The Gay Church

Let's say I am what everybody calls me--an unnatural man, a corrupter of youth. What does the Church offer by way of faith, hope or charity? . . . Do I need love the less? Do I need satisfaction less? Have I less right to live in contentment because somewhere along the line the Almighty slipped a cog in creation?

--The Devil's Advocate

When Homosexual Painter Nicholas Black spoke these words in Morris West's 1959 novel, homosexuality and Christianity seemed incompatible. For the vast majority of Christians in most churches, they still are, though there is a new--if somewhat grudging--acceptance of Black's point. What is more, at least two small new U.S. denominations are vigorously promoting an openly gay Christianity.

The larger of the two is the Rev. Troy Perry's Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles (TIME, July 13, 1970), which now has eleven affiliated congregations and eight missions throughout the country designed expressly for homosexuals (estimated total membership: 1,200). A second denomination for homosexuals, the American Orthodox Church* began public services just a year ago with its first congregation, the Church of the Beloved Disciple in Manhattan. Boasting 600 New York City members, the AOC now plans parishes in Tucson, Ariz., and Milwaukee. It has even started its own religious order, called the Oblate Companions of St. John. The order's first three members, two women and a man, will help run the Manhattan parish. So far, the order has no vows.

Though the American Orthodox Church maintains cordial ties with Perry's denomination, it has a "high church" tone markedly distinct from the evangelical character of the Metropolitan Community churches. Until three years ago, Father Robert M. Clement, 46, the New York denomination's mustachioed, long-haired founder, was a priest in the Polish National Catholic

Church of America (a schismatic denomination splintered from Roman Catholicism in the 1890s). His services now are still masses--in the ancient and quite orthodox Gallican liturgy.

Clement's congregation uses Manhattan's Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostle for its services, but the Episcopal hierarchy has not approved of all of Clement's ventures. Though last month's robing ceremony for the Companions of St. John took place in the church's sanctuary, Bishop Horace W.B. Donegan asked them not to use the church for a widely publicized solemnization of a "holy union" between Pastor Clement and his lover of twelve years, John Noble, 50. Instead, the ceremony took place at an off-Broadway theater, the Performing Garage.

A few other local churches of mainstream Protestant denominations have become involved in the homosexual ministry. Several liberal "straight" churches in San Francisco have made a point of offering a haven to homosexuals since 1964. One of them, Glide Memorial Methodist Church, willingly blesses "pledges of commitment" between homosexuals. A California United Church of Christ minister, Tom Maurer, 53, has recently announced, without reprisal, that he is a homosexual; a seminarian in the same denomination who publicly avowed his homosexuality is expected to be ordained next fall. On the other hand, the Rev. Gene Leggett, 36, was recently suspended by Texas Methodists after he had proclaimed his homosexuality at a ministers' meeting.

Sin by Silence. While few churches have made specific pastoral bids for homosexual worshipers, many others are at least taking a second look at the homosexual and his problems. As early as 1963, an official declaration on sexual morality from British Quakers stated that homosexuality was not in itself sinful. One of the controversial parts of the Roman Catholic Dutch Catechism (1966) has been its judgment that St. Paul's condemnation of homosexuality was aimed only at those who perversely and consciously cultivate it, not at those whose psychological orientation leaves them little choice. Union Theological Seminary's John P. Rash wrote in the seminary's quarterly review last year that it was "doubtful" that the Bible condemned homosexuality.

To be sure, the flaunted brand of homosexual Christianity that Perry and Clement practice will strain the patience of most churchgoers. Even many who are becoming humanely sympathetic to the homosexuals' plight are not yet willing to abandon the orthodox view that homosexuality is biologically unnatural and therefore morally wrong. But at an ecumenical Protestant conference on religion and the homosexual earlier this year in New York City, the Rev. Robert Wood of the United Church of Christ said that churches themselves have sinned by "silence in the face of the harassment and debasement of the homosexual person."

*Not to be confused with the Orthodox Church in America, formerly the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America.

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