wfn.org | Dutch Christians Explain How Churches Gave Full Acceptance to Gays

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15-December-1998 
98422 
 
    Dutch Christians Explain How Churches 
    Gave Full Acceptance to Gays 
 
    by Jerry Van Marter 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
HARARE, Zimbabwe- Three leaders of Protestant churches in the Netherlands 
have told Christians at a "Padare" gathering at the World Council of 
Churches eighth assembly that 12 years after the Reformed churches in their 
country extended to homosexuals and lesbians full participation in  the 
church, church members in their country no longer consider the issue of 
major significance. 
 
    "Many opponents [of homosexual rights in the church] have learned to 
live with the pluralism of the church," Leo Koffeman, leader of the 
Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (RCN) told ENI after the Padare 
gathering on Dec. 10.  "As they [homosexuals] have come into our church, 
the actual meeting [with] people changes almost everyone's mind, and it 
becomes harder to continue opposition to `the issue'," he added. The RCN 
has 720,000 members. 
 
    Karel Blei, a delegate to the assembly from the Netherlands Reformed 
Church - which, with 2 million members, is the biggest Reformed church in 
the country - agreed with Koffeman. "Homosexuality is not so dominant an 
issue now as it once was," he said.  "It is not a theological issue any 
longer, but it rises to the surface as a human rights issue or a 
discrimination issue, so then it must, of course, be addressed." 
 
    Noting that The Netherlands has a long history of tolerance, RCN leader 
Lodiwijk Palm told the 40 people at the Padare gathering: "The courage to 
come out is easier in a society where there is openness.  It is easier for 
us than for those in other societies perhaps."  Nevertheless, he added, "it 
is important that values and norms of the church, seen in the light of 
Scripture and God's grace, are their own, and independent of the norms of 
the secular context." 
 
    Acceptance of gays and lesbians, approved by the Reformed family of 
churches in The Netherlands in 1986, had taken place "not without pain and 
trouble,"  Liedeke in `t Veld, of the 50,000-member Arminian Church told 
the gathering. "It was a big step forward for many, and meant withdrawal 
for others," she said, "but 12 years later all parishes are very happy, and 
there is no discrimination." 
 
    But the process was not complete, Koffeman told ENI.  "We are still in 
the process of reconciliation," he said, "and this has been increasingly 
possible as individual stories have been shared." 
 
    In Harare on 10 December, the WCC's general secretary, Dr. Konrad 
Raiser, told a journalist from Le Temps, a Swiss newspaper, that although 
the WCC was not in a position to take up a  position on the issue of sexual 
orientation, during preparations for its assembly the WCC had applied 
"certain pressure" on Zimbabwean churches to open discussion about the 
subject. 
 
    But it became clear, he said, that "the great majority of church 
leaders [in Zimbabwe] refused to discuss it. They are not yet ready to take 
up this challenge." 
 
    He added that if the WCC tried to shock churches in Zimbabwe into 
discussing homosexuality, there was a risk that relations over the issue 
could be even more troubled locally after the WCC assembly ended than they 
had been before. 
 
    "We [the WCC] are leaving Harare [the assembly ends on 14 December], 
but the [local] churches and homosexual groups will stay," the WCC general 
secretary told Le Temps. 
 
    Dr. Raiser said he would have liked a WCC declaration on human rights, 
released on 10 December to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, to mention sexual minorities, but the Orthodox 
churches which are members of the WCC had refused. He said that personally 
he was convinced that the treatment of sexual minorities was a matter of 
human rights. He added that most Orthodox churches would be prepared to 
concede that homosexuals must have the same political and civic rights as 
other people. But, he continued, the Orthodox churches 
could not go beyond that into the area of personal morality because of the 
views of some people within their churches. 
 
    Asked by Le Temps if he would like to see the "taboo" on discussing 
homosexuality removed by the WCC, Dr. Raiser made a comparison with the 
Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, which has just 
ended. The decade, he said, had allowed women to discuss their treatment 
and place within churches, and to deal with issues they had never been able 
to discuss, even within their own families. But it had been a slow process. 
 
    The WCC hoped to enable - slowly - churches to discuss the issue of 
sexual orientation. He spoke positively of proposals for the WCC to set up 
an in-depth study of sexuality, and added that the issue had been raised at 
the assembly, "without confrontation." 

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