations, named after the popular hymn lyric "for God hath more light and truth / To break forth from the Word" -- were hanging around, too, along with past and present board members of the national group Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. At the margins I saw a small contingent from the antigay group, the Presbyterian Coalition.

No one seemed particularly happy with the moderator's opening remarks. Progay groups sensed that the Network's goal was now to keep the church unified at all costs, and the Coalition was anxious that the General Assembly's self-imposed "sabbatical" on gay rights issues was about to be broken.

When I finally nabbed Oldenburg for a brief chat, I asked him when we might expect some action on the gay leadership question. He replied, "You know, I voted against Amendment A. The General Assembly was pretty clear, too, in soundly defeating the measure by a large majority. There doesn't seem to be much reason to bring more legislation to the floor anytime soon." As for the sabbatical, Oldenburg said, "That doesn't mean we won't talk about these issues. We'll revisit them some time."

The possibility of a schism in the Presbyterian Church USA was particularly terrifying to Dr. Oldenburg, who had just seen the church reunify with its southern constituency in 1983. The fate of the American Baptist Church, which remains split off from Southern Baptist congregations since the early part of this century, seemed like a distinct possibility -- again -- for the Presbyterians.

Oldenburg then spoke about "a long-time acquaintance, church member and friend" who only recently revealed that he is gay. "I used to think that gays were child molesters and worse," said Oldenburg, "but you just need to know them." Overhearing the conversation was the pastor of a More Light church, who asked, "Does this mean that Janie Spahr must visit every church in the country?"

"Yes," said the moderator. He then followed his departing, and very tired-looking, wife.

Onward, Christian Soldiers
The next day, my frustration with the Covenant Network was quickly dispelled by an almost whispered, but deeply moving sermon from Michael Livingston, chaplain of the Princeton Theological Seminary. "I will not ask a slave to remain a slave or a second-class citizen," said the African American pastor. "We can no longer accept compromises, or we will be a part of the conspiracy." Although he never used the g- or l-words either, Livingston compared violence against minorities to gnats on a windshield: "They are small and harmless, but if enough of them are crushed, they will darken the windshield and we will lose our way."

Following the chaplain was Jack Rogers, professor of Theology at the San Francisco theological Seminary, who gave us a fascinating history of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s interpretation of scripture on the subjects of slavery, women's role in the church, and divorce and remarriage. Not surprisingly, unless scriptural law restricted them in some personal way, church leaders and theologians could waffle for a hundred years before re-interpreting the words of Jesus and the prophets in the Christian Bible.

Just after the American Revolution, for example, the Presbyterian Church considered it a biblical-based duty to be a slaveholder, and later pronounced that any attempt to abolish slavery was sinful. In 1818, a minister was thrown out of the national Presbyterian church for criticizing a farmer who tied his slave to a tree and beat her before and after attending worship service.

Although women were being ordained to all the church offices in both the southern and northern branches of the Presbyterian Church by 1974, a group of theologians and ministers continued to challenge their ordinations by proclaiming that "biblical authority is male authority." Finally, in 1976, the church confessed that it "now understands equality is for all people," thus formally forbidding the practice of slavery and permitting the ordination of women. It took more than 100 years for church leaders to make this reinterpretation of scripture.

Considerably less time, however, was taken on the issue of divorce and remarriage. According to Professor Rogers, the church argued for 31 years over the passage in the Christian bible in which Jesus states that, except in the case of death, remarriage is adultery. As divorce became more prevalent among its ministry, the church became more liberal in interpreting the "death" of a marriage. Finally, by defining infidelity and desertion as the "moral equivalents" of death, the church could justify divorce and remarriage. By 1959, grounds for divorce were broadened when the church added another moral equivalent: "when the marriage dies at the heart and the union becomes intolerable."

Unfortunately, our history lesson ended there. Dr. Rogers said nothing about the church's attempts to interpret the six passages in the Christian and Hebrew bibles that possibly refer to same-sex relationships, most famously the Sodom and Gomorrah story and Saint Paul's admonitions against "man lying down with man." I got the impression that the church never acted quickly on issues that did not personally affect its straight male leadership.

