Out of the Fold?

By David Van Biema/Cleveland

It should have been a celebration of unity, but it turned into a shocking tableau of discord. Louisiana bishop Dan Solomon was presiding over the General Conference of the United Methodist Convention, a contentious but usually joyous quadrennial meeting to plot the future of America's second-largest Protestant denomination. Solomon had proved an amiable and unflappable moderator, but now his voice cracked. "I speak to you with anguish about what is about to unfold," he said. "I bury my head in prayer. I cannot witness what is about to occur." As 5,000 delegates looked on, Solomon's head did drop to the lectern. Minutes later, a squad of uniformed police entered from the wings of the Convention Center stage in Cleveland, Ohio, and arrested 27 gay-rights protesters, including two bishops, charging them with disrupting a lawful meeting. As the protesters filed out, many delegates, even those who had just voted three times against gay-rights proposals, watched in tears. Everyone knew the police had been at the ready and that the activists might force their hand by taking over the stage. But had it actually happened? After all, the Conference's logo is a picture of Jesus' embracing arms and the words of the Apostle Paul: WE WHO ARE MANY ARE ONE BODY.

There is hardly a religious group in America that is not beset by the issue that rent the Methodist meeting in May: the place of gay people in its pews. In March the organization of Reform Jewish rabbis agreed that its members could perform gay-holy-union ceremonies if they chose. The group was then castigated for it by other Jewish branches. Last month the Vatican, which had earlier ordered an American nun and priest to end a ministry to gays and their families because it did not stress the "intrinsically disordered" nature of homosexuality, further prohibited the nun and priest from talking about what they used to do. Even the small Mennonite and General Conference Mennonite churches, for years planning a merger, came within 10 votes of scuttling it, in part because they couldn't agree on the combined church's position on gays.

But the most wrenching expression of the dilemma is playing out in the mainline, a process that will intensify this week as the Presbyterian Church (USA) convenes in Long Beach, Calif. Few expect the Southern Baptists to ordain gays or the Reform Jews to legislate against them, but the traditional liberal denominations are almost violently torn. The three proposals whose passage prompted the civil disobedience and arrests in Cleveland--bans on gay ministers and holy unions, as well as a clause stating that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching"--prevailed by votes of roughly 2 to 1. That kind of majority is satisfying in electoral politics, but alarming in groups that regard themselves as constituting the body of Christ. Mainline Evangelicals and some gay-rights advocates have threatened to abandon their denominations, and the specter of full-blown schism looms in the future. Even in the bosom of the relatively unruffled Episcopal Church, whose representatives will meet in Denver on July 14, the issue can wreak havoc. When a Seattle-area rector told his 300-person Episcopal congregation some time ago that he was a celibate gay, 100 of them walked out.

The issue is impossible to ignore and yet maddening to be stuck on. Says a Presbyterian lesbian who has done hundreds of hours of advocacy on the issue: "This is the church I grew up in and was nurtured in and found my faith in. I can't believe we are doing this to each other. Presbyterians don't talk a lot about [the end of the world], but when the Last Judgment comes...surely this is not what God wants us to waste our time on." But she cannot let it go.

This controversy is two-sided, and its conservative participants engage it with a passion and a devotion to the Gospel that equals that on the left. Says Claire Dargill, 38, a Presbyterian from Bridgeport, Conn.: "A sin is a sin, and you can't just change that because it's popular or politically correct. I just don't see how we can welcome gays into the church in the face of that." But as these portraits from the left-to-moderate wing of the discussion indicate, the issue is so divisive that it can foster bitterness and, at the very least, soul searching, even among those of apparently like mind.

TRACEY LIND: NO MORE PASSING

On the day last week when she donned the stole and the chasuble of her new office, on the day when her Episcopal bishop installed her as the dean of Cleveland's grand Trinity Cathedral, the Very Rev. Tracey Lind took a moment to think back on Sunday School, which in her case took place in a Reform synagogue. As a child, she had been half-Jewish, half-Christian, and the rabbi, who was teaching about the Holocaust at the time, glanced up shrewdly and asked, "Tracey, you could have passed. Would you have died for your faith or denied it?"

"You could have passed." The line haunted her in more ways than one. It took decades to settle the rabbi's implied religious query. It was only in 1984 that Lind stood on a Manhattan corner and heard what she describes as "the voice of God" calling her to the Episcopal ministry, into which she was ordained in 1987. But there was a second challenge the rabbi hadn't intended. On that same curbside, Lind promised herself, "I won't let the church use my sexuality as an excuse for not hearing God's voice through me." She was gay. And at that time, in a church with a distinct live-and-let-live-but-don't-rock-the-boat attitude, she felt that a dramatic coming-out would be a distraction. For the noblest of reasons, she was still passing.

