Presbyterians in conflict over gay issue

The Episcopal Church's split over homosexuality is getting worldwide attention, but a denomination of roughly equal numbers and stature in the United States — the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — is similarly torn up by the issue.

And as with the Episcopalians, compromises have left both liberal and conservative activists unsatisfied.

The Presbyterian conflict entered a new phase when a June assembly in Birmingham, Ala., approved a two-sided unity plan. For the conservatives, a church law remains in place that requires clergy and lay officers to limit sex to man-woman marriage — in keeping with biblical teaching as it's been traditionally understood.

But liberals were granted new leeway for local congregations and regional presbyteries to sidestep that sexual law with particular nominees. So an openly gay minister or lay elder could take office if local Presbyterians hold the liberal position that the Bible is chiefly concerned with love and inclusiveness.

Now, both sides are spending the summer in strategy meetings, where plotting next steps is the order of the day.

The Rev. Michael Walker, executive director of the conservative Presbyterians for Renewal, said Monday that the "decision to allow something as central as sexual morality to be a matter for local determination" gutted Presbyterian principles. Still, he urged fellow conservatives not to quit the denomination for now.

Walker spoke in North Carolina at Montreat Conference Center to 1,000 conservatives during the first of four conferences by groups that oppose the Birmingham plan.

The day that flock departed Montreat, about 260 Presbyterians arrived for a radically different "Celebrating Common Ground" rally, where supporters of the unity plan included presidents of nine seminaries and 16 moderators (titular heads of the denomination who are elected for limited terms).

One speaker, Barbara Wheeler of New York's Auburn Theological Seminary, thinks the Birmingham plan provides helpful "space for the exercise of conscience" and will "wrest control of the church's agenda from a small number of groups that have a vested interest in keeping the church in combat mode."

Nonetheless, future conflicts seem unavoidable.

By Wheeler's estimate, two-thirds of active churchgoers still believe gay sex is sinful while a majority of clergy now disagree. Moreover, activists on both sides are unwilling to relent.