BOB ABERNETHY, host: There is a new conversation taking place in parts of the religious community about anti-gay bullying. In recent weeks, several young men committed suicide after being targeted for harassment and violence because of their sexual orientation. Religious supporters of gay rights have launched new anti-bullying campaigns, while some opponents of homosexuality are re-examining their rhetoric. Our managing editor Kim Lawton has more.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: There’s been a lot of concern in the religious community about these acts of violence and harassment. Several religious denominations and faith-based organizations have been providing local congregations with resources. They’ve been urging pastors to preach about this in the sermons and providing information for youth groups and for youth leaders how to minister to people, young people, who might be struggling over some of these issues. A coalition of Jewish organizations from the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movement is actually asking Jewish leaders to sign a pledge promising to end bullying, this kind of anti-gay bullying, within the Jewish community. And even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons—they oppose homosexuality—this week they released a statement saying while we are not changing our position we do condemn any kind of bullying based on sexual orientation.

ABERNETHY: And the language involved, that’s being reconsidered, too?

LAWTON: Well, there’s been some interesting soul-searching among those religious groups that do consider homosexuality a sin. But how do they communicate that? How do they come across as they are communicating that? And some evangelical leaders have suggested that perhaps their community has been too harsh in their condemnations, as if homosexuals are in some kind of special depraved category or something like that. The Catholic Church, which considers homosexual behavior a moral disorder—one Catholic priest this week suggested that perhaps it should be considered within the pro-life agenda if these kids are committing suicide. None of these groups are suggesting that their churches change their theological position, and that then leads to this dilemma—how do you communicate dislike for the behavior without condemning the individual, and that’s a difficult dilemma.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton. Many thanks.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: A personal moment of prayer for Joey Heath, a Master of Divinity student at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. There was a time it seemed very unlikely he would be where he is today, a time when he was praying for God to make him whole, make him so he wasn’t gay.

JOEY HEATH: At the time I believe that it was something I needed to be healed from, and so I would pray every day that God would just heal me of this, this evil part of me, and that this would be just removed and I would be cleansed and made whole again.

SEVERSON: Today, Joey says he feels whole, but he’s still gay and still facing the kind of condemnation he faced in his United Methodist church when he first came out.

HEATH: I was involved somewhat in the leadership of the campus ministry, and then my campus minister said I can no longer speak on behalf of the ministry because it’d be an endorsement of my lifestyle, which for me was devastating.

Pastor Heidi Neumark

SEVERSON: Pastor Heidi Neumark says that condemnation has led to outright discrimination. She says too many churches have created an environment where it’s okay to bash gays or lesbians or bisexuals or transgenders, known collectively as LGBTs.

PASTOR HEIDI NEUMARK (Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan): Churches have played a huge role, probably the largest roll in fostering homophobia. The church encourages these young people to be viewed as less than human, dehumanized and even demonized, and it creates an atmosphere where it’s okay to be verbally abusive, be physically abusive. So these young people, many of them, suffer profoundly, physically, psychically, spiritually.

SEVERSON: During the day, Pastor Neumark runs a school for young children at her New York City church, which is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. At night she operates a shelter for LGBT kids, because she says since churches have been a big part of the problem, they should be part of the solution. Jonathan Sawyer, who sleeps in the church basement every night, represents an alarming statistic. Nationwide, 20 to 30 percent of homeless kids are LGBT. In New York City it is one in three, according to Zak Rittenhouse, who works in a homeless shelter for gay and straight youths.

ZAK RITTENHOUSE (Green Chimneys): Here in New York City, 7,000 kids identify as gay or lesbian, and they’re on the streets for various reasons, and there’s definitely some religious ties to that.

SEVERSON: Zak is gay. He grew up in a Baptist church, where he says he was taught that being gay was sick and an abomination. He says many kids who come out are forced out the house by parents who accepted that doctrine from their churches.

RITTENHOUSE: The parents don’t know how to react when their kids come out, so they push them out on the streets. The kids don’t feel safe at home, so they run away.

