With Same-Sex Decision, Evangelical Churches Address New Reality

By MICHAEL PAULSON
JUNE 28, 2015



WEST CHICAGO, Ill. — The tone of the worship service was set at the start. An opening prayer declared it “a dark day.” The sermon focused on a psalm of lament. In between, a pastor read a statement proclaiming the church’s elders and staff “deeply saddened.”

In downtown Chicago, as in several other cities around the country, Sunday was marked by jubilation, the annual gay pride festivities made more celebratory by Friday’s Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. But here at Wheaton Bible Church, a suburban evangelical congregation that draws about 2,600 people to its five weekend worship services, it was a day of sorrow.

“I came in with a great sense of lament, because of what happened on Friday,” the church’s teaching pastor, Lon Allison, told worshipers before reading a statement declaring, “We cannot accept or adhere to any legal, political or cultural redefinition of biblical marriage, nor will we conduct or endorse same-sex ceremonies.”

The dramatic shift in public opinion, and now in the nation’s laws, has left evangelical Protestants, who make up about a quarter of the American population, in an uncomfortable position. Out of step with the broader society, and often derided as discriminatory or hateful, many are feeling under siege as they try to live out their understanding of biblical teachings, and worry that a changing legal landscape on gay rights will inevitably lead to constraints on religious freedom.

But the challenges are not only external. To a degree that is rarely acknowledged in the public square, many evangelical churches are also grappling with internal questions. Especially in and around large urban areas, pastors increasingly report that some openly gay and lesbian Christians are opting to worship in evangelical congregations (“more and more are coming to our church,” Mr. Allison said) and that heterosexual worshipers are struggling over the church’s posture because friends or family members are gay.

“There is a growing desire on the part of some, even within the church, to combine their Christian faith with the acceptance of homosexual practice,” the Wheaton Bible statement acknowledged.

The result has been an obvious change in tone and emphasis — but not teaching or policy — at many churches. Almost all evangelical churches oppose same-sex marriage, and many do not allow gays and lesbians to serve in leadership positions unless they are celibate. Some pastors, however, now either minimize their preaching on the subject or speak of homosexuality in carefully contextualized sermons emphasizing that everyone is a sinner and that Christians should love and welcome all.

“Evangelicals are coming to the realization that they hold a minority view in the culture, and that on this issue, they have lost the home-field advantage,” said Ed Stetzer, the executive director of LifeWay Research, which surveys evangelicals. “They are learning to speak with winsomeness and graciousness, which, when their view was the majority, evangelicals tended not to do.” A handful of evangelical churches have changed their positions. City Church in San Francisco, for example, has dropped its rule that gays and lesbians commit to celibacy to become members, and GracePointe Church in Tennessee has said gays and lesbians can serve in leadership roles and receive the sacrament of marriage. Ken Wilson, who founded the Vineyard Church in Ann Arbor, Mich., published an open letter calling for a greater embrace of gays and lesbians in evangelical churches. But Mr. Stetzer said they are the exceptions.

“Well-known evangelicals who have shifted on same-sex marriage, you could fit them all in an S.U.V.,” Mr. Stetzer said. “If you do shift, you become a media celebrity, but the shift among practicing evangelicals is minimal.”

Polling supports that assertion. Even in an era when most Americans, including a majority of Catholics and white mainline Protestants, support same-sex marriage, among white evangelicals just 27 percent are in favor while 70 percent are opposed, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical,” said the Rev. Wilfredo De Jesús, the senior pastor of New Life Covenant Church, an Assemblies of God megachurch that has nearly 20,000 members on multiple campuses, most of them in Chicago.

“We won’t marry two men. That goes against our beliefs,” said Mr. De Jesús, who is known as Pastor Choco. He, like others interviewed, noted that over 2,000 years of Christian history, the church has often been at odds with the culture.

“We’re prepared to go to prison, or whatever occurs, but the church cannot change,” he said.

But even in his church family, there are gays and lesbians. Fa’Darryl Brown, 34, a gay man who worships at New Life Southeast in Chicago, a “daughter church” of New Life Covenant, said simply, “I’m not aware of Choco’s stance.” Mr. Brown said that his local pastor had described homosexuality as a sin, but that “he doesn’t make you feel hell-bound.”

“I just see the subject of sexuality as one that we may have to agree to disagree on,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that I can’t sit under his ministry.”

The court decision did not come as a complete surprise, of course. Wheaton Bible began working on its statement on Tuesday, anticipating the ruling. And same-sex marriage was already legal in Illinois, as in many other states, before the Supreme Court decision; it was legalized here last year.

In Libertyville, Ill., at one of the main campuses of a nondenominational church called The Chapel, which draws about 6,000 worshipers each weekend across eight campuses, the pastor, Scott Chapman, chose this weekend not to talk about the Supreme Court but to stick to a planned sermon on Moses.


Two years ago, he had preached at length on homosexuality, but only after a series of meetings with gay and lesbian worshipers; in that sermon, he repeatedly referred to homosexuality as a sin, but also apologized for the behavior of Christians. “For far too long, in far too many places, far too frequently,” he said then, “gay and lesbian people have been treated very badly in the name of Jesus Christ, and it’s not O.K.”

In an interview, Mr. Chapman said that he did not support same-sex marriage, but that “we have a substantial number of folks in our church in that lifestyle.”

“We want to be a place that loves everybody and is open to everybody,” he added.

After The Chapel’s Saturday evening worship, one of the church’s members, Kevin Woodside, 51, said he felt uncomfortable watching news coverage of the Supreme Court decision and seeing the angry signs held by some opponents.

“It’s hard to look at that as a Christian response to this,” he said. “I don’t want to judge anybody on this. We all come here in different states of brokenness.”

At Wheaton Bible on Sunday, Mr. Allison said that when he was delivering the statement reiterating his church’s opposition to same-sex marriage, he looked out over the crowd and guessed that 5 percent to 10 percent of those present disagreed. Interviews at the church’s cafe bore that out: Even as he was presiding at a late service, a few attendees at the early service volunteered that they did not share their church’s reaction to the Supreme Court decision.

“It’s not a sad day. It’s a happy day,” said one, who asked not to be quoted by name while disagreeing with a church leader preaching in the next room. “The court made the right decision,” said another.

Far more of those interviewed said they supported the church’s position that marriage should be reserved for opposite-sex couples. John Mulsoff, 66, who was playing with his grandson, a Bible at his elbow, during a morning break, said he and his wife discussed the issue during a long car ride the previous day.

“I’m very conflicted about it,” he said. “I believe, as our church does, that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but I don’t believe in discrimination, and I can’t say how I would deal with it if I had a son or a daughter in that situation.”

Claudia Velazquez, 21, said: “I don’t agree with legalization, but I do respect the human beings. It does not take away from their character, and at the end they’re a creation of God, too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/us/with-same-sex-decision-evangelical-churches-address-new-reality.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news