MLCN Votes to Merge with PLGC Reach Out to Moderate Grass Roots By Alexa Smith Presbyterian News Service CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A merger with Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (PLGC) was unanimously approved by delegates of the More Light Churches Network (MLCN) during the network's annual conference here, initiating a new strategy for gay and lesbian Presbyterians to work more cohesively in the church's grass roots to reach supportive but cautious moderates. To further that goal, Bill Capel, a Champaign, Ill., elder, donated $30,000 to start a salary pool so that the new group - tentatively known as More Light Presbyterians (MLP) - can hire a full-time organizer and an assistant to work with congregations and presbyteries, particularly in regions where the denomination's 1997 vote on Amendment A, the "fidelity and integrity" amendment, was close. The defeat of Amendment A, which tried to broaden the more restrictive ordination standards that went into the church's constitution in 1997, effectively closed the door on the ordination of sexually active homosexuals. Capel is a member of the McKinley Memorial Presbyterian Church, on the campus of the University of Illinois, the MLCN congregation that hosted the conference and just unveiled an "inclusiveness" stained-glass window (with a pink triangle, recalling the symbol homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps were forced to wear, at the top) in its sanctuary. MLP is aiming to raise another $30,000 and to hire staff early in 1999. PLGC to vote at GA PLGC's members will vote on the merger during their annual meeting at the General Assembly this week. "We're entering a new phase of this struggle ... and there's a desire to reinvent ourselves to be a bit better prepared for this new phase," said Scott Anderson of Sacramento, one of PLGC's co-moderators. "While we'll always be a presence at the General Assembly, for the next phase we're going to enlarge our work at the local level dramatically, [particularly in] swing-vote presbyteries," Anderson said. "Five to 10 years' work will make the difference." Merger and reunion The vote is both for a merger and a reunion of sorts. In 1978, when the General Assembly adopted "definitive guidance," denying ordination to homosexuals, New York City's West-Park Presbyterian Church immediately declared itself a conscientious objector to the policy and defined itself as gay welcoming. The Munn Avenue Church in East Orange, N.J., and the Downtown Church in Rochester, N.Y., quickly followed. In 1992, the MLCN was organized as a way to nurture the growing numbers of congregations practicing ecclesiastical disobedience. While churches in the network ordain gays and lesbians as elders and deacons, members, when asked, were able to identify only one MLCN church in the 95-congregation network that has called an openly gay minister. PLGC, on the other hand, built its reputation as a lobbying organization, focusing most intently upon changing General Assembly ordination policy. It emerged at the 1974 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America as the Presbyterian Gay Caucus. It became Presbyterians for Gay Concerns in 1979 to accommodate growing numbers of nongay members. The name was officially changed to Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns in 1980. The organization now has 20 active chapters. "The popular vote was so much larger this time," said MLCN co-moderator the Rev. Richard Lundy of Excelsior, Minn., referring to the 46 percent of Presbyterians who voted for less restrictive ordination standards in presbyteries this year, even though Amendment A was ultimately clobbered by a 114-to-59 vote. "That helps us know where we need to concentrate our grassroots efforts. ... "The MLCN tradition is committed to nurturing churches," said Lundy. "PLGC has focused on legislative initiatives at the General Assembly. Now we're committed to grassroots organizing in addition to the legislative initiatives." Areas targeted for a stronger MLP presence are the Southeast, an up-to-now solid wall of opposition to ordination of gays and lesbians, and the Midwest, where voting has been more mixed. Other organizations The decision to bankroll local organizing isn't a new one among gay and lesbian activists within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In her advocacy work throughout the United States, the Rev. Jane Spahr, an evangelist hired by the Downtown Church in Rochester, N.Y., to educate the denomination on gay and lesbian concerns, is laying the groundwork for local congregations to hire what she calls "regional evangelists." These gays and lesbians, working side by side with MLP, will be advocates and educators in the church's historically moderate middle. Projects under the auspices of Spahr's supporting organization, That All May Freely Serve, are under development now in Baltimore, northern California and Chicago, and are beginning in Atlanta. Spahr gained denomination-wide recognition in 1992 when the General Assembly's Permanent Judicial Commission declared her call as pastor to the Downtown Church in Rochester out of order, prohibiting her installation there. An ordained minister, Spahr is an "out" lesbian. Presbyterian Welcome, a coalition of ten New York City Presbyterian churches, has already hired a part-time regional evangelist - United