Zak Rittenhouse

SEVERSON: Matt Gromlich went to a private Christian school and says what he had been taught in church made it traumatic when he discovered he was gay.

MATT GROMLICH: At some churches that I’ve visited, you know, there’d be messages about how homosexuality is wrong, or they’d throw it in with a list of sins, and, you know, I wouldn’t really say anything, but just not go back. In that time I was really struggling with faith and being gay, you know, and well, if I accept that I am gay, which I had at that point, then how can I still be Christian?

HEATH: The church says these things where, you know, if you don’t change, you’re going to hell, and people get to a point where they feel like, well, I can’t change, so I guess there’s no hope, and so they abandon the church.

SEVERSON (speaking to Pastor Bob Perdue): If I came to you and I said, “Pastor, I am gay,” what would you say to me?

PASTOR BOB PERDUE (Senior Pastor, Old Dominion Baptist Church, Bristol, Virginia): I would say that’s against the creative order of God. It violates the way God has set it up, and so while I understand that you have that attraction and that it developed maybe by no fault of your own, you’re not free to act upon that.

SEVERSON: Bob Perdue is pastor of the Old Dominion Baptist Church in Bristol, Virginia. Like many other Christians, he believes the Bible makes it clear that living a gay lifestyle is a sin. But he doesn’t believe it’s any worse than any other sins.

PERDUE: A lot of times the church will quote Leviticus 18:22 and say, you know, man lying with man is an abomination. What we forget is that Proverbs also says pride and lying and gossip are also abominations to God.

Pastor Bob Perdue

SEVERSON: Nor does he believe, like many Christian conservatives, that being gay or lesbian is a choice. But he does believe that acting on an attraction to the opposite sex is a choice and a sin to God.

When Zak Rittenhouse came out, his parents sent him to a six-week camp that promised to make him interested in women.

RITTENHOUSE: They had told us all that by the end of this six weeks we would all be heterosexual men and women walking in the light of the Lord.

SEVERSON: He says of the 80 kids who went to camp, to his knowledge none came out straight. Though there are no reliable statistics on whether these ex-gay ministries actually work, many, including Pastor Neumark, think it is cruel to try to force change on these young people.

PASTOR HEIDI NEUMARK: There’s members of the congregation here who have been in therapy to try and get them to stop being gay and, well, I haven’t talked with anybody that that’s worked for. I think that’s abusive.

SEVERSON: Pastor Perdue says both he and the church are there to help heal those who are broken, whether it’s sex, pornography, gambling.

PERDUE: I would first ask you why you considered yourself gay, and I would expand that identity to include other parts of who you are and hopefully get you to see that you’re so much more than just that sexual attraction, you know, just like an alcoholic. I do the same thing with them.

SEVERSON: Like an alcoholic, says Perdue, homosexuals need to learn how to control their yearning so they can, in his words, “experience life to the fullest.” The pastor knows of what he speaks.

PERDUE: I was sexually abused at 10 or 11, and those were my first sexual memories, so I developed an attraction, a same-sex attraction, which obviously at first—my first response to that was to suppress it. And then the kind of guilt and shame of all of that led me to a suicide attempt.

SEVERSON: After 30 days in a psychiatric hospital, Pastor Perdue says he came to terms with his sexual proclivity. He’s now married and the father of five children.

PERDUE: I can’t say that my attraction has completely changed. I liken it to my fellow ministers who are married. Their attraction for other women hasn’t gone away, but they’re choosing not to act on that attraction because they’ve made a vow and a commitment in a certain direction. It’s the same for me.

SEVERSON: There are a number of denominations that accept practicing gay ministers, and Pastor Neumark says as more young people come out, and homosexuality becomes better accepted by society, ever more churches will have to eventually teach tolerance, even if they believe the lifestyle is sinful.

NEUMARK: What really makes me angry is to know that church people—because I love the church, I’m a pastor of a church—have a real hand in creating so much pain.

SEVERSON: Pastor Perdue agrees the position of many churches against homosexuality has been harmful but says he doesn’t know many other pastors who share his view.

