Gays Step Up Efforts to Reverse Gay-as-Godless Stereotype

A groundbreaking survey about the faith lives of gay Americans that the Barna Group put out last week got surprisingly little attention. In my latest God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly, I tied the Barna survey's fascinating portrait of gay religious life to the gay rights movement's recent efforts to ratchet up outreach and messaging. Much of the work is aimed at reversing the gay-as-Godless stereotype.

Here's the top:

Though he was raised in the United Methodist Church, Harry Knox knew he couldn't become a minister in his denomination because it doesn't ordain openly gay members. He enrolled in a seminary of the more liberal United Church of Christ but was eventually denied ordination anyway. "My whole career as an activist is an accidental ministry," says Knox, 48, who now works at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group. "I would rather be a local pastor."

Instead, since 2005, Knox has built HRC's "religion and faith program," which works to combat the stereotype of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community as antireligious. "For far too long, LGBT organizations did not put religious allies at the forefront of our efforts," Knox says. "That's a mistake we're making less often now."

Those religious allies may be more plentiful than most Americans think. A Barna Group survey out last week shows that most gay Americans lead pretty robust faith lives. While 72 percent of straight American adults describe their faith as "very important" in their lives, so do 60 percent of gays and lesbians. Almost as many, 58 percent, say they've made a personal and ongoing commitment to Jesus Christ.

And though they are much less likely than straights to share the beliefs of born-again Christians—which comes as no surprise, since most churches in the born-again tradition condemn homosexuality—the Barna survey found that 27 percent of gays do hold those beliefs. "Many in the Christian community assume there's this significant gap between heterosexuals and homosexuals in terms of faith beliefs and activities," says George Barna, the country's top pollster on religious issues, who supervised the survey. "While there are statistically significant differences, it's the narrow size of the gap that's most surprising."

The poll unleashed a torrent of hate mail, mostly from believers furious with Barna's conclusion: that many gays are Bible-believing Christians. But more and more gay rights organizations are joining HRC in stepping up efforts to highlight the faith beliefs of many gay Americans, largely through religious outreach programs. And some religious traditions and denominations are taking steps to welcome gay and lesbian members.

Gay rights activists say that the 2004 election, when voters in 11 states passed gay marriage bans that were heavily promoted through churches, was a wake-up call. To help counter the image of the gay marriage battle as a fight between gays and religious Americans, HRC, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and other national gay rights groups quickly hired religious outreach staff.

Read the full story here.

See Gays Step Up Efforts to Reverse Gay-as-Godless Stereotype

U.S. News & World Report

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Gay row minister to be inducted in Scotland

The gay minister whose appointment sparked a furious debate in the Church of Scotland is set to be formally inducted in Aberdeen.

The Reverend Scott Rennie will be introduced to his congregation at a service at Queen's Cross Church.

Hundreds of ministers and thousands of Church of Scotland members signed an online petition opposing the move.

After arriving in Aberdeen, Mr Rennie said he was looking forward to serving God in the city.

The issue had gone to the General Assembly which narrowly voted in favour.

But there has been a two-year ban on the ordination of gay ministers and a special commission is considering the issue.

 See

Gay row minister to be inducted

BBC News

Gay exorcism: 'Loose your grip, Lucifer

he 16-year-old teenager in this disturbing video from the US was being subject to an exorcism ritual because he was held by his church elders to be 'possessed' by the demon of homosexuality. 'Rip it from his throat!' a woman yells. 'Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!' Msnbc has the full story. Gay rights groups have condemned the ritual, carried out by Manifested Glory Ministries, who have removed the video from their site. I found it at Slate in France and on YouTube. See Gay exorcism: 'Loose your grip, Lucifer!' Times Online Blogs

Britain is no longer a Christian nation, claims Church of England

The Rt Rev Paul Richardson said declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that "Christian Britain is dead".

He criticised his fellow bishops for failing to appreciate the scale of the crisis and warned that their inaction could seal the Church's fate.

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As one of the Church's longest-serving bishops, the comments by the assistant Bishop of Newcastle are set to fuel the debate over its future.

The General Synod, the Church's parliament, will next month consider proposals to cut the number of bishops and senior clergy amid fears over the Church's finances.

Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, Bishop Richardson said: "Many bishops prefer to turn their heads, to carry on as if nothing has changed, rather than face the reality that Britain is no longer a Christian nation.

"Many of them think that we are still living in the 1950s – a period described by historians as representing a hey day for the established church."

He said that the Church had lost more than one in ten of its regular worshippers between 1996 and 2006, with a fall from more than one million to 880,000.

"At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility," said Bishop Richardson.

Nearly half of the population in England regard themselves as belonging to the Church of England, while seven in ten described themselves as Christian in the last census.

However, the Bishop said that the fall in church marriages and baptisms revealed that Britain was no longer a Christian nation.

See Britain is no longer a Christian nation, claims Church of England ...

Telegraph.co.uk

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New North American Anglican grouping won't last says gay bishop

A new North American group claiming to embrace "traditional Anglican values" will not last long, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop has predicted.

Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner, whose 2003 consecration as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire created a backlash among traditional believers within the U.S., church, told Ecumenical News International he does not believe the new Anglican grouping has long-term viability.

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that," Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

His response came after the June 22-25 assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, meeting in Dallas, Texas, formalised years of dissatisfaction with the Episcopal Church over policies that have included the ordination of women, permission to perform holy unions for same-sex couples and the consecration of an openly gay bishop.

Calling the week the foundation of a "hopeful future," Archbishop Robert Duncan, the former Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said of the new denomination, "We are reaching out to North America in particular, and the whole world with the transforming love of Jesus Christ."

The breakaway grouping claims 100 000 members in 700 U.S. and Canadian parishes. These include four U.S. dioceses that cut ties with the Episcopal Church: Pittsburgh; Fort Worth, Texas; San Joaquin, California; and Quincy, Illinois. It also includes a number of other groups that had formed in recent years, including groupings with missionary efforts in Kenya, Uganda and the Southern Cone of South America.

Duncan announced that two African Anglican provinces, those of Uganda and Nigeria, which are said to be the two largest Anglican provinces in the world, had formally recognised the new North America group.

Among those addressing the assembly, attended by some 700 clergy and laity, was the Rev. Rick Warren, an evangelical leader in the United States, and Metropolitan Jonah, himself a former Episcopalian and the new primate of the Orthodox Church in North America, who told those assembled: "I am seeking an ecumenical restoration by being here today. This is God's call to us."

The Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Church of Canada did not formally comment on the ACNA assembly, the Episcopal News Service reported, but a representative of a group of Episcopalians who are remaining with the established U.S. church noted there is still unresolved litigation between the break-away Anglicans and the U.S. Episcopal Church over such issues as church property.

"Despite the ACNA's grand words, the new organization is being built largely with assets belonging to the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. It is unclear what Christian moral principles can be invoked to justify this," said Kenneth Stiles, a Pittsburgh attorney and vice president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh.

Right Wing Hastens to Hold Up Gay Adoptive Dad, Alleged Pedophile, As Typical of All Gays

Right Wing pundits on the right lost no time in seizing on the shocking case of a gay adoptive father who allegedly offered his five-year-old son as a sex object online.

Pointing to the case, which culminated in a June 26 arrest, a June 29 Christian News Wire article titled "Lombard Demonstrates Why Gays Should Not Be Able to Adopt" reported the broad outlines of the case, in which Duke University Center for Health Policy Associate Director Frank Lombard allegedly offered an undercover officer the sexual services of his young adopted son.

The article also used the case to decry, in equally broad terms, adoption by same-sex couples, taking the occasion to promote a purported study reportedly done by discredited researcher Paul Cameron.

Cameron, a long-time anti-gay activist and chairman of the Family Research Institute, was quoted in the article as saying, "The cant that ’gay parents are no more likely to molest’ is not based on evidence but liberal ideology."

Cameron, whose membership in the American Psychological Association was discontinued by the APA in 1983, and who was specifically cited in a 1984 resolution by the Nebraska Psychological Association that read, "[The NBA] formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality," has, nonetheless, gone on to author a number of studies purporting to prove various claims about gays, including that they die younger than straights and that children reared by gay couples are "more apt to report sexual confusion... more apt to be socially disturbed... more apt to abuse substances... less apt to get married... more apt to have difficulty in attachment and loving relationships..." See Right Wing Hastens to Hold Up Gay Adoptive Dad, Alleged Pedophile ... EDGE Boston

Midstate PA Delegates support same-sex blessings

Midstate Episcopalians last month expressed support for the creation of liturgies for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Delegates to the June 12-13 convention of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania at Bucknell University also voted in support of the church allowing the consecration of gay or lesbian bishops.

