Gabriel Arana investigates the grassroots efforts of Christians:
Except for the Episcopal Church, which recognized same-sex unions in 2009 and ordains openly gay and lesbian priests, the leadership of the country’s major Christian denominations has presented a solid front against the spread of same-sex marriage across
the country. Further down the totem pole, churches are moving on without their leadership. According to a forthcoming report from the National Congregations Study at Duke University, the number of congregations allowing openly gay and lesbian members has increased from 38 to 48 percent since 2006. Twenty-seven percent of churches gave gay and lesbian congregants leadership roles in the same timeframe—an 8 percent jump.
“Things don’t change that much in religion—there’s a lot of stability,” says Mark Chaves, a sociologist at Duke and one of the researchers behind the study. “This is one of the biggest jumps on a specific subject we’ve seen since we first started collecting data in 1998.” Indeed, while public support for same-sex marriage shot up in the last ten years—in 2003, only 33 percent of the public supported gay unions; today, 55 percent do—polls have generally shown attitudes among religious folk trending upward more languorously. But those who study religious opinion say the trend line among the faithful began to shoot up between 2008 and 2009. “The sea change has hit among religious organizations,” says Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a think tank in Washington, D.C. “Overall, what we’re seeing are the changes in American culture broadly reflected in attitudes of religious Americans as well.”
And the Pope is conducting a survey of Catholics in the pews …
Updates from a few readers:
Please don’t forget the United Church of Christ, which has been on the right side of this issue even longer than the Episcopalians (God bless ’em).
The New York Times called the UCC “the first mainline Christian denomination” to support same-sex marriage officially, in 2005. As the Times notes, “the denomination says it and its predecessors were among the first churches to take a stand against slavery, in 1700, the first to ordain a woman, in 1853, and the first to publish an inclusive-language hymnal, in 1995.” The UCC is one of the oldest and proudest Protestant churches in America. Many of the Pilgrims were Congregationalists (one of the denominations that joined to become the UCC in 1957). It was a Congregational church that supported the African victims of the Amistad. And President Obama was a UCC church member in Chicago before the Rev. Wright imbroglio. It’s frustrating that the UCC is often left off the list of significant Protestant denominations in America. This is a truly historic American church that has been fighting the good fight for centuries.
Another:
I hope others will be emailing you also, but Arana needs to do a bit more homework. Yes, he forgot the UCC, but he also forgot the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is home to nearly 4 million Lutherans in more than 10,000 congregations (which makes it about four times larger than the Episcopal Church and the UCC). In 2009, the ELCA – which has, for its 25 years, always allowed gay and lesbian persons to be ordained – voted to allow churches to call partnered clergy and to allow congregations to recognize and support the LGBT people and relationships in their midst. The Southern California Synod also recently elected Guy Irwin, an openly (and now engaged to be married) gay man, with very little notice.
The UCC and the Episcopal Church deserve their praise, no doubt. But we ELCA Lutherans have been quietly fighting the good fight for some time now. For many in the ELCA, this isn’t part of a political movement, but simply part of our ongoing response to God’s call of love and grace for we vulnerable humans.
(Photo from Getty)
The Dish 