PERDUE: They haven’t walked where I’ve walked. They haven’t been where I’ve been. While I haven’t changed my theology on what homosexuality is that I have definitely changed my attitude toward people who struggle.

SEVERSON: After Joey Heath completes his theological education, he hopes to be ordained a pastor.

HEATH: I feel called by God to minister to those that have been pushed out and neglected by the church, and the church to a certain point has created a class of people that are not worthy of church, and I want to go to those people.

SEVERSON: But before he can go to those people, he needs to be ordained, and the United Methodist church, his church, does not as yet ordain self-avowed, practicing homosexuals. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Washington.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Welcome. I am Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us. We take our look ahead now to the stories we expect to cover in the new year with the help of Jason Byassee of the Duke University Divinity School, where he directs its Faith and Leadership Project; E. J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, the Washington Post, and Georgetown University; and with Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program. Welcome to you all. Jason, we have a recession. What’s going to happen to it, do you think, and what effect has it had and will it have on the churches, the denominations, the charities—all those people that you cover?

JAYSON BYASSEE, Duke Divinity School: I am struck by how you can’t have a conversation with a religious leader now without talking about what the financial downturn means for their organizations. This is across the board, from left to right, whatever position one has. What this means is that people are laying people off. They are cutting back on ministries. I wonder if this isn’t the story upcoming. Lots of our denominational infrastructures were built at a time when you could assume money would keep coming in. Well, it’s not now, and how do you do more with less? Nobody is quite sure how to do that.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly: Talking about doing more with less, the recession is also having a terrible impact on the people in the pews of all of these religious congregations, the people that these ministries serve. These people are hurting more than ever. They need help. They need resources. They go to the religious institutions, who are struggling. So it’s a real problem.

E.J. DIONNE, Brookings Institution: The entire not-for-profit sector has been hurt. Now, there is some hopeful evidence that sometimes some people actually step up and give a little more when they can to groups helping the very poor, because they have an even better sense than usual about “there but for the grace of God go I”—that possibility. The economy is going to be critical to so much of what happens this year. It’s going to be crucial politically to what happens in the 2010 elections. You can almost predict on a straight line if the economy feels like it’s getting substantially better by the midyear, President Obama and the Democrats are probably going to do better; if it feels like it’s not getting better it will be a large problem for them. That’ll have an effect on how we discuss all kinds of questions, including moral and religious questions, in the course of the year.

ABERNETHY: Jason, do you see people going into the ministry, or not going into the ministry, because of the recession? Do you see seminaries closing, churches closing?

Jayson Byassee

BYASSEE: The standard assumption is that when the economy is bad people go to school, because work is not good. The problem with that is, if you can’t sell your house then it’s pretty hard to move across the country and go to school. Lots of seminaries are trying to do more online education. I expect more of that to come. But there is enormous pressure, especially on small seminaries that aren’t connected to a big university, and dire predictions about how many of those may close in the coming years. That might not seem like a big thing until you realize, okay, where my minister was trained means everything for what I’m going to hear about God. This has an outsize ripple effect on institutions across the board and religion in this country, I think.

ABERNETHY: E.J., it is an election year again. What do you see as a result of that that will be of particular importance to believers?

DIONNE: I think, first of all, we may have the discussion on morality and the economy that was, I think, a little bit delayed, that people were trying to come to terms with what the downturn meant. I think there is going to be now a real look back and look forward as to why did we get into this mess—how much of it were practical problems, how much of it were about people not taking responsibilities seriously that they should have—the stewards of our economy, the people with a strong position in our economy. I think that debate will very much affect the elections. I also think we’re going to have a kind of after-effect of our big health care debate. I think what you saw among religious groups, particularly Christian religious groups, were a real difference between those who laid the heaviest stress on the moral imperative to getting everyone, or as many people as possible, covered through insurance, versus those who felt that the major emphasis on whether abortion is or is not funded and how in this health care debate. I think that’s going to have a continuing effect, because I think there is this running dialogue, certainly in the Catholic Church that I’m part of, but I think in all of our traditions, between those who believe the central emphasis of our religious group should be on a certain relatively narrow—though they would say very important—list of moral questions: abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research versus those who say that the emphasis should be on a much broader agenda having to do with social justice and how we organize our lives together in the economy. I think that discussion is going to very alive, made all the more so by the controversy of an election year.