Diocesan spokesman David Shively said the measures were consistent with similar resolutions considered during previous years' conventions.

"In a sense, this was old business restated," he said.

"We have been far too distracted for far too long about something that's an important issue but not the only issue."

Clergy and lay delegates to the national convention are likely to consider the issues at a July 8-17 meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

Delegates include the Rev. Canon David Lovelace of St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in York; Harry Snell III of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Spring Garden Township; and Jennifer Railing of Memorial Church of the Prince of Peace in Gettysburg.

The Episcopal Church has not authorized official liturgies for same-sex unions, but bishops in a number of dioceses allow them. The Diocese of Central Pennsylvania is not among those.

Bishop Nathan D. Baxter of the 24-county diocese has provided no guidance one way or another on same-sex blessings in the diocese.

The previous bishop, Michael W. Creighton, declined to authorize such rites because the church has not approved a liturgy for them, Shively said.

Delegates support same-sex blessings York Daily Record
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Executive Council asks for comment on current Anglican covenant draft

he Episcopal Church's Executive Council has asked General Convention deputations and their bishops to study and comment on the latest draft of a proposed Anglican covenant.

In May, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) postponed an expected request that the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces consider adopting the Ridley Cambridge draft. The council said instead that it wanted the draft's Section 4, which contains a dispute-resolution process, to get more scrutiny and possibly be revised.

The Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a small working group to do that work. The members, all of whom served on the original Covenant Design Group, have solicited provincial responses by November 13, 2009. The working group will meet November 20-21 in London and report to the Standing Committee meeting December 15-18. The Standing Committee is a group of elected representatives of the ACC and the Primates Meeting.

A letter from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson and Rosalie Ballentine, the Executive Council member who chairs the council's task force on the Anglican covenant, asks that responses must be turned in by September 1. The task force and the council will use the comments to formulate a response during its October meeting.

"We believe that this work will best be accomplished in light of work and resolutions passed at the 2009 General Convention, so we are asking that deputations make their responses following convention," they wrote in the letter.

Deputations and their bishops are being asked to pay particular attention to the draft's fourth section, "along with other thoughts and reactions to the draft as a whole."

The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, said in a May 28 letter to the communion's provinces that the ACC was concerned "that Section 4 of that text had not been subject to the same degree of consultation with the provinces as the other three sections had."

"Accordingly the ACC requested that the text be referred to the provinces asking that Section 4 of the text be considered by each province to identify issues of unclarity or ambiguity in the text," he wrote.

The 2006 General Convention asked (via Resolution A166) the Executive Council to follow the development process of an Anglican covenant. The council has noted repeatedly that following the development process and offering feedback on draft texts does not imply the Episcopal Church will bind itself to the covenant in its final version.

The task force facilitated the church’s response to both the Nassau and St. Andrew's drafts of the Anglican covenant. The response to the first draft is available here. The response to the second draft second draft is here.

To guide the requested diocesan study on the Ridley Cambridge draft, the council's task force has developed a four-question study guide.

It is available in English here and in Spanish here.

The letters from Jefferts Schori, Anderson and Ballentine, and from Kearon are also available via those links, as is the ACC resolution asking for more study and a link to the covenant text online.

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.

Episcopalians return to Petaluma church

Bells rang and heavy oak doors were opened wide Wednesday as an exiled Petaluma Episcopal congregation made an emotional return to the church it lost 2½ years ago in a dispute with a breakaway group that objected to gay ordination.

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More than 100 people crowded into St. John's Episcopal Church to hear their first service there since a majority of members had split from the diocese in late 2006, retaining the property and aligning with an international Anglican church.

On Wednesday, parishioners reclaimed the 118-year-old building and all assets under the terms of a settlement this summer prompted by a recent state Supreme Court ruling. For some, it was a triumphant and tearful homecoming.

"I can't stop weeping," said Geri Olson as she stepped outside after the service. "It's such a beautiful feeling to have a home."

The 200-member St. John's Anglican congregation held its final services in the building on Sunday and turned over keys to the building and church offices Wednesday.

