wfn.org | MLCN Votes to Merge with PLGC,

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10-June-1998 
98203 
 
    MLCN Votes to Merge with PLGC, 
    Reach Out to Moderate Grass Roots 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
CHAMPAIGN, Ill.-A merger with Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns 
(PLGC) was unanimously approved by delegates of the More Light Churches 
Network (MLCN) during the network's annual conference here, initiating a 
new strategy for gay and lesbian Presbyterians to work more cohesively in 
the church's grass roots to reach supportive but cautious moderates. 
 
    To further that goal, Bill Capel, a Champaign, Ill., elder, donated 
$30,000 to start a salary pool so that the new group - tentatively known as 
More Light Presbyterians (MLP) - can hire a full-time organizer and an 
assistant to work with congregations and presbyteries, particularly in 
regions where the denomination's 1997 vote on Amendment A, the "fidelity 
and integrity" amendment, was close. 
 
    The defeat of Amendment A, which tried to broaden the more restrictive 
ordination standards that went into the church's constitution in 1997, 
effectively closed the door on the ordination of sexually active 
homosexuals. 
 
    Capel is a member of the McKinley Memorial Presbyterian Church, on the 
campus of the University of Illinois, the MLCN congregation that hosted the 
conference and just unveiled an "inclusiveness" stained-glass window (with 
a pink triangle, recalling the symbol homosexuals in Nazi concentration 
camps were forced to wear, at the top) in its sanctuary. 
 
    MLP is aiming to raise another $30,000 and to hire staff early in 1999. 
PLGC's members will vote on the merger during their annual meeting at the 
General Assembly this week. 
 
    "We're entering a new phase of this struggle ... and there's a desire 
to reinvent ourselves to be a bit better prepared for this new phase," said 
Scott Anderson of Sacramento, one of PLGC's co-moderators. 
 
    "While we'll always be a presence at the General Assembly, for the next 
phase we're going to enlarge our work at the local level dramatically, 
[particularly in] swing-vote presbyteries," Anderson said.  "Five to 10 
years' work will make the difference." 
 
    The vote is both for a merger and a reunion of sorts. 
 
    In 1978, when the General Assembly adopted "definitive guidance," 
denying ordination to homosexuals, New York City's West-Park Presbyterian 
Church immediately declared itself a conscientious objector to the policy 
and defined itself as gay welcoming.  The Munn Avenue Church in East 
Orange, N.J., and the Downtown Church in Rochester, N.Y., quickly followed. 
 
    In 1992, the MLCN was organized as a way to nurture the growing numbers 
of congregations practicing ecclesiastical disobedience. While churches in 
the network ordain gays and lesbians as elders and deacons, members, when 
asked, were able to identify only one MLCN church in the 95-congregation 
network that has called an openly gay minister. 
 
    PLGC, on the other hand, built its reputation as a lobbying 
organization, focusing most intently upon changing General Assembly 
ordination policy.  It emerged at the 1974 General Assembly of the United 
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America as the Presbyterian Gay 
Caucus. It became Presbyterians for Gay Concerns in 1979 to accommodate 
growing numbers of nongay members.  The name was officially changed to 
Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns in 1980.  The organization now 
has 20 active chapters. 
 
    "The popular vote was so much larger this time," said MLCN co-moderator 
the Rev. Richard Lundy of Excelsior, Minn., referring to the 46 percent of 
Presbyterians who voted for less restrictive ordination standards in 
presbyteries this year, even though Amendment A was ultimately clobbered by 
a 114-to-59 vote. "That helps us know where we need to concentrate our 
grassroots efforts. ... 
 
    "The MLCN tradition is committed to nurturing churches," said Lundy. 
"PLGC has focused on legislative initiatives at the General Assembly.  Now 
we're committed to grassroots organizing in addition to the legislative 
initiatives." 
 
    Areas targeted for a stronger MLP presence are the Southeast, an 
up-to-now solid wall of opposition to ordination of gays and lesbians, and 
the Midwest, where voting has been more mixed. 
 
    The decision to bankroll local organizing isn't a new one among gay and 
lesbian activists within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  In her advocacy 
work throughout the United States, the Rev. Jane Spahr, an evangelist hired 
by the Downtown Church in Rochester, N.Y., to educate the denomination on 
gay and lesbian concerns, is laying the groundwork for local congregations 
to hire what she calls "regional evangelists." These gays and lesbians, 
working side by side with MLP, will be advocates and educators in the 
church's historically moderate middle.  Projects under the auspices of 
Spahr's supporting organization, That All May Freely Serve, are under 
development now in Baltimore, northern California and Chicago, and are 
beginning in Atlanta. 
 
    Spahr gained denomination-wide recoginition in 1992 when the General 
Assembly's Permanent Judicial Commission declared her call as pastor to the 
Downtown Church in Rochester out of order, prohibiting her installation 
there.  An ordained minister, Spahr is an "out" lesbian. 
 