LAWTON: It’s going to be interesting to see how involved faith-based activists get in these midterm elections. Certainly Barack Obama mobilized a very active campaign effort among especially moderate and liberal faith-based individuals. There was activity on the religious right as well against him. But will a Democratic candidate at the state level be able to get that same sense of energy? Will they come out? Meanwhile, the religious right is still really trying to figure out who they are, who’s going to lead them, and what they’re going to do. The Republicans are trying to figure out what do we do with this core of our party? So it will be fascinating to watch all of that unfold in the coming months.

DIONNE: Although I do think there’s one interesting thing that’s happened on the right, at least in the last year, which is I think the religious conservative voice has been less powerful than the voice of, whatever you want to call it, this Tea Party movement. There seems to have been a shift within the right from an emphasis on moral questions that the religious conservatives were focused on to this very strong anti-government strain. Now, obviously, there are overlaps on the conservative side, but I think this is a different sort of direction that we’ve seen on the right side of politics.

LAWTON: But we’ve seen, especially with the health care debate last year and the role abortion played within that debate, those social issues are still very important to a lot of people and will still come up, I think, in the midterm elections.

BYASSEE: Much more quietly, along with that I am struck by how many dozens of churches in my area can’t afford a minister any more because of health care being so expensive, and yet the left has somehow not managed to have the kind of energy in favor of expanding health coverage by any stretch that the right has managed to have against it, it seems to me, because of this confluence of leadership in opposition.

ABERNETHY: Kim, what do you see coming about the all the issues around gay marriage and what jobs homosexuals can have in the churches?

Kim Lawton

LAWTON: This is going to be a very important year within the worldwide Anglican Communion. The US Episcopal Church, which is the branch here of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has moved forward. The Los Angeles diocese has elected an assistant bishop who is a lesbian. The worldwide community had asked the US church please don‘t move forward on this. She would be the second one. Her election needs to be confirmed within the next few months before she would be officially installed in May, so that’s still coming up. But the world is watching in the Anglican Communion, and many people are not happy about this, so this is going to be really important. We’ve been talking for years about is the Anglican Communion going to hold together? I think this year could be very crucial on that question.

BYASSEE: It seems like the first election, you could make space for it being a naïve move, or a misstep move, if you were in opposition. A second one, you can’t make that claim any more. The striking thing to me about this election is not so much that Mary Glasspool is a lesbian, but do you really need three Episcopal bishops in Los Angeles? Again, is it a structure set up for a time when the money was flush, and now does it make sense any more?

DIONNE: I’ve thought about this the last couple of years, where we have focused so much of the debate on the issue of gays and lesbians. It strikes me that, within the Christian Church for 100-150 years there have been episodes of modernity confronting tradition and that, right now, the center of that debate is around issues related to gay rights. But when you listen to some of the conversation—why people are for or against gay rights—it’s really part of this much deeper struggle that’s been going on within Christianity for a long time of how much its task is to resist modernity versus how much of its task is to respond to modernity, if you will, in a more dialectical way, with some opposition but also embracing some of what modernity has to give us. I think this episode is just—there is a particular passion behind this, because this is obviously a major step in this long argument.

LAWTON: Another interesting aspect to this particular debate, when you are talking about the Anglican Communion, is the demographic changes of Christianity around the world. So you have Christians in Africa and Asia who have the numbers. There’s millions of Christians in Uganda and Rwanda and Sudan. These tend to be more conservative on some of these issues—much more conservative, especially on the issue of homosexuality, and where their place is in the international Christian family is very much up for grabs in this particular debate.

DIONNE: Indeed, Christianity is growing. I think it’s a great shock for people to realize that there are many more Anglicans in Africa than there are Episcopalians in the United States.

