When churches declare themselves to be inclusive of all people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people, a number of things commonly happen that people don’t necessarily expect. Let me deconstruct three myths. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the term “open and affirming” (O&A) to describe any church that has made a public declaration of inclusiveness, regardless of the actual language used (Depending on the denomination, some churches use “Reconciling,” “More Light,” etc.)
Myth #1: LGBT people will flood the church.
Fact: While some churches who declare themselves O&A do so in hopes of realizing strong membership gains from the LGBT community, O&A churches do not tend to experience many, or any, additional LGBT members very quickly. While, years ago, stories circulated about certain churches who were flooded by the LGBT community after declaring themselves O&A, these churches were quite far from the norm. Most churches’ experience has been more like Countryside’s. Several years ago, Countryside adopted a mission statement publicly declaring itself to be “an inclusive family of faith, welcoming all to our table of love and acceptance.” The phrase “an inclusive family of faith” has regularly been included in our advertising to the community and been displayed on our banner facing Pacific Street. Yet Countryside has experienced no discernible growth from the LBBT community since the adoption of our mission statement. While some may assume that we would experience more growth if we used the words “Open and Affirming” in our mission and advertising, this is not the experience of most churches who adopt this term.
When my former congregation in Scottsdale declared itself to be formally “Open and Affirming” twelve years ago (becoming the first UCC church in Arizona to do this), for instance, we went for two or three years before welcoming our first new gay member – this, despite the fact that we were actively promoting our “O&A” status in community publications and held a series of special prayer services for those with AIDS which were advertised in area HIV clinics.
Given their long history of exclusion from full participation in faith communities, many LGBT people have either drifted away from Christian faith or have become skeptical about how fully they actually would be welcomed even among churches that declare themselves O&A. So they tend to shy away. The fact of the matter is that a church normally has to work very hard, intentionally reaching out to the LGBT over a number of years, before they realize discernible growth from the LGBT community. When I left Scottsdale, after we had been publicly and assertively O&A for a full eleven years, the percentage of LGBT members in the congregation had definitely risen, but to approximately 15%. That’s significant, but hardly “flooded.”
Myth #2: Membership will decline due to conflict over O&A status.
Fact: A few years ago, the UCC published a study showing that O&A churches in our denomination were more likely to grow, and also to realize giving increases, than non-O&A churches. While a recent study of O&A churches in a couple of other mainline denominations has shown no significant increase in growth among O&A churches, it was also shown that O&A churches were no more likely to decline than non-O&A ones.
Curiously, during the years I was in Scottsdale, we experienced a significant increase in membership growth from “straight” people after declaring ourselves O&A. While other factors contributed to membership gains besides O&A, we were intrigued by the fact that approximately 9 in every 10 new “straight” members cited our O&A status as being a contributing factor to their attraction.
Myth #3: People’s attitudes about whether or not to accept LGBT people are fixed and can’t be expected to change.
Fact: Have YOU always affirmed and accepted LGBT people? Personally, as I mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon, I have not. And, like Bishop Spong, I have always figured that if I could change, the Church could change. Happily, this assumption has proved itself to be correct over and over. In the 15 months since I arrived at Countryside, quite a few people have told me that their views on LGBT people have changed in recent years. I witnessed the same phenomenon in Scottsdale. This shouldn’t be surprising. The same thing happened with respect to welcoming Gentiles into full Christian fellowship in the early church. Had not quite a number of staunch rejectors of Gentiles not experienced a change of mind and heart, most of us would not be Christian today. It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it, that the largest, most controversial issue facing the Christian church in the first century was whether or not to let people like you and me in?
While there are certainly some pockets of resistance among churches with respect to the O&A issue, this trend toward greater inclusiveness may be expected not only to continue, but to accelerate. While a handful of years ago, there were just 200 churches in the UCC that listed themselves formally as “Open and Affirming,” now there are over 700 and the number is still rising rapidly. A couple of weeks ago, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. boldly declared that it would not only lift the 3-year-old moratorium on ordaining openly gay bishops that the worldwide fellowship of Anglican Churches had asked it to sustain, but that it would begin development of marriage liturgies for gays (Click here for a NY Times article on this).
The fact of the matter is that when people discover that “the sky does not fall” after churches begin welcoming LGBT people, or states begin allowing LGBT people to marry, then many of those who had been taught that the sky would, in fact, proverbially fall begin to reexamine their assumptions.
Most people don’t want to condemn others or deny them basic rights. They only do so out of fear. Once it can be shown decisively that their fears are unfounded, many people who have condemned or been wary of LGBT people experience profound relief. (They may also experience anger or resentment toward those responsible for instilling their fear to begin with.) The more joyfully churches and other social and cultural institutions welcome LGBT people, the more relief is experienced by good-hearted people who had once been afraid of everything coming apart at the seams. And the more that this relief is sustained by continuing life experience, the more former detractors start becoming advocates.
In his poem, “The Old Interior Angel,” David Whyte describes an experience of being confronted by a scary-looking bridge to be crossed in the Himalayas. This poem, I think, describes far more than bridge crossings. To me, his poem describes wonderfully well the important role played by individuals – and institutions – who joyfully go where others have been afraid to go, creating a change of heart in those who had been paralyzed by fear. I think it serves as a fitting end this post.
The Old Interior Angel”
by David Whyte (from Fire in the Earth [Many Rivers Press, 1992]; reprinted in River Flow: New and Selected Poems 1984-2007 [Many Rivers Press, 2007]
Young, male and
immortal as I was,
I stopped at the first sight
of that broken bridge.
The taut cables snapped
and the bridge planks
concertina-ed
into a crazy jumble
over the drop,
four hundred feet
to the craggy
stream.
I sat and watched
the wind shiver
on the broken planks,
as if by looking hard
and long enough
the life-line
might spontaneously
repair itself
-but watched in vain.
An hour I sat
in the clear silence,
checking each
involuntary movement
of the body toward
that trembling
bridge
with a fearful mind,
and an emphatic
shake of the head.
Finally, facing defeat
and about to go back
the way I came
to meet the others.
Three days round
by another pass.
Enter the old mountain woman
with her stooped gait,
her dark clothes
and her dung basket
clasped to her back.
Small feet shuffling
for the precious gold-brown
fuel for cooking food.
Intent on the ground
she glimpsed my feet
and looking up
Said “Namaste”
“I greet the God in you”
the last syllable
held like a song.
I inclined my head
and clasped my hands
to reply, but
before I could look up
she turned her lined face
and went straight across
that shivering chaos
of wood
and broken steel
in one movement.