Spahring Match
I sat next to Virginia Davidson for a while to learn more about the organization that she and Reverend Spahr started, That All May Freely Serve. In 1991, Davidson was an elder with the Downtown Presbyterian United Church in Rochester, New York, when the Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr was "called" to be their copastor. Another church in the New York presbytery found out and challenged Spahr's call on the grounds of a 1978 "definitive guidance," which stated that an "avowed, practicing homosexual" could not be ordained to church office.

Spahr had already been ordained as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament, but as a married woman with children. Historically, once a person is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), he or she is a minister for life, whether or not the minister has a con-gregation or retires. Apparently, now that she was divorced and an out, practicing lesbian, her ordination was no longer valid. The legal battle was long and difficult, but Spahr managed to keep her sense of humor. "It's certainly true that I'm an avowed homosexual," she said, "but I am not a practicing one. I've got it down cold."

Nevertheless, in 1992, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission voted to uphold the challenge, and Spahr was out of a job. But not for long. In 1993, the Downtown Church was so incensed that the national church should tell them whom they could choose as their minister, they hired Janie anyway -- as an "evangelist" for the newly organized That All May Freely Serve. It would be Spahr's job to travel throughout the country, advocating for the inclusion of gay leaders in the Presbyterian Church USA, and forming regional partnerships of That All May Freely Serve.

Despite the wrangling over Amendments A and B, Virginia Davidson seemed pleased with the progress of her group. Although they had not had significant impact on the General Assembly and received no funding from the Presbyterian Church USA, That All May Freely Serve was growing in size and influence. "Why, we even got a call from a pastor in New York whose church was already a Presbyterian 'Welcome Church.' He wanted to know if they could be a part of our network!" As of today, there are five regional partnerships in Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay area, and New York City. A sixth, the Texas partnership, is expected to be organized early in the year of 1999.

Fire and brimstone on the right
By Saturday morning, conference participants were beginning to grumble about too much theology and not enough strategy. In response, the executive committee of the Covenant Network met in "emergency session" to come up with a plan. As the sun set on our second day, cofounder John Buchanan affirmed the purpose of the Network ("The Presbyterian Church needs this voice") and presented a four-point plan which included "a stronger presence" at the next General Assembly, the commissioning of theological papers, development of a stronger community through newsletters and such, and a promise to "stand up and support all those hurt by Amendment B, and that includes legal and financial support."

Noticeable by its absence was a plan to present new legislation at the next General Assembly. This was a blow, especially because the Presbyterian Coalition had already written a lengthy and detailed "Declaration and Strategy Paper," designed to save the Presbyterian Church from liberal theologians and pastors. The Coalition was obviously looking to dominate the 1999 meeting of the Assembly in Fort Worth. But who were these people, exactly?

The Coalition was formed in 1993 for the specific purpose of opposing the "election" (i.e., ordination) of practicing homosexuals to church office. At its most recent meeting, 600 members gathered to approve the Declaration and Strategy Paper. The Coalition also anticipates a 1999 budget of between $350,000 and $500,000, which makes it considerably more powerful than the Covenant Network with its budget of $170,000.

Of course, the Coalition is a strong supporter of Amendment B. In fact, Coalition leaders had threatened to split with the church if Amendment A passed.

The Coalition also has a strong voice in the conservative newspaper, The Presbyterian Laymen. Described by one critic (who asked not to be named) as "the Presbyterians' National Enquirer," the newspaper not only reports all the doings of the Coalition, but all the scandals of the church's more liberal organizations. For example, in its September/October 1998 edition, it claimed that the National Network of Presbyterian College Women's Web site (www.nnpcw.org) had links to a lesbian dating service and hard-core pornography.

In the same issue was the sensational headline, "Membership loss three times higher in 'Amendment A' presbyteries." Between 1990 and 1996, according to a survey by The Laymen, liberal presbyteries lost members at a rate three times higher than the conservative South Atlantic and Alaskan presbyteries. The Laymen reminded us that a million members have left the Presbyterian Church (USA) since 1966. Additionally, the Laymen reported that "giving per member" in 1996 averaged $576 in the liberal churches and $634 in the conservative congregations.

