Gay church’ leader gives up on ministry in Owensboro, Ky.
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 17, 2006
The Rev. Michael Erwin is leaving Owensboro, Ky., after nearly conducting funerals for two entire congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ.
It seems that the second congregation – New Hope United Church of Christ, locally known as the “gay church,” dwindled to about 25 members and it couldn’t collect enough to pay him a full salary. So his next stop will be on June 11 at Bethel United Church of Christ in Evansville, Ind., where he will become the associate pastor.
Erwin made news in Owensboro and well beyond in 2000 when, at the age of 32, he accepted a call to Central Presbyterian Church, an aging congregation. “We’re all 1,000 years old,” joked one of the members.
Erwin was determined to bring Central into modernity. He convinced the leaders to align with More Light Presbyterians, an organization devoted to ending all PCUSA barriers against the ordination of adulterers and homosexuals.
He drew attention – much of it flattering. The media portrayed him as a liberating theological pioneer, bravely breaking down barriers.
Nonetheless, some members of Erwin’s flock were not happy about the direction of the congregation. They complained and Erwin was fired. That added martyrdom to Erwin’s reputation as a crusader, and he was portrayed even more heroically in the media while Central’s leaders were depicted as backward yokels.
He tried to cash in on his growing fame in Owensboro by starting New Hope United Church of Christ.
One journalist, Jane Hines, editor of The Voice, the newspaper of the Synod of the Living Waters, decided to take a closer look. “There has been so much publicity in the secular press about this matter, with the point of view of the session being noticeably absent, that we have finally decided (after consulting with presbytery and synod advisors) to give an equal opportunity to members of the Owensboro Central session to air their views if they chose to do so,” Hines explained in an article titled “The Owensboro Story from Another Point of View” (The Voice, October 2001).
Her interviews revealed an entirely different picture from the media coverage that turned Erwin into a hero. Her story also had a profound effect on the presbytery in the 2001 PCUSA referendum. The Presbytery of Western Kentucky became one of seven presbyteries in 2001 that voted to affirm the ordination standard after having voted against it in 1998. That election – with 73.4 percent of the presbyteries affirming the ordination law – was a devastating blow to More Light Presbyterians and other groups seeking to repeal the ordination requirement.
In 1996, nearly 60 percent of the commissioners to the Presbytery of Western Kentucky voted against including the “fidelity/chastity” standard in the Book of Order. In 2001, 76 percent of the commissioners voted to affirm the standard – the most pronounced shift in the voting on Amendment 01-A.
Hines said she conducted her interviews and wrote her article because Presbyterians had a one-sided view of what happened – mostly from Erwin’s perspective. Leaders of Central Presbyterian had declined to be interviewed until Hines asked them.
She said she was surprised from the outset. She had expected to meet with “a bunch of homophobic tough guys who would turn out to be real jerks.” Instead, she said, “there were four gentle, soft-spoken retired women. One of them seemed frail from a recent fall and long period of recuperation. One of them is blind.”
Hines’ account provided an altogether different image of the congregation from stories that quoted only Erwin.
He left the impression that the congregation had no diversity or social ministry. She noted that Central hosted meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and that the congregation helped to start a center for the homeless. In addition, it supported a ministry for the deaf and provided a room for an HIV/AIDS task force.
One newspaper reported that Central rejected Hispanics, but Hines quoted Gladys Combs, who was chair of the committee that nominated Erwin to become pastor, as disagreeing. ” … As a former high school Spanish teacher, she [Combs] had written to a prospective member in Spanish and the congregation had studied conversational Spanish in order to communicate with them,” Hines said.
Hines described the reluctance of church leaders to follow Erwin’s urging that Central become a More Light Church. She quoted Combs as saying that “‘we didn’t have to do it, but we had just been beat to death with it. We would do anything to stay out of a fight, but now we’ve been in one for a year. We thought maybe we could be More Light and just go on, but there was a lot more to it than that.'”
Another elder told Hines she believed that the gays “wanted all of the old members to die or leave.” That elder speculated that the church’s endowment was enticement for the gays to take over.
“One of the new members was named financial secretary, an office that had not been filled in years,” Hines wrote.
Combs grew wary of Erwin’s leadership, and he became disenchanted with her flagging support for him. According to Hines, Combs said Erwin told her that she didn’t belong in the Presbyterian Church. She has been a member of Central since 1953.
In addition to Hines’ interview with church leaders, The Voice ran an editorial titled, “Exactly Who Is Out There in Those Margins?”
“Although they were accused of not supporting the new ministry to ‘the marginalized people’ of Owensboro, could it be that they themselves were being marginalized because they were old? Had they been rejected in favor of a younger group? If your hormones aren’t raging, … are you less engaging?” the editorial asked.
In a recent Associated Press story about Erwin’s leaving Owensboro, he was quoted as saying, “I think it’s hard to start any kind of ministry that has a vision as inclusive and broad as what New Hope did in Owensboro.”