Soulforce makes plans for Baptists, Presbyterians
The Layman Online, May 31, 2000
Soulforce, a gay-rights organization, has broadened its plan to protest on behalf of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons to include Southern Baptists.
Soulforce, which is “preparing for our nonviolent civil disobedience at the Presbyterian General Assembly, June 24-25,” is also trying to find “fifty friends of Soulforce [to] agree to join us Tuesday evening, June 13, (to be trained) in Orlando, Florida, and Wednesday, June 14, (to face arrest in a nonviolent act of civil disobedience at the Southern Baptist Convention),” according to a Soulforce Alert signed by Rev. Mel White.
White is a Soulforce co-founder and gay minister of the predominately gay and lesbian Metropolitan Community Church.
“With 15.8 million members in 40,000 churches, the Southern Baptists have become the primary Protestant source of misinformation about God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered children. This year the Baptists have promised to re-affirm their anti-GLBT policies…,” said White in the Alert posted on the Soulforce website.
If 50 people agree to participate in the Orlando demonstration by May 26, reads the Alert “our committee will fly to Orlando next week and make arrangements with the Police Department and other city and convention officials. If fifty do NOT sign up by Friday, May 26, we will forfeit this opportunity to stand for truth in love relentlessly before the Southern Baptist Convention.”
White also described plans for the upcoming demonstration at the PCUSA General Assembly. “I spent three hours with the police in Long Beach preparing for our nonviolent civil disobedience at the Presbyterian General Assembly, June 24-25. This will be an incredible experience as well.”
Baptist response
Paige Patterson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press that the Soulforce protestors will not be met with harsh words from Southern Baptists.
“It is my profound belief that if these homosexual and lesbian people come to the convention, they will be treated with the greatest kindness and the most profound love that they’ve experienced,” said Patterson. “Southern Baptists have long since proved that they are able to love the sinner even while they hate the sin.”
“We will have to trust them to understand that it is our honest, heartfelt belief that their lifestyle is terribly destructive to both the family and to the nation,” Patterson told Baptist Press.
By the same token, he stressed, “It will be our joy to share the healing properties of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them as well as with all people.”
Demonstrations at PCUSA General Assembly
A Soulforce Alert dated May 15 said Soulforce will take “direct action” on Sunday, June 25, the second day of the General Assembly, at Long Beach. The demonstration is planned to overlap the General Assembly’s worship service, which is expected to draw thousands of people.
In its release soliciting protestors, Soulforce said the PCUSA’s “current discriminatory polices exclude sexual and gender minorities from ordination, marriage and ministry.”
White called the Presbyterian Church’s ordination requirements “tragic and misinformed policies [that] lead to discrimination, suffering and even death … Our disobedience, June 25, is planned to send a clear message to our Presbyterian sisters and brothers that we cannot wait patiently any longer.”
The PCUSA’s ordination standard, which requires church officers to live in fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness, was adopted in a national vote of presbyteries in 1997. It was reaffirmed by a 2-1 margin in 1998 when presbyteries voted against a proposed amendment that would have diluted its language.
200 arrested at Methodist conference
About 200 Soulforce outside demonstrators and 31 inside protestors were arrested at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, which met in Cleveland.
The United Methodist Church retained its stance on homosexuality May 11 in what one veteran General Conference observer called the most emotional day he had ever experienced at the quadrennial assemblies.
By margins of approximately 2 to 1, the 992 delegates said the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, and no self-avowed practicing homosexual can be ordained as clergy or given a pastoral appointment.