Their administrator, Mike McIntosh, said the congregation would meet at the Petaluma Community Center on North McDowell Boulevard until a permanent location is found.

"We realize that from our perspective, the Lord has a plan for us, and he's calling us to another place," McIntosh said. "This is our calling, and we accept it. It's not about anything else besides moving on."

See Episcopalians return to Petaluma church Santa Rosa Press Democrat -

Where does your church stand on diversity education?

ALAMEDA — Local leaders of the United Church of Christ are calling on their fellow pastors and ministers to support teaching diversity and multicultural education in public schools in response to the issue coming under fire when it was proposed here and in Castro Valley.

The local representatives are asking 900 delegates from across the country who are now attending the church's General Synod in Grand Rapids, Mich., to approve a resolution which backs diversity lessons, saying they reflect Jesus' command for people to love their neighbors.

"Children and youth are dying, literally dying, because they have not heard this message of hope," said the Rev. Dr. Arlene Nehring, senior minister at Eden United Church of Christ in Hayward.

Nehring and other local church leaders decided to propose the resolution after controversy erupted over Castro Valley High School's "Day of Diversity" program, as well as over the lesson plans within the Alameda Unified School District that aim to curb anti-gay teasing and bullying on the playground.

In Castro Valley, parents recently sued the district after they learned that lesbian minister Nehring was addressing students at the high school, while in Alameda the anti-bullying curriculum — which will be taught in kindergarten through fifth grade — sparked weeks of heated debate before it was approved last month.

"What I bemoan is the fact that the argument against it has been posed as, 'Your right to be infringes on my right to be,'" said the Rev. Laura Rose, a lesbian and senior pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Alameda.

Church delegates are expected to vote on the resolution Tuesday.

While it would not be binding on pastors and ministers if it passes, the resolution would still send a "word of encouragement" as congregations look at how gay issues are addressed in schools, the Ohio-based Rev. Michael Schuenemeyer said.

According to the resolution, "school districts have a mandate to keep their children safe from emotional and physical harm by providing lessons to address ways in which words like 'gay' are misused by children as early as kindergarten to tease, humiliate and bully fellow students."

The resolution also says that "Days of Diversity" help children reach their full potential "without fear or intimidation."

Among the resolution supporters is Teri Kennedy, a member of Rose's church in Alameda and a special-education teacher at Alameda High School.

"I want my son to learn that there are all kinds of families and that what's important is taking care of those we love," Kennedy said.

Formed in 1957, the United Church of Christ is a Protestant church with 1.2 million members. Its General Synod meets every two years.

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Church leaders asked to support diversity education San Jose Mercury News

LOS ANGELES: Dissident parish takes property fight to US Supreme Court

A breakaway congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has taken the fight to keep its property to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a statement released June 24 by St. James Anglican Church.

An attorney for the Newport Beach congregation said he will ask the nation's top court to overturn a January California Supreme Court decision that the property was held in trust for the mission and ministry of the Los Angeles diocese and the wider Episcopal Church.

"We will be arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that the California Supreme Court's interpretation of state law has violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," said Dr. John Eastman, who is dean of the Chapman University Law School and a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

"The First Amendment says Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Even though it says Congress, that Amendment has been interpreted as applicable to the states as well," Eastman said in the prepared release.

The petition asks the Supreme Court to decide whether, under the U.S. Constitution, certain religious denominations can disregard the normal rules of property ownership that apply to everyone else. A response from the court regarding the St. James petition can be expected as early as October 2009. A decision could be reached as early as mid-2010.

The full text of the petition may be found here.

John Shiner, chancellor for the Los Angeles diocese, told the Episcopal News Service, "We believe the opinions of the California Supreme Court and Court of Appeal resolved completely the issue involving property ownership, taking into account constitutional and other relevant arguments including an earlier decision on the subject by the U.S. Supreme Court."

A majority of St. James' members voted to disaffiliate from the Episcopal Church and to realign with the Anglican Province of Uganda in August 2004, citing theological disagreements and the consecration of an openly gay Episcopal Church bishop. They sought to retain the Newport Beach property.

Leaders replaced the word "Episcopal" in their name and documents with "Anglican" although the Episcopal Church is a member church in the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes 80 million people in 44 regional and national member churches in 160 countries.