The Coalition's rhetoric may be frightening, but the truth remains to be told. Several More Light Presbyterian congregations claim that their progay stance has brought them new members and prosperity in an increasingly diverse and secular America. The experience of congregations in other denominations, in fact, suggest the more "welcoming" a church, the better.

"It's the best thing that ever happened to us," says Greg Eggertson, a minister at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco, which found itself "disfellowshipped" from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in 1995 after a battle over the congregation's welcoming position toward gay and lesbian members and clergy. "Membership is up and we are thriving."

Nonetheless, conservative Presbyterians continue to blame the pro-gay wing of the church for the Presbyterian Church USA's shrinking roster. "We've let the bars down," said Larry Ballenger, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Ukiah, California. "A number of church leaders and pastors don't have a good sense of what the authority of scripture is, or which scripture should be interpreted culturally and which shouldn't." Ballenger allowed that modern views of divorce and remarriage were good because "God gives us redemption and the opportunity to start again." The ordination of women ministers also met with his approval because "scripture should be taken in its totality." But when it came to the issue of gay ordination, he drew the line. "We're right on the edge here," he said. "I don't think we should cross that line."

Although Ballenger admitted that he's "not crazy" about Amendment B, he was definitely opposed to the ordination of practicing gays, citing for the most part scriptures in Leviticus and Corinthians. "From a biblical standpoint, homosexuality is not acceptable as a practice, and certainly not appropriate for leadership of the church." he said. Although he maintained that a better understanding and acceptance of gays and lesbians is needed, and that our culture is becoming more understanding and accepting, he added, "But we certainly hope not that they would become acceptable for leadership. Other lifestyle issues would rule a person out -- and should."

He recommended to me that we "keep in the spirit of the sabbatical. Let's don't talk about this for awhile."

Until Hell freezes over
I skipped the panel discussions at the conference and flew home, eager to complain to Douglas Huneke, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tiburon, California, the More Light church I've been attending for more than 20 years. As it turns out, he had not expected much from the Covenant Network. "They're trying to keep faith with people who, as I see it, are our enemies -- all for the sake of unity. It's just a good ol' boys network, and nothing will come out of it," he said.

Huneke's prayers may well be answered by another group of gay activists, Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns. I spoke with Comoderator Scott Anderson, who said the PLGC was the oldest progay organization in the Presbyterian Church. It had formed when a group of lesbians and gay men attending the 1975 General Assembly held up a sign saying, "Are there any gay Presbyterians here?" A cadre of queer parishioners approached, and from that small beginning, the group has grown to 5,000 members in 20 chapters across the U.S.

On January 1, 1999, however, the PLGC will be no more. It will combine with the More Light Network -- which now has 80 churches nationwide -- to become the More Light Presbyterians. "It just made sense," said Anderson. "The PLGC is more focused on advocacy, and the More Light churches are more interested in nurturing congregations that are inclusive. So, there were two good reasons for the merger: One, we don't want to divorce the two tasks; we want to be married together. And two, economy of scale. There would be one fundraiser, one newsletter, and so on."

The merger has had another good effect: Once an all-volunteer effort, the More Light Presbyterians have raised $60,000 from combined donations, enough to hire a full-time staff person. "Our national office will be wherever the new staff lives," says the activist.

Unable to change General Assembly policies immediately, the More Light Presbyterians will focus more attention on the local level, particularly in strategic presbyteries like Sacramento, California. "We have at least 30 'swing' votes here," says Anderson, "enough to make a difference at the General Assembly."

Apparently, the so-called sabbatical on discussions around sexuality will have little influence on the "Act Up" side of the organization's nature. According to Anderson, the PLGC did not support the sabbatical and was not asked to participate in the vote, probably because they had vowed to demonstrate at every General Assembly until Amendment B is overturned. Calling the demonstrations "public witnesses," the group attracted 1,000 participants at the Albuquerque General Assembly when Amendment B passed. "So we're going to ignore the sabbatical, and continue to submit legislation and protest for as long as it takes," Anderson said. "If necessary, until Hell freezes over."