That changed in 1995. Lind felt a special empathy for the oppressed; she attracted national attention for a series of dynamic social programs she had introduced as pastor to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in inner-city Paterson, N.J. But then a storm brewed in her backyard. Former Newark assistant bishop Walter Righter was charged with heresy for having knowingly ordained an open homosexual named Barry Stopfel.

Stopfel was Lind's good friend, she told her flock in a powerful, high-risk sermon; "It could have been me." She recounted the rabbi's challenge. Here was her answer. "I am not coming out because I want to flaunt my sexuality, [but] because the Gospel demands it," she said. "To exist in a homophobic society in fear and collaboration...causes moral insanity and moral death. To state clearly who one is and who one loves is to claim life in the midst of death."

At which point, oddly enough, everything fell into place. Her congregation rose and applauded. Ecclesiastical judges threw out the Righter case. Episcopal bishops have since ordained dozens of gay priests. "There is still work to do in this church, but for gays the tide has turned," says Lind. She was offered the high-profile job as cathedral dean, often a stepping stone to a bishop's post. Says Wiley Cornell, Trinity's senior lay leader: "Sexual orientation was a nonissue for the search committee."

Or close to one. In fact, the church omitted mention of Lind's sexuality when it announced her hire in February. "We didn't want that to become the defining vision everyone had of her," says Cornell.

And so begins a more subtle stage in Lind's development. She no longer passes. But her prominence sometimes demands a new discretion. "If you've spent your life banging on a door to get in, what do you do when you get inside?" she asks. "My job is to continue to engage people. As any good politician knows, there are no permanent enemies and no permanent allies."

The installation ceremony ends, and the bands strike up. Lind throws herself gamely into the bluegrass and polkas. Then as evening falls, a deejay comes on. And the newly invested dean, beaming, boogies down to the Village People's YMCA.

MEL WHITE: THE LURE OF SCHISM

Slender, California-breezy and prone to corny gay humor, the Rev. Mel White, co-head of the roving protest group Soulforce, seems a bit lightweight at first. But he has a powerful life saga, and was willing to get arrested not just in Cleveland in May and in Orlando, Fla., in June (Baptists), but plans to do likewise in Long Beach in July (Presbyterians) and possibly in Denver a week later (Episcopalians). The only transdenominational figure on the scene, he will establish the nightly-news rat-tat-tat for the entire season of contention. His attitude toward the various denominations? "We don't debate anymore. You change your policies, or we're going to split you apart and leave."

White's is a transformation that begs for comparison with Saul's on the road to Damascus. Grandson of a tent revivalist, White was ghostwriter of choice in the 1980s to the Evangelical elite, co-authoring books with Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. One day, sitting with Falwell in a car surrounded by gay protesters, he realized he should be on the outside. After 25 years of clandestinely trying to "cure" himself via exorcism, electroshock and prayer, the father of two divorced and settled down with a man named Gary Nixon. Then he began searching for a way to expiate sins committed in the service of "homophobic haters."

That turned out to be Soulforce. For six years, White steeped himself in the confrontational nonviolence taught by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He courted the heirs and icons of his newfound field--Gandhi's grandson Arun, King's daughter Yolanda and his strategist James Lawson--and they joined him in Cleveland, along with several hundred multidenominational gays, lesbians and transgendered persons wearing T shirts emblazoned with THIS DEBATE MUST END--WE ARE GOD'S CHILDREN TOO. Of these, 191 helped White block a Convention Center exit and went to jail, an act of "redemptive suffering" intended as a Christian witness to the perceived injustice of the Methodist position on homosexuality.

Humdrum as such activism might be in big-city streets, it can still shock the church world. Since the 1970s, mainline homosexual church activists have worked within the system, assuming that their quest for inclusion would begin as a minority cause but triumph when their brothers and sisters in Christ saw the justice of their plea. Only recently have some reached the conclusion that they are no match for Evangelical forces campaigning fervently from the right and that after rejecting gay ordination and marriage at convention after convention, denominational consensus was only hardening. In this context, White's attitude makes a certain harsh sense.

