How inclusive is your house of worship?
WEBSITE SCORES CHURCHES ON THE TRANSPARENCY OF THEIR LGBTQ POLICIES
It is not unusual for gay couples who ask churches to perform marriage ceremonies to be turned away because of doctrines that reject same-sex unions.
For these couples the pain of rejection could have been avoided if the church had been clearer from the outset about its positions on gay and lesbian rights.
George Mekhail, director of innovation and strategic partnerships at The Riverside Church in New York, said when it comes to lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer inclusion an important concern is ambiguity.
“Churches talk around the issue,” Mekhail said. “Some do a bait and switch and don’t tell the truth about what their policies are.”
To address the ambiguity problem, Mekhail cofounded Church Clarity with megachurch marketing specialist Tim Schraeder and freelance writer Sarah Ngu. Their website, churchclarity.org, launched in October.
Their mission is to rate churches based on the transparency of their LGBTQ policies. After the current phase, they hope to expand their church ratings to include additional issues such as women’s equality in the church and racial injustice.
When someone submits a church to be rated, Ngu oversees a rigorous vetting process. Several ratings are available — including “actively discerning” and “undisclosed” — and there’s a survey that churches can fill out if they want to participate in the process.
As of this writing, more than 1,100 churches have been submitted, and more than 450 of those have been rated and published.
Of the 450 churches rated, nine are in the Houston area. Of those nine, seven have been rated “unclear: non-affirming,” includ-
ing Second Baptist and Lakewood Church. This rating means that statements, sermons or links on the church website may suggest a non-affirming policy on LGBTQ inclusion, but this stance has not been verified yet.
Second Baptist declined to comment for this article. Lakewood Church did not respond in time for publication.
The remaining two Houston churches on the list were scored as “clear,” meaning their LGBTQ inclusion policies were found to be transparent and verifiable. One of those is Houston’s First Baptist Church, rated “clear: non-affirming.” First Baptist did not respond for comment by presstime.
The other is A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, rated “clear: affirming.” Its pastor, the Rev. Kathleen Kendall Davies, said she completed a Church Clarity questionnaire to achieve the rating and that she believes in the mission of transparency. “So many churches act like they’re welcoming,” Davies said, “but you go in and they’re not.”
Davies said it was a natural fit for her church to participate in Church Clarity’s rating, as they were already involved in the Believe Out Loud network, an online community empowering LGBTQ Christians. Moreover, the Presbyterian Church’s national governing body voted in 2011 to allow the ordination of openly gay ministers and in 2014 to allow same-gender marriage.
People around the country have been submitting LGBTQ-affirming churches, Ngu said, as the Church Clarity team expected. They were surprised, however, that some also have been submitting “churches that they’ve been burned by.” Mekhail knows that experience. Before he joined Riverside Church and co-founded Church Clarity, he was executive pastor at an evangelical megachurch near Seattle.
In 2015, he made a public statement for full inclusion of the LGBTQ community, and he saw a backlash immediately. People left or threatened to leave his church. Several pastors reached out quietly, Mekhail said, to offer their private support. He said they told him: “We agree with you but we can’t do what you did. You almost lost your church, along with millions of dollars and thousands of people.”
This crisis opened Mekhail’s eyes to the behindthe-scenes dynamic in the church world. He saw many Christian leaders who hedge publicly on LGBTQ issues and avoid the conversation.
The experience gave Mekhail a new appreciation for conviction. “The most frustrating people to talk to are the ones who dance around this,” he said. “They say, ‘We totally love gay people! Everyone’s welcome!’ But then they say, ‘No, you’re not welcome’” — when it comes to leadership in the church, communion or marriage for LGBTQ individuals.
Schraeder has seen this dance of denial during his 15 years doing marketing for megachurches.
“They like to bill themselves as welcoming, gay-friendly, inclusive,” he said. “Churches don’t want to appear unwelcoming.
“But honestly,” Schraeder added, “it’s false advertising. Some have their heart in the right place, and others do a bait and switch — thinking they’ll attract gay people who will then see the error of their lifestyle.”
Mekhail worried that churches have succumbed to market forces instead of claiming their role as witness for their convictions. A June 2017 Pew Forum survey showed growing support for same-sex marriage among evangelicals — especially younger ones. Many surveys have showed the rise of the socalled “nones,” Americans with no religious affiliation, to nearly a quarter of the population.
Pastors realize times are changing, Ngu said, but they are adapting not their theology but their packaging.
For example, Ngu added, you’ll see young pastors using Instagram, preaching about Black Lives Matter and other edgy topics. “People think they must be progressive theologically,” Ngu said. “‘Hip churches’ can seem inclusive even if they have a conservative policy.”
Rev. Jon Page, of First Congregational Church in Houston, has seen this demographic-driven dynamic, too. “So much of the pressure is to grow churches,” he said, “and they won’t talk about LGBTQ issues because it will alienate one group or another.”
Page is openly gay and leads a LGBTQ-affirming church. The United Church of Christ, the national denomination of which Page’s church is a member, declared its openness to LGBTQ individuals in 1997.
Because many churches remain vague about where they stand, Page welcomed Church Clarity’s call for transparency. But in addition to their criteria of inclusion — church leadership and ritual, namely — Page said churches which consider themselves LGBTQ-affirming should be challenged to take that affirmation into the public square through advocacy for LGBTQ rights.
“There are plenty of churches that are LGBTQaffirming,” Page said, “but they wouldn’t march in a PRIDE parade or fight SB6 [the Texas “Bathroom Bill”] publicly.”
Church Clarity founders did not describe it as an advocacy tool, and they acknowledged the many organizations pushing for LGBTQ inclusion in churches, such as The Reformation Project.
“We’re not trying to replace or replicate their advocacy work,” Schraeder said. “We want clarity on church policies.”
Other church rating systems, like gaychurch. org, tend to focus only on LGBTQ-friendly congregations. Church Clarity rates churches no matter where they stand on the affirming spectrum.
“A lot of communities think they’re welcoming and open to LGBTQ people, until they’re put to the test,” said Rev. Troy Treash, senior pastor of Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church in Houston. That test can come in the form of performing a same-sex marriage, baptizing a child of gay parents, or hiring a gay Sunday school teacher.
“Sometimes,” Treash added, churches “will welcome people into attendance and tithing, but not leadership or public blessing.”
Church Clarity’s mission struck Treash as valuable for would-be congregants and for churches. Treash said that University of Houston professor Brené Brown’s latest book, “Braving the Wilderness,” talks about how “currently in our country we’ve lost the ability to be civil and say who we are at the same time.”
In that spirit, he said, perhaps Church Clarity can help churches be less evasive about where they stand on LGBTQ inclusion.
For Mekhail, that call to clarity is a guiding principle. He said his “appreciation for conviction” extends to those who are willing to say they do not affirm LGBTQ inclusion in their church. Treash, who is gay and leads a church whose denomination was founded as a haven for gay people rejected from other churches, shares Mekhail’s preference for clarity.
“I would certainly rather have transparency,” Treash said. “I know what to expect from people when it’s clear they’re not supportive of my family. Then I can be prepared. It’s the ones who smile and then hurt you while they hug you that are devastating. They even cause more harm up close.”