European churches take an open
attitude toward gay/lesbian ordination
A special visiting reporter with Presbyterian News
Service writes on the very different attitudes in European churches
toward gay ordination. While conservatives have pointed to relations
with former "mission churches" - especially in Korea and parts
of Latin America - as a reason to resist changes in the church's
attitude toward glbt members, this report suggests that other sister
churches have much more open attitudes and policies. [7-3-01]
Issue is not as divisive as in the
PC(USA)
by Luca Negro, for
Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE - July 2, 2001 - Gay ordination is a hot issue for Protestant
churches in Europe, but it is not nearly as divisive and polarizing
there as in the United States.
The debate arrived on the old continent years after it
ignited in the States, giving society and churches more time to deal
with it. The European churches have responded thoughtfully and
pragmatically, projecting an attitude of openness and of respect for
others' Biblical understandings and theological principles.
So the geography of gay ordination in Western Europe
is like a leopard skin, with islands of "gay" color scattered
here and there in the sea of the dominant culture.
The prospects of an openly gay candidate for
ordination vary widely from country to country.
The
Netherlands
Laurens Hogebrink, a Dutch Reformed pastor, manages
the Europe and North America office of the Uniting Churches in the
Netherlands (UCN), a merger of the Lutheran church and the two main
Reformed Churches in the country. With more than 2.7 million members, it
is the largest Dutch Protestant church.
Hogebrink attended the recent General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) here as an Ecumenical Advisory Delegate, and
witnessed first-hand the gay-ordination debate before the Assembly
Committee on Ordination Standards. "I must confess that I was not
expecting to take part in this discussion," said Hogebrink, who is
not gay. "So, instead of talking about global issues, which are my
expertise, I surprisingly found myself talking all the time on gay
ordination. I was impressed by the strongly emotional impact of the
debate, but at the same time by the true effort of the concerned parties
to listen to each other."
"For many years, we do ordain homosexuals,"
Hogebrink explained. "There's nothing in our Book of Order
to single out a particular category as being more sinful than another.
Of course, we expect the lifestyle of our ministers to be compatible
with the Gospel, but we are aware that we are all sinners."
He said the UCN doesn't regard homosexuality as a sin,
nor distinguish between sexual orientation and practice.
"This is our national policy," Hogebrink
said, "but at the local level the congregations may have different
points of view. In our church order system, it's left to local
congregations to take into account the personal lifestyles of their
ministers, elders and deacons."
Hogebrink said women's ordination has created a
similar situation. While the majority nationwide favors it, a good
percentage of congregations do not accept women as pastors.
"In this case, and also in case they don't want a
homosexual pastor, we believe we cannot force them," Hogebrink
said.
The national policy of equal rights of all church
members, including the possibility of ordination, was clearly expressed
in 1979 by the Synod of the "Re-reformed Churches" (Gereformeerde
Kerken, one of the partners in the UCN). Together with controversies
about doctrinal matters, this decision, according to Hogebrink,
"has caused some troubles to the ecumenical relations of the
''Re-reformed Churches', particularly with other Reformed denominations
and organizations, such as the (international) Reformed Ecumenical
Council, and, in the USA, with the Christian Reformed Church in Northern
America."
Hogebrink said his own church, the Reformed Church (Hervormde
Kerk), has not felt ecumenical repercussions because of its policy on
homosexuality.
"We had a difficult time within our own church,
when in the late 1980s a local congregation refused to give communion to
a gay couple," he said. "Our Synod then rejected disciplinary
measures by local congregations because of homosexual orientation or
practice. After a wide debate, the Synod reconfirmed in 1995 that
heterosexuals and homosexuals have fully equal rights as church members.
Today the issue is much less controversial, except when it comes to the
blessing of homosexual couples. But the fact that recently one of the
three co-moderators of the UCN Synod happened to be a self-affirming
homosexual has hardly been seen as something special." The Dutch
Lutheran Synod affirmed already in 1972 that homosexuals could be
ordained.
