CLGS

The Presbyterian Church (USA), (PCUSA) the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, held its national General Assembly in San Jose, CA from June 21-28. The biennial conference involves lay and clergy delegates from the nation's 174 regional bodies, or Presbyteries, who debate and vote on issues of church policy and governance. This year, the General Assembly voted to recommend changes to the church.s constitution that would allow openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people to be ordained in the church. The following is a personal account of General Assembly from PSR communications assistant and GTU PhD student Richard Lindsay.

Signs and portents of change in San Jose By Richard Lindsay

Attending General Assembly was, as always, a challenging, exhausting experience. Hundreds of delegates and interested observers converged from June 21-28 for the biennial Presby-palooza of worship, prayer, and most important, committee meetings and voting, to decide the future of the church.

In addition to the official voting members of the General Assembly, different "affinity groups," ongoing non-profit organizations mostly made up of Presbyterians, attend the conference with the intent to shape church legislation and policies. Many of these groups represent causes that have become familiar parts of the culture wars throughout American society and within mainline Protestant denominations. At General Assembly, one is likely to see groups for and against reproductive choice, organizations for and against LGBT inclusion in the church, or organizations of conservative Presbyterian women or liberal Presbyterian women. In addition to these more politically-based groups are organizations with interests as broad-ranging as environmental justice, science and religion, worship and music, Christian education, advocacy for the homeless, youth and young adult issues, and international peacemaking efforts.

During General Assembly, I worked with That All May Freely Serve (TAMFS), one of several affinity groups that work for LGBT inclusion in the church. The church continues to have a policy in its Book of Order (constitution) that holds ordained ministers, elders, and deacons to a standard of "fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness." Do the math: that means if you.re in a same-sex relationship, you.re not eligible for ordination. The struggle for full inclusion of LGBT people in the church has gone on since the early 1970's, or roughly parallel to the modern gay rights movement in the United States.

The typical approach for affinity groups at General Assembly has been get out their messages by holding luncheons, worship services, and educational sessions, or renting a booth in the exhibit hall. This year, TAMFS decided to try a different approach. Adding to a core of TAMFS vets that have been witnessing at General Assemblies for 17 years, we recruited 15 young adults from across the country. Most of the young adult team members were seminary students, but we did have a couple of undergrads and an engineering masters student from UC Berkeley. We held a two-day training session in Berkeley thanks in part to resources from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (including an inspiring session with Jay Johnson). Then we descended on San Jose to surprise and delight the Assembly with street theater, speakouts, roving evangelism, wildly creative worship, and random acts of guerilla hospitality. Our intention was to change not just the direction of the church, but the direction of the LGBT movement within the church.

Starting Saturday night and continuing throughout the Assembly, one of our creative outreach efforts was "Techno Evening Prayer," an interactive worship with techno music, video graphics, and prayer readings which was held in an abandoned bank parking lot in downtown San Jose. (In addition to providing a truly creative worship experience for GA attendees, we entertained several homeless folks as well.)

One morning, we rented Segways and several of our team members zoomed up to delegates coming into the convention hall and greeted them with messages like, "We're from the Church of the Future! Thanks for voting for LGBT equality!" We played games like "Toss you a question," where we threw plastic balls to passers by with questions written on them like, "Why do you think the church continues not to ordain LGBT people?" and asked them to respond. And throughout, we were there with our smiling faces, offering fresh coffee and warm cookies to lighten the stress of the General Assembly experience.

On one occasion, our hospitality outreach received help from some anti-gay forces. Several members of a Bay Area church turned out on the sidewalk outside the convention center to protest the denomination with signs like "Homosexuals are going to hell" and "Repent homosexuals!" (They looked like cream puffs compared to the Phelps clan.) This took place as delegates were returning to the convention center from dinner. We stood next to the hate group and offered warm cookies to passers-by, who had the opportunity to sample our smiling, generous hospitality in contrast to the angry anti-gay message of the protesters. We got reactions like, "I like your approach better." And even, "You guys have been so creative this week, we thought this was part of your act. Where.s the choreography?" Many of us believed the protests had a positive effect on the outcome of the General Assembly. Protestors like these hold up a mirror to homophobia in all its ugliness.

The upshot was that the General Assembly voted to change the Book of Order to remove the language that proscribed heterosexual marriage as the only allowable relationship for ordained members of the church. This decision must be ratified by a majority of the 174 Presbyteries in order to take effect. So the struggle for this change will continue for the next year as groups like TAMFS work to reach out to educate Presbyteries on this issue. But people who attended General Assembly this year felt a distinct difference in tone from past General Assemblies in the denomination's approach to LGBT issues. It felt like a kinder, gentler Presbyterian church.

A couple of stories from GA that were not covered in the media aftermath of the decision:

The press usually portrays the discernment process over full membership for LGBT people in the mainline churches using terms like: "Division!" "Schism!" "Church split!".part of their never-ending need to wring conflict out of any situation. The opening line of the Associated Press article on the GA decision was typical: "The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), bitterly divided over sexuality and the Bible, set up another confrontation Friday over its ban on ordaining non-celibate gays and lesbians."

One of the major talking points of the well-funded and politically-connected groups that oppose LGBT ordination in the mainline denominations is that this issue is causing conflict and dissention in the churches, and if the gays would simply go away, the conflict would go with them. Mainline Protestants do not take well to the idea of theological conflict; their sense of God.s approval depends on having a well-ordered Church. The press must realize that to play up the conflict angle is to take sides in favor of the conservative forces that just want the LGBT issue to go away. It's also sloppy reporting, as it fails to acknowledge the hard work the denominations have done to study, pray, and discern the place of LGBT people in the churches, and the radical transformations that have taken place as a result.

The second point that needs to be brought out is that much of the change on LGBT issues in the mainline churches has already been planted in the next generation. People under 40, the rising generation of church members and leaders, have grown up aware of LGBT issues through the media, in relationships, and in their own experiences of sexual self-discovery. Sociologists debate what to call the rising generation, whether Generation Y, or the Millennials, but in the case of the church, they should be known as is the "Welcoming Generation." This is a generation that doesn't define sexuality and gender in the same limited terminology as the previous generations. The dreams of forty years of LGBT activism are being realized in this generation. And what.s exciting is that the Welcoming Generation isn't based on age. There are people from all ages, all walks of life, that are standing up for justice for LGBT people.

The highlight of our week at GA was a revival service we planned along with the praise band and choir of Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco. Keeping to our strategy of doing ministry at the margins of the General Assembly, we held our service not in a stuffy hotel ballroom, but on a wide paseo near the San Jose convention center. People from all ages and backgrounds joined us in a joyful celebration of praise, preaching, and singing.

As I said in the sermon I preached on this occasion, "[When it comes to LGBT inclusion in the mainline churches] the signs and portents are clear. God is revealing a new thing. There is a world that is ending, but there is a new world beginning as well & We have discovered a new church in this wilderness that was once the [mainline] church. And we are not asking the [mainline] churches if we can be a part of their church, we are inviting them to be a part of the church that we've found. Our bodies and minds have led us into the wilderness, where we found a new way of seeing God, and we need to share this Good News. But if we're going to share this Good News, we need to let go of victimhood and start claiming victory."

Let's hope the positive voices for change raised at General Assembly are just the beginning of signs and portents to come of Good News for LGBT people in the Christian church.