BYASSEE: There’s twice as many Anglicans in Sudan as there are in the United States—just one big country in Africa. I don’t think we’re anywhere near catching up with what this means, not only on social issues but on doctrine, worship life, and all the rest. What’s it going to mean, not very long from now, that Christianity is essentially an African religion and not a Western one, not a North American or European one?

DIONNE: You’re seeing that, to some degree, in the debate about global warming. I do think the environment is another area where we’re going to see continuing activism and debate within the churches. The presence of a very strong group of Third World Christians in all of the denominations is going to put the focus not simply on the issue of reducing carbon in the atmosphere, but also on what kind of compensation Third World countries will get, which became a very critical issue in the discussions in Copenhagen.

ABERNETHY: Let me move to another point, Kim especially. There is an investigation going on, or a review, or whatever is the right term for it, of Catholic nuns in this country by the Vatican. Where is that going, and when will we know what comes of it?

LAWTON: The Vatican says that it wants to look into the quality of life for US sisters. That has created a huge amount of consternation here in the US, as there are questionnaires that have been sent to different communities of sisters with a lot of questions. Many of them feel like we’re not going to answer some of these. So that’s going to be moving forward throughout this year, as that sort of give-and-take moves forward. Do they answer these questions? What do they say? How do they say it? What’s really behind all of these questions in the first place? That’s what a lot of people, not just among nuns but across the Catholic community, want to know. What’s really behind this study, this investigation?

E. J. Dionne

DIONNE: There’s a great danger here. I think this could prove a very, very divisive move inside the church. There is enormous affection toward nuns among people who are Catholics. Many of us owe enormous debts to them for our educations and for so many other things they did. They are among the most activist—that’s a bad term in the eyes of some conservatives—as in giving comfort to the poor, helping the sick, doing all the things the Gospel says we should do. And so they risk, I think, a real backlash, if they don’t handle this very carefully. I think they are already confronting it, to some degree. They’ve got to be very careful with the nuns. I’ve got some nuns that sent that message.

BYASSEE: It is an interesting question. If you have an enormously radical form of life, based on what Jesus said we should do, can you be liberal doctrinally? It sounds like the answer may be no, right? That’s a very risky answer…

DIONNE: The answer from the Vatican may be no. It’s not clear to me that there is, first of all, any consistent sort of liberal doctrinal positions, and to the extent that they are somewhat more liberal—for example, in asserting that perhaps there is a bigger role for women to play in the authority structure of the church—it shouldn’t surprise that perhaps that the nuns, who have taken so much responsibility for helping run the church, just might have a view like that.

BYASSEE: My wife, who is a pastor, would “Amen” your claim. I think that’s right.

ABERNETHY: Jason, you study and help identify future leaders in the churches. What do you see? Some of the familiar old names are no longer so familiar. Oral Roberts died. Where is it going? Who do you see out there who’s going to succeed the people we used to hear about so intensively with the religious right?

BYASSEE: One thing that interests me is that there’s less of an emphasis, if you’re a younger evangelical leader, on starting a parachurch ministry like Billy Graham did, and more of an emphasis on being a pastor. I’m not exactly sure why this shift has happened, but if you’re a young pastor, you’re charismatic, what you want to do is plant a church usually and grow it big and have that be where your ministry is. So I see a lot of pastors of enormous churches—in places like Seattle and Grand Rapids—who have churches of 20-30,000 people. You don’t hear about them in the national news yet. You don’t hear Rob Bell’s name. You don’t hear Mark Driscoll’s name. You’re hearing Tim Keller’s name in Manhattan more because he’s writing books that have gotten attention. Same with Rob Bell. But these are pastors who are sort of a half-generation after Rick Warren, or Bill Hybels at Willow Creek, who are going to have an enormous impact, because if you want anyone to catch a religious allusion in politics in 20-30 years, it’s likely to be because one of these pastors helped teach a congregation to hear the Scriptures, right? If people are going to be serving the poor, it’s going to be because churches like this—like Adam Hamilton’s church in Kansas City, Church of the Resurrection—encourage people to do that and made space and structure for them to do it. So I think that’s an enormous shift.

