This week will be very important in ongoing efforts of mainline denominations to determine the appropriate response to gay Christians within their family.
The Episcopal Church will be having its national convention at which issues relating to the ability of congregations to bless same-sex unions and of regions to elect gay bishops will be debated. Depending on the results of votes, this convention could result in decisions that lead to either a split within that denomination of their possible expulsion from the worldwide Anglican fellowship.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) will alse be making a decision this week that could effect whether individual churches can select openly gay ministers.
And the upcoming United Methodist Church convention in 2008 will also continue its long debate over homosexuality within the church, including a recommendation from Minnesota that same-sex marriages be allowed.
USA Today has a nice synopsis of the issues up for vote.
“Young adults today can’t understand what the fuss is all about. Their lives are colorblind. They have gay friends and straight friends. They have good values, but they don’t stay with the church,” he says.
“The gay-rights battle isn’t the main reason, but it’s one of them. They don’t see in their church a lens to see the world.”
Probably one of the most profound statements on the future of organized religion in the US.
When I was born in 1960 everyone in my extended family (with one Lutheran exception) of about 40 people was a practicing, Mass-attending Catholic.
By 1980, it was slightly less than half (and by then three Lutherans).
Today, with births/deaths, what I consider extended family numbers about 70 people, and only about five or six of them attend Mass or services on any kind of regular basis. None has attended Catholic schools since the 1970’s.
The last church wedding I attended for a family member was in the early 1980’s.
Except for funerals for the older ones, very few people in my family find the Church relevant anymore, whatever the denomination.
Talk about a cultural shift…..
Quote from reference USA Today article: “Barbara Brown Taylor, 55, left the Episcopal priesthood, observing that “human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.”
Since when does God need protecting? Who would be audacious enough to presume that they have the power to reign God in and shelter Him/Her? Doesn’t protecting something imply that you are greater and stronger than it?
Isn’t this just another case of defining God to fit the worldview with which you are comfortable? Isn’t part of the concept of having a Higher Power that it is above and beyond us?