His campaign has predictably attracted ire from the right. Says James Heidinger II, publisher of Good News, a conservative Methodist journal: "We don't feel good about outsiders coming in and using intimidation and pressure on our delegates for something that ought to be a family affair." In fact, even some in-house gay activists feel trampled on. "He's just like Falwell in his own way," says an Episcopalian.

White claims to understand. Of the gay Methodist activists who met him when he arrived in Cleveland (and who were themselves eventually arrested, to Bishop Solomon's dismay), he says, "They're thinking, 'Mel, we've worked four years for this moment. Don't screw it up for us.'" But to the extent that they are worried that he may mar their dialogue with their denominations, he really doesn't care. "Schism? Yes, we are calling for a personal schism. I don't think there's any chance for reconciliation in these churches. We're pushing people to say, Either you change the policies, or we will leave and get someplace where we can be spiritually fed. We're calling gay, lesbian, bi- and transgendered people to leave these churches... And then let them try to find an organist."

A NEW SUNDAY LESSON

Jane Wise was worried about gays in her church. Not about their being there. But that they might walk out the door and she might have to decide whether or not to go with them.

Wise, who is 73 and straight, recently arrived at her usual pew in Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, for a special meeting of the congregation. In front of her was her friend Carolyn Dietrich, 39. At the pulpit was Trinity's pastor, Sid Hall, recapping: the Methodist General Conference's 65% vote calling homosexuality incompatible with Christian teaching was even higher than the tally four years before. Where did that leave Trinity? Eight years ago, it became a reconciling congregation, one that "welcomes all people regardless of race...age [or] gender identity." But didn't the General Conference's emphatic, repeated rejection of homosexuality make that an empty pledge? Could Trinity in good faith stay in the Methodist fold? A woman stood and declared with some heat, "Whether you are gay or lesbian, black or white or transgendered, we're all part of God's family and should be accepted as that." "Very well put," muttered Wise.

Things have come a long way since 1988. That was the year Trinity hired Pastor Hall at age 30, hoping a young minister could revive a congregation shrunk to a mere 120 members, mostly old; they joked that anyone under 70 should join the youth group. Hall proved dynamic alright, but not in a way the solidly middle-class, overwhelmingly straight congregation had expected. Over three years he explicitly campaigned to extend fellowship to gays. This caused considerable whispering. "People said, 'Sid's not going to last very long, and we can always get another minister,'" recalls Wise. "One friend of mine said she thought if gays came to church, Sid's children would be molested. I told her I didn't think so."

When Trinity finally voted in 1992, reconciliation passed by a 4-to-1 vote. And the church thrived. This year it counted 350 members, a full third of whom are gay (plus one transgendered person, a Mary Kay beauty-products saleswoman). For Wise, the transformation was a joy and a challenge. A joy because people like Carolyn Dietrich returned to the church. Thirty-five years ago, Wise had taught Carolyn in Sunday School. Since then, Dietrich had gone off into the world, become a teacher and then a funding consultant, lived in Dallas, and wooed and wed her partner Lisa Dalton in a nondenominational ceremony. On the day Dietrich arrived at Trinity for the first time in nearly 30 years, Wise gave her a big hug.

Dietrich and Dalton also represented Wise's challenge. Issues like same-sex marriage still trouble her. "I don't know how to put it," she puzzles. "My own marriage meant so much to me...I'm sure it would mean the same to others, but we haven't approved such things in the church."

Today, however, she is worried that as a result of the Conference vote, Pastor Hall--who has already stopped performing any weddings at all because of the ban on gay nuptials--may feel called to lead Trinity out of the church altogether. That would put Wise in a terrible place. "I've grown so accustomed to the [Methodist] rules and regulations," she says nervously. Luckily, the meeting flows another way. One by one, congregants declare that they will continue to struggle for gay initiatives within the Convention. Alice Crabtree, a heterosexual mother of three, rises and says, "This church is a place where you can bring your most-honest-to-God-awful self or your most magnificent self," she says. "And people know you and love you. You watch people die. But you can come here because this is a safe place. For some people it's all the family we've got."

Dietrich, weeping, turns to her old Sunday School teacher. "Do you have a Kleenex?" she asks. Wise, as if the 35 years had never happened, calmly opens her beige pocketbook and hands her a tissue. Then she leans forward and gives Dietrich a couple more. "Just in case," she says.

--With reporting by Wendy Cole/Cleveland and Austin and Lisa McLaughlin/New York

With reporting by Wendy Cole/Cleveland and Austin and Lisa McLaughlin/New York