Hogebrink said his participation in the PC(USA)
Assembly "has convinced me that the real issue is not
homosexuality. It's how you read and understand the Bible. The
theological question is the same that emerged with the issues of slavery
and of the place of women in church and society. It's at the same time
an ecclesiological and a theological question. It's a challenge to check
how open and inclusive we are, and how, really, we do believe in
justification through faith only."
Germany
The German Evangelical Church (EKD) is an alliance of
the regional churches known as Landeskirchen, which may be Lutheran,
Reformed or United. About 38 percent of Germany's 83 million citizens
are Protestant. The EKD position on homosexuality is detailed in a
lengthy document approved in 1996, titled "Living with
Tensions." A whole chapter is devoted to the issue of gay
ordination. It says that as a general rule it isn't wise to ordain
homosexual pastors, but it is permissible in some individual cases,
provided that certain criteria are fulfilled.
"As a matter of fact," explained Kerstin
Soederblom, a woman pastor in Frankfurt, "several regional churches
are much more liberal. The 1996 document is already an old text, and
opinions are rapidly changing. Some regional churches, particularly in
the East and the South of the country, still hold a conservative
position, but the majority of the 'Landeskirchen' do admit homosexual
pastors, provided that they do not promote or too openly proclaim their
homosexuality.
"For example, in the city of Frankfurt about 25
percent of the pastors are gay or lesbian persons," Soederblom
continued. "This is no coincidence: It's easier to be homosexual
and a pastor in a city than in the countryside. There are no obstacles
for an affirming homosexual to be ordained, but the local congregation
has the right to say no."
In her case, Soederblom said, the majority of the
Session was in her favor, but some members had doubts. So they created a
three-month trial period -- a departure from normal practice.
"After that period I was fully hired," she said. "I was
also allowed to live in the manse with my partner".
"Knowing that I am an affirming lesbian,
influenced by feminist theology," she continued, "probably
someone feared that I would turn the church into a gay/lesbian center.
But this did not happen: We are a Christian church, inclusive and
welcoming. Of course many people who in the past had distanced
themselves from the church are now coming, knowing that the pastor would
respect them as they are."
Asked how church members have responded, Soederblom
replied, "They like us. They often invite us as a couple for
dinner. I think we give a good picture that it's possible to live in a
committed and loving relationship as a homosexual couple."
Soederblom said homosexual pastors in Germany are in a
precarious situation. "I'm happy here, but I wonder what will
happen if for some reason something goes wrong," she said. "As
a matter of fact, we do not have the same legal rights as heterosexual
ministers. We have to be twice as good as them to prove that we are
qualified pastors. Therefore we must still work to clarify our position
in the church."
Some church leaders also would like to make church
legislation crystal-clear.
At the recent "Kirchentag" (a mass rally of
100,000 German Protestant, held in June), the president of the Synod of
the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck, Ute Heinemann, said the
criterion for homosexual applicants for ordination should not be their
sexual orientation, but their ability to faithfully serve the church.
Heinemann also spoke in favor of blessing ceremonies for homosexual
couples.
Church people fear that the issue could stir up old
tensions.
Germany's Parliament has just passed a bill that would
extend to homosexual couples [the right] to officially register their
partnerships. The EKD council, while not opposing the legislation, has
made clear that it wants to maintain the distinction between homosexual
partnerships and marriage. Now the churches are facing another quandary:
what to do if a gay or lesbian church employee, or even a pastor,
registers his or her homosexual relationship. The churches are pondering
the issue and expect to make official statements by the end of the
summer.
Austria
One church that has a clear-cut position about the
issue in Europe is the Austrian Protestant Church (APC), which
represents five percent of the population in the predominantly Catholic
country.
Peter Proeglhoef, an ordained pastor since 1990, lives
in Salzburg with his male partner, also a pastor. In 1992, he recalled,
"a conservative group presented an overture to our Synod, asking to
ban the ordination of homosexual persons.
"The Synod then asked its theological committee
to engage in an extensive study, which resulted in 1994 in a declaration
affirming that there are no fundamental theological arguments against
homosexuality."