LAWTON: One thing I’m watching is, with some of the folks you just referred to that already have these big megachurches, what happens when those leaders—people like Rick Warren at Saddleback Church, people like Bill Hybels in Willow Creek, built these giant congregations—what happens when they retire, though? What happens to those congregations? It’s really hard to step in to a congregation that’s already in process. That’s something I’m really going to be looking at.

ABERNETHY: I want to hear, Jason, what you have to say, and E.J.—each of you—about kind of the state of religious life and of organized religion in this country today. How is it going? Is secularism pushing it aside? What’s happening?

BYASSEE: It does seem to me that the new atheist books gave a certain permission to people to claim that they are not religious, that you don’t have to have the default be, oh yeah, I’m a Christian, even though I don’t do anything. Now it can be no, I’m not religious, and that seems to be more socially okay. Of course, being biased people in religious institutions—I spend all my time with religious leaders for whom things are very vibrant, right—but I think we shouldn’t overlook the fact that there are a whole lot of people who aren’t engaged by the church and its ministries and would much rather they go away, especially at election time.

ABERNETHY: Sixteen percent, I think, identify themselves as having no affiliation. E.J., what do you see? How is the tide running?

DIONNE: I wrote a column some years ago that ran under the headline, which I openly took from The New Republic. The headline was “God Bless Atheists.” I think one of the things about this atheist challenge that’s actually good for believers and good for Christians is that it has created a debate on the fundamentals. I don’t mean by that fundamentalists; I just mean the fundamental tenets of does God exist? How do you know God exists? What is the relationship between God and humankind? These debates have gone on for centuries. A lot of what the new atheists say are new versions of very old arguments that have been taking place. I think it’s far better to surface these arguments than to have people either pretend to believe when they don’t, or have believers not have to confront really core challenges to belief itself. And so, at bottom, if you can say this whole debate may be providential.

LAWTON: I think we need to be careful, too, when you look at some of these numbers. A lot of those people who are unaffiliated—it doesn’t mean that they’re not religious or spiritual in some way. They’re just not necessarily associating themselves with a particular organization or institution.

BYASSEE: It does seem important that these numbers bump when there is an election that people are unhappy about. It seems like there’s been some behavior from religious people that they’re displeased by, so it seems like the 2004 election, in particular, got a bunch of people book contracts to write about how bad God is.

ABERNETHY: Kim, there are some Supreme Court decisions coming down of some interest.

LAWTON: I think this coming year will see some interesting decisions about the conflict between religion and the public square. One is the Mojave cross. Can there be giant crosses in public property? Another one that I find particularly interesting is that the Supreme Court will be looking at a case with the Christian Legal Society and whether a law school can—the Christian Legal Society has a student club and they also believe that gays should not be in their leadership or their voting members, because that’s part of their religious belief. Well, the law school where they were operating said, well, if you believe that, you can’t be part of an official student group, because we don’t discriminate based on sexual orientation. So you have this clash of religious values. On the one hand, you have people who want to exercise their religious beliefs. And then you have people who say this is a matter of human rights or civil rights. Then those start clashing. Who trumps whom? So that’ll be interesting.

DIONNE: That’s a hugely important and really fascinating case, because you’re dealing with, in a sense, two conceptions of liberty, two conceptions of whether people should be free to be gay, and no organization on the campus should discriminate against them, and one can see how one gets to that conclusion, versus the right of the Christian Legal Society to constitute themselves as a group that has a very particular view on homosexuality. I think it could be a very bitter argument, precisely because each side is going to claim—they’re going to have competing goods, as each side will claim competing notions of freedom.

ABERNETHY: E.J., quickly, what are you going to be looking forward to particularly in the coming year? What stories?

DIONNE: I am going to be looking forward to a continuing moral debate about how we should organize this economy and what got us into the mess we’re in, in the first place. I think it’s going to be a real test of whether Barack Obama’s efforts to tamp down the culture wars have us get along a little better, whether that will succeed. Like everybody else, I’m going to be looking at how the test of these last two years—how the last two years are judged by the voters in November.

