Rebecca Voelkel, interim national coordinator of the UCC Coalition
for LGBT Concerns, urged fellow church members during a June 30 rally to approve
a resolution supporting same-sex marriage. (Photo by Sher Pruitt)
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DYANA BAGBY
Friday, July 08, 2005
ATLANTA — Gays are hailing a vote by the governing
body of the United Church of Christ to affirm same-sex marriage as “courageous
and prophetic” against a mounting movement of anti-gay political and religious
sentiment.
But the July 4 vote is also inciting backlash among some congregations that
have left or are threatening to do so.
The UCC, with 1.3 million members and more than 5,700 congregations worldwide,
became the first mainline Christian denomination to endorse same-sex marriage
when its General Synod overwhelmingly approved a resolution to endorse “equal
marriage rights for all regardless of gender.”
UCC officials said an estimated 80 percent of the 884 registered delegates
to the conference, held in Atlanta July 1-5, approved the resolution with only
a handful of abstentions. Voting members held green cards to show approval of
the resolution during the vote on Monday.
Several UCC congregations already define themselves as “open and affirming,”
meaning they bless same-sex holy unions. The General Synod’s vote went
further by endorsing same-sex marriage rights and encouraging state and local
governments to do the same.
The resolution was combined in an executive committee vote July 3 with a second
resolution that asks UCC members to engage in “serious, respectful and
prayerful discussion of the covenantal relationship of marriage and equal marriage
rights for couples regardless of gender.”
A third resolution, presented by the conservative Biblical Witness Fellowship,
defined marriage as solely between a man and a woman. The resolution was defeated
by about 80 percent of the General Synod during a vote Monday evening, according
to Rev. J. Bennett Guess, the gay news director for the UCC.
Church leaders said the resolution affirming same-sex marriage puts the denomination
in the middle of a contentious social issue, but it is also the duty of the
church to address truth as it relates to humanity.
“This vote was essentially a decision around our theological understanding
of God’s justice,” UCC President and General Minister John H. Thomas
said Monday.
“I see this as an opportunity to offer a word of comfort and consolation
to the many who have been excluded and also a word to our culture that the Gospel
offers more than the predominate, or dominate, voice being heard — and
that is a word of grace, healing and hope as well,” he added.
Rev. Mel White, executive director of the national interfaith gay organization
Soulforce, applauded the UCC vote as a strike against “religion-based
discrimination.”
“[W]ith this courageous and prophetic vote, the UCC General Synod has
taken its stand against the rising tide of Christian fundamentalism and obeyed
the command of Christ to ‘love one another as I have loved you,’”
White said.
The vote by the UCC General Synod set a positive tone at a time when banning
same-sex marriage has reached a fever pitch in several states and among religious
conservatives across the country, according to Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, interim
national coordinator for the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns.
“This resolution continues the UCC’s experience and witness of
Christianity that God acts in the world, in history and at this time when governmental
jurisdictions are limiting the rights of LGBT people and using sexual orientation
and gender identity to distract people from urgent issues of poverty, war, racism,
health care, education and environmental protection,” Voelkel said Monday.
Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta, civil rights leader and a UCC pastor,
accepted an award from the UCC General Synod Monday and expressed his support
of same-sex marriage before the vote.
“I had an experience when I was with the [National Council of Churches],”
Young said. “There were a number of gay clergy there and I remember once
when there was a big issue on race being discussed and I got worked up about
it and my gay friends said, ‘Andy, you can’t speak to this issue.
You are too emotional about it. You have to let us fight this battle for you.’
And they said, ‘One day you might have to fight a battle for us.’
“Those were some of the most influential people in my life at that point
so I can’t back off this issue,” Young said in a statement.
After accepting his award, Young said, “There is no education without
controversy — and there is no resurrection without crucifixion.”
Local UCC congregations are autonomous and the General Synod speaks “to
the churches and not for the churches,” Thomas said, leaving it up to
individual churches to decide whether to follow the marriage resolution. Churches
that don’t will not be disciplined, Thomas said.
But the vote still prompted a swift and negative reaction from some conservative
congregations.
Rev. David Runnion-Bareford, executive director of the New Hampshire-based
Biblical Witness Fellowship, said Wednesday his office received more than two-dozen
phone calls from UCC churches concerned about the same-sex marriage endorsement.
“They’re asking, ‘What are we going to do now?’”
he said. “And I expect many more calls in the next few days.”
Runnion-Bareford said the New Hampshire-based fellowship includes 300 member
churches and another 600 congregations that support its mission. Runnion-Bareford,
senior pastor for Candia Congregational Church in Candia, N.H., said his church
won’t leave the UCC, opting to stay to continue its mission of “speaking
for the convictions” of the UCC.
But the General Synod’s endorsement of same-sex marriage will cause “a
number of churches to leave” he added.
“This decision will impact churches more than any other decision the
UCC has taken because it requires a local church response — pastors will
have to decide if they will do wedding ceremonies [for gay couples] which will
prompt them to reconsider belonging to the UCC,” Runnion-Bareford said.
Members of the First Congregational Church in Torrington, Conn., voted July
3 to leave the UCC on Oct. 1 over the denomination’s stance on gay issues
and same-sex marriage, according to the Associated Press.
First Congregational becomes the fourth parish in the state’s Northwest
District to leave in recent months over gay issues, the AP reported.
Rev. J.R. McAliley, pastor of the Center Congregational Church in Atlanta,
said this week the 60-member church would also likely leave the UCC.
“We are open but will not be affirming,” McAliley said Wednesday.
Endorsing same-sex marriage, which is legal in the U.S. only in Massachusetts,
places a heavy burden on a church whose members believe homosexuality contradicts
God’s moral teachings, McAliley added.
“This is a political hot button,” he said. “The UCC is in
fact endorsing a sinful behavior and it’s pretty much a given we’ll
pursue a relationship with the Congregationalists and be pulling away from the
United Church of Christ.”
Immediately following the vote Monday, Thomas, who supported the resolution,
led the audience in prayer.
“Remind us that as we are tempted to run from each other, so too we run
from you,” he said. “We know that every choice confers a cost, so
let us attend in the coming hours and days to those for whom this decision confers
a particular burden … let us use our hands not to clap, but to wipe away
every tear.”
Thomas was elected to a third and final four-year term as UCC president on
Monday. A day earlier, the Biblical Witness Fellowship called for Thomas to
resign over his support of marriage rights for gay men and lesbians.
Runnion-Bareford said the General Synod does not speak for the majority of
members of the UCC and instead represents a biased view of a few liberal members.
“It does not speak accurately for the membership,” he said. “The
past two studies by the UCC show that 26 percent are evangelical, 25 to 30 percent
are liberals and the rest are in the middle — and that complex reality
was not represented by Monday’s vote.”
Bo Shell contributed to this report.
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