Taking cues from their national assemblies, some of Lafayette’s Protestant churches are opening their arms and their doors to same-sex marriages.
Photo by Robin MayIt gets lost in the shrill alarms of the culture war over marriage equality that the battle lines are not clearly drawn. Typically understood, opposition to marriage equality is the purview of the Christian Right, especially the loose but politically savvy confederation of mainstream protestant organizations, fringe evangelical hate groups and Roman Catholics, a motley pew considering their history of internecine strife. But as The Advocate noted in a recent piece, mainstream Protestantism in the U.S. does not present a unified face on the matter of gay marriage with organizations like The Episcopal Church, The Presbyterian Church USA, The United Church of Christ and The Disciples of Christ tackling the issue via sacred democracy in their respective governing bodies, and providing for marriage rites and blessings to same-sex couples in their congregations.
At national conventions this year, both The Presbyterian Church USA and The Episcopal Church afforded individual dioceses (or presbyteries in the case of the Presbyterian Church) the latitude to tackle the issue within their religious jurisdictions, functionally allowing the individual congregations within those dioceses and presbyteries to decide if same-sex unions would be allowed in their sanctuaries. The Episcopal Diocese of West Louisiana, which includes the congregations of St. Barnabas and The Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Lafayette, decided to allow its member congregations to offer marriage rites to all couples, regardless of gender, should those congregations desire. While the official rite, the code of language used in a marriage service, is not expected to be released until this fall, the Rev. Mitzi George at St. Barnabas has said her ministry intends to offer marriage services to same-gender couples in her community.
“St. Barnabas happens to have a number of families that are gay and lesbian. And they’ve been longtime members of the congregation. For our congregation it was a matter of ‘these people have always been in our community.
We know them.’ They were around long before the Episcopal Church started having this conversation. It was only natural for us to move in that direction.”
St. Barnabas sent three voting deputies to the Episcopal Church’s 78th General Convention in June. For those of us who grew up Catholic, the concept may be somewhat alien, but Episcopalians decide matters of liturgical legislation by member vote in a bicameral body not unlike the U.S. Congress. According to George, the overwhelming majority of dioceses voted to reword marriage liturgies to include same-sex couples. The way George describes it, Episcopalians have been grappling with the topic long before the Obergefell decision, with various congregations around the country selected for “study” of the issue and its potential impact on the faithful. The “studies” are, effectively, ongoing conversations among parishioners, church representatives and the clergy that gauge a congregation’s feeling on contentious liturgical or social issues. Ultimately, when the issue was set to vote at St. Barnabas, the representative vestry decided that their church should allow their gay brothers and sisters in Christ to be wed in the Church that serves them.
“In the Episcopal church, we don’t shy away from difficult issues. We’re open to accepting a wide variety of views,” says George. “We couldn’t do it at St. Barnabas if the congregation didn’t support it.”
The Presbyterian Church USA, represented in Lafayette by congregations at First Presbyterian, Trinity Presbyterian and Grace Presbyterian, settled the issue in similar fashion, according to the Rev. Zach Sasser, First Presbyterian’s pastor. While the individual congregations in town have not, as of press time, voted to allow same-sex unions within their churches, recent votes by the national body have afforded those congregations the choice to do so. Local “sessions,” the governing bodies of individual churches, would have to approve the move before a same-sex
union could take place in a specific church. A decision to not permit same-sex unions by a specific session, however, would not preclude a Presbyterian minister from officiating a same-sex marriage in a private ceremony should that accord with the minister’s individual interpretation of scripture and moral rectitude, and provided the minister finds the couple adequately prepared for marriage.
“Part of being Presbyterian is respecting each other’s interpretation of scripture,” says Sasser. “And respecting each other’s difference of conscience in our interpretation of scripture.”
The Rev. Ashley Sherard of Jerusalem Christian Church, a congregation in communion with the national Disciples of Christ movement, says emphatically via email that her ministry is “open and affirming” with respect to the LBGT community, including marrying samesex unions. Her congregation is a member of the national GLAD Alliance, an organization of DoC churches committed to promoting inclusiveness of LGBT Christians.
“We seek to share the table with those whose gender identity and expression, race, ability, sexual orientation, family shape, economic status, and culture differ from our own in order to have a deeper understanding of the Creator,” reads the welcome statement on the JCC website.
Of course, the second edge of the sword is that many protestant congregations affiliated with the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ will elect to prohibit same-gender unions as a matter of conscience. Given the bottom-up nature of the respective electoral processes, those decisions will reflect the majority opinion of the communities served by those churches. So long as parishioners in those areas remain opposed to same-sex marriage, the churches will follow suit. It’s a situation that mirrors the state-by-state process by which gay marriage was permitted heterogeneously in the U.S. prior to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision.
Still, for many in Acadiana these developments represent a thaw in Christianity’s ministerial outreach to LGBT faithful.