ABERNETHY: I’m sorry, but our time is almost up. Many thanks to Kim Lawton, to E.J. Dionne, and to Jason Byassee. Happy New Year to each of you and to our viewers.

After the vote, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton asked Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno how he would explain the vote to Anglicans around the world who oppose gay bishops, and what message he hoped it would send to gays and lesbians.

TIM O’BRIEN, anchor: The issue of gay marriage is on the agenda as the US Episcopal Church holds its once-every-three-years General Convention in Anaheim, California.  For years, Episcopalians have been deeply divided over homosexuality.  One proposal being debated at this meeting would allow Episcopal churches to conduct same-sex weddings in the six states that have legalized gay marriage.  Currently, most mainline denominations do not officially allow same-sex weddings.  But the changing legal environment is adding new pressure.  Kim Lawton has our report.

KIM LAWTON: Boston’s historic Church of the Covenant has been an important place for Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault. The lesbian couple had their first date there in the late 1970s, and by the time Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage the two had been active members for more than 25 years, so a church wedding seemed the obvious choice.

SARAH PERREAULT: In particular we wanted to be married at our home church with our community and our family and friends.

LAWTON: But it was complicated. Church of the Covenant is dually aligned with two mainline denominations: the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).  And while the UCC has no problem marrying same-sex couples, it’s against national Presbyterian policy.

ANNE CRANE: Well, it’s painful to know that the church that I’ve been a part of all my life does not recognize our relationship and our marriage as being a legitimate marriage.

LAWTON:  Church of the Covenant worked it out so that a retired UCC minister conducted the ceremony, and the Presbyterian side of the church officially stayed out of it.  Crane and Perreault say their wedding was beautiful and meaningful, but not quite everything they would have planned.

PERREAULT:  I felt badly because there were people that we would have liked to include in our ceremony who could not participate because they were ordained Presbyterian clergy. There was a real loss there.

Man at Protest:  “We are a couple…”

LAWTON:  For decades, mainline denominations have been wrestling over issues surrounding homosexuality: whether to ordain gay clergy and whether to recognize–and bless same-sex unions. Now that six states have legalized gay marriage, those battles are taking on a new urgency. Some church members are pushing the denominations to reassess their policies, while others are fighting to hold the line.

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an advocacy group that supports conservative positions within mainline denominations.

MARK TOOLEY:  The church shouldn’t just go along with what the wider society demands of it. But the church is ideally supposed to be faithful to timeless teachings that have been presented to the church through its Scripture and through its traditions.

Minister:  “To have and to hold…”

LAWTON: Currently, while the Unitarians and the UCC conduct gay marriages, mainline Protestant denominations as a rule don’t officially allow it. Clergy who participate in same-sex weddings could face church trials and even risk being defrocked.

Minister:  “I hereby pronounce you husband and husband…”

TOOLEY:  Traditionalists within those churches will strive to help to ensure there is as much fidelity as possible, by the clergy to the official teachings.

LAWTON: In the United Methodist Church, 83-year-old Richard Harding has a long history of activism for gay rights. He helped found Reconciling Retired Clergy, a network of retired pastors willing to perform gay marriages.

REV. RICHARD HARDING: There’s not a whole lot that they can do to we retired clergy, and there’s a whole lot that they can do to active clergy that they can’t do to us. And that’s why we’re stepping in.

LAWTON: Harding says he believes what he’s doing is the right thing, so he’s willing to risk any repercussions.

HARDING: We could be defrocked. I would be now sitting here as Mr. Harding instead of Reverend Harding. And in Massachusetts, a lay person can go for a day to the state house and get permission to officiate at a marriage. So I’d still be able to do it, only I just wouldn’t be a pastor anymore.

LAWTON: At Church of the Covenant, interim minister Jennifer Wegter-McNelly is an ordained Presbyterian pastor. She says her congregation has been put in a difficult position of trying to maintain support for gay members while still respecting the national denomination.