The document was sent to all congregations, and in
1996 the Synod voted overwhelmingly in favor of a three-point policy:
· Homosexual believers are brothers and sisters, and
should not be discriminated against in our congregations.
· The State should give legal recognition to
homosexual couples.
· The criterion for the admission to ministry is not
sexual orientation, but responsible sexual behavior.
"This decision," Proeglhoef said,
"opened the way to my partner's ordination."
Of course, not everybody in the Church was pleased
with this decision, Proeglhoef said, "but the Church leaders
clearly and openly supported me. They welcomed my partner - who was then
a candidate to ministry in Germany - to serve in our church."
Some Catholic bishops criticized the Synod's decision.
The bishop of Salzburg, for instance, declared that the APC was
"getting away" from the ecumenical fellowship. But no church
in the country reacted officially. Later, the Old Catholic Church in
Austria had its turn at the homosexual-ordination debate, and decided to
open the way to gay clergy.
Proeglhoef served as pastor of a small Protestant
congregation in Salzburg for 13 years, and now works in the office of
the Salzburg Protestant Church district as a school inspector. His
partner is a pastor. They have been together for 10 years, and last year
they moved into the manse.
"This was not a problem for the
congregation," Proeglhoef said. "The Session asked us to sign
an agreement that regulates various aspects of our living in a flat
belonging to the church. The same rules (that apply to) married
heterosexual couples. That's all."
Italy
Less than one percent of Italians are Protestant. But
Protestant churches have been in the forefront of defending the rights
of minorities. So, in the late 1970s ---- when
homosexuality was essentially taboo in Italy ---- the
Waldensian Center of Agape, in Northern Italy, opened its doors to gay
believers, and since then has sponsored an annual conference on faith
and homosexuality.
The Waldensian Church has become so popular in Italy's
gay community that the national gay and lesbian organizations officially
invite their members to sign up for the Waldensian Church when they pay
taxes. (Italian law allows taxpayers to allocate a small percentage of
taxes, 0.008 percent, to churches of their choice).
The majority of gay and lesbian Christians who attend
the Agape conferences are Roman Catholic. But in 1998, members of the
Waldensian, Baptist and Methodist Churche -- clergy and
lay people, men and women, straight and gay or lesbian -- founded the
Italian Protestant Network on Faith and Homosexuality.
"It was not enough to be perceived as a 'liberal'
church, said Giorgio Rainelli, the national coordinator of the Network.
"The fact is that our churches do not have an official and clear
position on homosexuality, and we felt the need to deepen our
understanding of inclusiveness, to work out our theological awareness
and to be more effective in pastoral care for sexual minorities."
As a result of the network's efforts, last year's
General Assembly of the Baptist, Methodist and Waldensian churches
agreed to set up a theological commission on homosexuality, which will
produce materials for congregational study and report to the next joint
Assembly in 2005.
"The ordination of homosexual ministers has never
been a real issue in our churches," said Rainelli, a gay man who is
actively engaged in his congregation as Sunday School director. "We
have a certain number of gay and lesbian pastors, and their case has
been dealt with by keeping a low profile. The church leaders are clearly
supportive of their ministry, but usually recommend being as discreet as
possible. What they mostly fear are the possible repercussions on
ecumenical relations, not only with Catholics but also with other
Evangelical Churches, like the Pentecostals."
Rainelli, who lives in partnership with a male pastor,
said: "Almost everyone in the Church knows that we are committed to
each other. They accept us as a couple -- at least unofficially. But to
be honest, after so many years, I am getting tired of caution. Late this
year, we will celebrate our twentieth anniversary, and my desire is to
tell everybody how happy we are, and how blessed has been our
relationship -- even without an 'official' church blessing."
"The time has probably come to be more
bold," he added, "which doesn't mean to be needlessly
provocative, but to dare openly proclaim the wonders of God's inclusive
love."
(Luca Negro is the
communications officer for the Federation of Protestant Churches in
Italy. He has spent the last month in Louisville as part of the Mission
to the U.S.A. program of the Worldwide Ministries Division, assigned to the
Presbyterian News Service.)