A year after the disaffiliation, Orange County Superior Judge David C. Velasquez ruled the congregation owned the property. The California Court of Appeal reversed the lower court ruling in July 2007, deferring to church hierarchy regarding ownership of local church property. The state supreme court upheld the appellate court in January 2009.

Eastman said St. James will argue that the state supreme court's ruling also denies "the local church community their ability to organize and hold title to their own building and conduct their religious services in a manner they see fit," thereby violating their right to the free exercise of religion.

"Under longstanding law, no one can unilaterally impose a trust over someone else's property without their permission," Eastman said. "Yet, in the decision titled Episcopal Church Cases, the California Supreme Court ruled that certain denominations – those that claim to be a "superior religious body or general church" – can unilaterally impose a trust on the property of spiritually affiliated but separately incorporated local churches, resulting in the local church forfeiting its property if it ever chooses to leave the denomination."

Eastman said the constitutional issues involved affect all places of worship and spiritual centers. "Every local church, temple, synagogue, parish, spiritual center, congregation or religious group which owns its own property through a religious corporation, and has some affiliation with a larger religious group, is at risk of losing its own property under the California Supreme Court's ruling," he said.

-- The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Provinces VII and VIII and the House of Bishops. She is based in Los Angeles.

BRAZIL: Theologian Jaci Corréia Maraschin dies at 79

The Rev. Jaci Corréia Maraschin, an influential poet, theologian and priest in the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil (Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil, or IEAB), has died aged 79.

In a June 30 news release, the IEAB described Maraschin as an "ardent defender of liberty, inclusiveness, the ordination of women, and creativity in hymns and liturgy."

Maraschin's contribution to liturgical music, as author, composer, and translator, "is a valuable legacy not only for the IEAB but also many other churches in Brazil and beyond," the provincial news release said, noting that his latest project was to coordinate a revision of the IEAB's hymnal.

"It would be difficult to think of a priest, theology student, or lay leader in the IEAB who was not profoundly influenced by the Rev. Maraschin, whose motto was 'life goes only as far as liberty does.'"

Maraschin has served on several international commissions, including the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), on which he helped to draft the document Gift of Authority, signed by both churches.

Maraschin also assisted in the writing of The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality, a book intended to support the process of listening to gay and lesbian Anglicans.

"Jaci brought a depth of understanding to the traditions of the church catholic to the writing of Chapter 4 of the Anglican Communion and Homosexuality," the Rev. Canon Phil Groves, facilitator of the Anglican Communion Listening Process, told ENS. "His depth of knowledge allowed us to place the issue in the context of the developing traditions of the church, challenging us to be faithful to the faith once delivered to the saints in a rapidly changing world. His approach was rooted in the past, positive about the present and giving hope to the future."

In 1976, Maraschin was elected to serve on the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.

During the early 1950s, Maraschin studied at General Theological Seminary in New York. When he returned to Brazil in 1956, he was put in charge of coordinating Christian education and began to teach at the Theological Seminary of Brazil, "ambitiously modernizing religious education and seeking to incorporate the diversity and richness of Brazilian culture," the provincial news release said.

Maraschin is survived by his wife Ana Dulce, daughters Ana Isabela and Rosa Maria, and four grandchildren. See BRAZIL: Theologian Jaci Corréia Maraschin dies at 79 Episcopal-Life

Jim McGreevey studying to become priest

Ever wonder what happened to Jim "I am a gay American" McGreevey?

McGreevey famously outed himself in resigning as governor of New Jersey in 2004, amid revelations that he had an affair with a man on his staff.

He now is in a "healthy, happy relationship" with a different man now, studying to become an Episcopal priest and volunteering at Exodus Ministries at the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem, New York, "which tries to help newly-released prisoners learn life skills and handle the significant challenges that ex-convicts face," according to a story by David Shankbone, a New York photographer and writer who befriended McGreevey while they attended the same church.

Shankbone wrote that McGreevey also "was a source of hope and friendship" for Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor of New York last year in the wake of revelations that he patronized a high-priced prostitution ring, and has offered advice to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who recently admitted to leaving the country to visit his Argentinian mistress without telling his family or staff where he was going.

See Jim McGreevey studying to become priest Seattle Post Intelligencer