REV. JENNIFER WEGTER-MCNELLY: We have a long history and we’re very active, and so I think there is a lot of really thoughtful hard conversation about how do we be prophetic and remain faithful and connected to the churches that are our larger community?

LAWTON: So far, they’ve been able to do that by keeping same-sex weddings solely under the jurisdiction of the UCC part of their church. Other congregations don’t have that option. Episcopal clergy also can’t conduct gay marriages. In an effort to be even-handed, many Massachusetts Episcopal churches aren’t doing any weddings, gay or straight. Instead, Reverend Pam Werntz at Boston’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church says they provide a blessing for couples who are married by the state.

REV. PAM WERNTZ:  That could happen separately, it could happen at the courthouse and then a couple comes here for the ceremony, or it can happen in the same ceremony where a Justice of the Peace presides over the first part of the service and the priest presides over the blessing and often a Eucharist celebration.

LAWTON: The compromise may have helped circumvent some of the denominational difficulties, but Werntz says it was still painful for many members.

WERNTZ:  There were people that left the church in feeling a lot of sorrow and betrayal that the Episcopal Church couldn’t move as fast as I think it needed to move when same-sex marriage was legalized.

LAWTON: UCC minister Reine Abele, who does perform gay weddings, say churches need to be better at addressing social concerns.

REV. REINE ABELE: Churches generally are not the leading edge of cultural change in our society. They are often not the engine but the caboose.

LAWTON: But despite the new activism, mainline clergy continue to be conflicted over the issue, and those who support gay marriages still appear to be in the minority.

LAWTON: According to a recent survey by Public Religion Research, mainline clergy are generally more supportive of gay rights than Americans as a whole. But that doesn’t hold true when it comes to same-sex marriage. Only a third of mainline clergy support gay marriage. That number is just about the same for Americans overall.

TOOLEY: Often people in wider society are very surprised to learn that the mainline churches don’t already accept same sex marriage, because typically these churches, at least for the last 50, 60 years or more have been on the liberal side of social issues. But they have hung back on the marriage issue.

LAWTON: For many, it’s an issue of basic theology.

TOOLEY: Typically for Jews and Christians, marriage is a metaphor for faithfulness between God and his people and once you begin to redefine what marriage is you ultimately start to redefine who God is and that obviously and understandably is difficult for Christians and Jews.

LAWTON: In the Presbyterian Church (USA), Reverend Mary Holder Naegeli is among those urging the denomination to maintain its stand.

REV. MARY HOLDER NAEGELI: Homosexual practice is not God’s design for humanity. Not being God’s design for humanity, having these clear prohibitions in the Scripture make homosexual practice a sin. Homosexual marriage makes permanent a situation that God wants to redeem.

LAWTON: But others advocate a different interpretation of the Bible.

WEGTER-MCNELLY: Our call to be inclusive of all people comes from scripture.  It comes from faithfulness to God, it comes from understanding that all people are made in the image of God and it’s essential to support people in their relationships, to bless them and support them and nurture them.

LAWTON: For Wegter-McNelly, the issue also comes down to her pastoral responsibilities to the people in her pews.

WEGTER-MCNELLY:  Here gay marriage isn’t an abstract issue. It’s not a political issue.  It’s very much an issue of the people of the congregation being in community together. To tell people that this community that is the compass for your life is not going to bless and support you in your intimate relationship is kind of an impossibility.

LAWTON: But supporters of traditional marriage say pastors also have a responsibility to their faith and to the wider church.

HOLDER NAEGELI: Why would I, a representative of God, help people make permanent with a vow, I take marriage vows very seriously, but with a vow to make permanent then, seal something that God wouldn’t agree with?

LAWTON: As they celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault are glad their church wedding worked out.

CRANE: It’s a liberating feeling, and it’s enabled me and us to just, to live our lives honestly and openly, and many people don’t have that opportunity and have to continue living a lie. And that’s the sad thing.

Minister: Those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder.  Amen.

LAWTON: But given the conflicts within the mainline churches, the situation is not likely to change any time soon.

I’m Kim Lawton in Boston.