    Presbyterian Welcome, a coalition of ten New York City Presbyterian 
churches, has already hired a part-time regional evangelist - United Church 
of Christ pastor Cliff Frazier - and its latest project is petitioning the 
Synod of the Northeast to become a "G-6.0106b-free Zone."  G-6.0106b is the 
clause in the denomination's constitution that in effect prohibits the 
ordination of sexually active gays, lesbians and unmarried heterosexuals. 
 
    "It's hard work," said Frazier, when asked about mediating between the 
more radicalized congregations in his coalition who are ecclesiastically 
disobedient and the more moderates ones, who are supportive but who are 
committed to working for change within the system's rules.  "It's hard to 
negotiate different points of view. ... Not impossible - just difficult." 
 
    Such disparity in perspective has created tension in More Light circles 
for years, leading the organization to develop a second-tier membership of 
inclusive-but-not-quite-More Light churches - something hardliners in the 
ordination debate consider a compromise and others accept as pragmatic 
politics. 
 
     "Being inclusive without becoming More Light ... may be a comfort for 
the conscience of an organization.  But it doesn't tell gay and lesbian 
people they're welcome there ... if it's just privately known to the 
congregation," said Donn Crail of West Hollywood, a retired minister who 
has long worked in gay and lesbian advocacy and who wants moderates to take 
a more vocal - and visible - stance.  He includes in that group members of 
the Covenant Network of Presbyterians (CNP), the self-styled 
middle-of-the-roaders who worked to get "fidelity and integrity" language 
into the constitution and who intend to continue as a moderate voice in 
denominational debates but who, much to Crail's dismay, list no openly gay 
people in their literature. 
 
    "I'd like to push the moderates to come out," Crail said. 
 
    Pam Byers of San Francisco represented the Covenant Network of 
Presbyterians in MLCN presentations and in a General Assembly strategy 
session that was closed to the press.  Byers told the gathering that the 
CNP is working to mobilize those who are "much more moderate than the folks 
in this room" and described her constituency as people who "lost a vote, 
but found a voice." 
 
    Many in MLP believe it is time to widen the group's membership to 
include those who are supportive of gays and lesbians but unwilling to be 
ecclesiastically disobedient.  But while MLCN's other co-moderator, 
octogernarian activist Virginia Davidson of Rochester, N.Y., is willing, 
she's still dragging her feet on compromising much to accommodate people 
who don't take the risks More Lighters have historically taken. 
 
    Davidson, who wrapped up her last three-year term as co-moderator at 
the close of the conference, believes that the only way gays and lesbians 
will be ordained anytime soon in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will be 
by a favorable Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) decision brought about 
by judicial action. 
 
    "People want to get this one by one by one," said Davidson, referring 
to pastors who want to change parishoners' minds slowly because they are 
reluctant to upset members by taking convictional stands. "I want to 
maintain connections and I want to keep talking and listening with them ... 
but I don't think we're gonna change the church that way.  It's the polity 
that has to change. 
 
    "And we need a decision like that on the books from a PJC," said 
Davidson, who believes that a favorable PJC action now would be comparable 
to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. 
 
    Anderson believes that those cases are inevitable, but is less certain 
that now is a favorable time.  MLP is compiling lists of volunteer lawyers 
to represent gays and lesbians and More Light churches in ecclesiastical 
court and has socked away $20,000 toward covering whatever fees arise. 
 
    "We're not folding up our tents and quietly going away, becoming UCC 
[United Church of Christ, which, with its congregational polity, permits 
the ordination of homosexuals]," he said, stressing that gay activists 
intend to turn whatever Presbyterian judicial cases get filed into national 
media stories and that they will also work to improve pastoral and 
spiritual care of the flock in this tense time. 
 
    "We are preparing ourselves, ..." he said. " There were 41 years of 
overtures before women's ordination [was approved] - judicial cases and 
irregular ordinations.  The parallels are so strong.  So if we adopt that 
perspective, we're still in the early stages of this discussion in the life 
of this denomination. 
 
    "We've only been at this 25 years," said the 43-year-old former 
Presbyterian minister who was "outed" and demitted his ordination, "and I 
think it will take another 25. I hope it happens before I die, but I'm not 
holding my breath on that." 
 
    PLGC co-moderator Laurene Lafontaine, parish associate in a Denver 
Presbyterian church, is also focusing on the long haul.  "I feel pretty 
hopeful, even though it's hard now," she told the Presbyterian News 
Service, describing the frustration and hope that swings back and forth 
like a see-saw as she meets with CNP's moderates, antsy More Lighters and 
even more conservative factions. 
 
    "We want to do the right thing," she told her constituents, "and we're 
trying to figure out how to do it. Part of the challenge of this work is 
how to work together." 

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