Church of Christ pastor Cliff Frazier - and its latest project is petitioning the Synod of the Northeast to become a "G-6.0106b-free Zone." G-6.0106b is the clause in the denomination's constitution that in effect prohibits the ordination of sexually active gays, lesbians and unmarried heterosexuals. Different points of view "It's hard work," said Frazier, when asked about mediating between the more radicalized congregations in his coalition who are ecclesiastically disobedient and the more moderates ones, who are supportive but who are committed to working for change within the system's rules. "It's hard to negotiate different points of view. ... Not impossible - just difficult." Such disparity in perspective has created tension in More Light circles for years, leading the organization to develop a second-tier membership of inclusive-but-not-quite-More Light churches - something hardliners in the ordination debate consider a compromise and others accept as pragmatic politics. "Being inclusive without becoming More Light ... may be a comfort for the conscience of an organization. But it doesn't tell gay and lesbian people they're welcome there ... if it's just privately known to the congregation," said Donn Crail of West Hollywood, a retired minister who has long worked in gay and lesbian advocacy and who wants moderates to take a more vocal - and visible - stance. He includes in that group members of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians (CNP), the self-styled middle-of-the-roaders who worked to get "fidelity and integrity" language into the constitution and who intend to continue as a moderate voice in denominational debates but who, much to Crail's dismay, list no openly gay people in their literature. "I'd like to push the moderates to come out," Crail said. Looking to the PJC Pam Byers of San Francisco represented the Covenant Network of Presbyterians in MLCN presentations and in a General Assembly strategy session that was closed to the press. Byers told the gathering that the CNP is working to mobilize those who are "much more moderate than the folks in this room" and described her constituency as people who "lost a vote, but found a voice." Many in MLP believe it is time to widen the group's membership to include those who are supportive of gays and lesbians but unwilling to be ecclesiastically disobedient. But while MLCN's other co-moderator, octogenarian activist Virginia Davidson of Rochester, N.Y., is willing, she's still dragging her feet on compromising much to accommodate people who don't take the risks More Lighters have historically taken. Davidson, who wrapped up her last three-year term as co-moderator at the close of the conference, believes that the only way gays and lesbians will be ordained anytime soon in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will be by a favorable Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) decision brought about by judicial action. "People want to get this one by one by one," said Davidson, referring to pastors who want to change parishioners' minds slowly because they are reluctant to upset members by taking convictional stands. "I want to maintain connections and I want to keep talking and listening with them ... but I don't think we're gonna change the church that way. It's the polity that has to change. "And we need a decision like that on the books from a PJC," said Davidson, who believes that a favorable PJC action now would be comparable to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Anderson believes that those cases are inevitable, but is less certain that now is a favorable time. MLP is compiling lists of volunteer lawyers to represent gays and lesbians and More Light churches in ecclesiastical court and has socked away $20,000 toward covering whatever fees arise. Looking to the national media "We're not folding up our tents and quietly going away, becoming UCC [United Church of Christ, which, with its congregational polity, permits the ordination of homosexuals]," he said, stressing that gay activists intend to turn whatever Presbyterian judicial cases get filed into national media stories and that they will also work to improve pastoral and spiritual care of the flock in this tense time. "We are preparing ourselves, ..." he said. " There were 41 years of overtures before women's ordination [was approved] - judicial cases and irregular ordinations. The parallels are so strong. So if we adopt that perspective, we're still in the early stages of this discussion in the life of this denomination. "We've only been at this 25 years," said the 43-year-old former Presbyterian minister who was "outed" and demitted his ordination, "and I think it will take another 25. I hope it happens before I die, but I'm not holding my breath on that." PLGC co-moderator Laurene Lafontaine, parish associate in a Denver Presbyterian church, is also focusing on the long haul. "I feel pretty hopeful, even though it's hard now," she told the Presbyterian News Service, describing the frustration and hope that swings back and forth like a see-saw as she meets with CNP's moderates, antsy More Lighters and even more conservative factions. "We want to do the right thing," she told her constituents, "and we're trying to figure out how to do it. Part of the challenge of this work is how to work together." |
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