When I visit a church for the first time, I check for a spirit of love and acceptance.

        Do people welcome me or turn and stare? Does someone sit down beside me or avoid my pew? Am I the only nonwhite person there, and is that a problem?

        I've felt unwelcome at a few churches I've visited. I didn't return.

        I can't imagine what it's like to be gay and Christian and to constantly get that feeling from churches.

        How many gay Christians feel rejected at the church door? How many others go in but go underground about who they are, so they can have fellowship with those who love God?

        That's why the challenge that Mount Auburn Presbyterian faces strikes at my heart.
       

A question of purity

        Eleven years ago, Mount Auburn Presbyterian adopted a “statement of inclusion” that says “gays and lesbians are part of God's good creation and that they, no less than heterosexuals, are meant to enjoy God's gifts of love, joy and intimacy.”

        Since then, the 140-year-old church with 280 adult members has performed same-sex marital unions. Its Boy Scout troop has refused to bar homosexuals, and its leadership has elected gays and lesbians as elders and deacons.

        Mount Auburn is vocal — some say militant — in defending its actions. “No second-class status will be imposed on homosexual persons,” its statement reads. The church is part of the national More Light Movement within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

        Recently Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian petitioned the Cincinnati Presbytery to enforce its rule prohibiting homosexual elders, deacons or ministers. Seven area Presbyterian churches have joined in.

        The Presbytery is a governing body over 83 churches in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. It set up a commission to study church law and whether gays and lesbians should be ordained as deacons and elders. The commission is to report in January.

        The Rev. Tom A. Sweets, pastor of Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian, says this “isn't one church striking out against another.” It's about a denomination trying to keep itself pure, he says.

        Homosexuals, like all sinners, are welcome at church, he says. But because the Bible calls homosexuality a sin, church leaders must be in a heterosexual marriage or living a chaste single life.

        “Most churches don't want to deal with the issue and say, "Aw, leave them alone,'” the Rev. Mr. Sweets says.
       

A painful role

        The Rev. Mr. Sweets says his is a painful role, but he believes it's what God wants. “I look like the enforcer; they look like the victims. They break the law, but make everyone else look like they're wrong.”

        Who is really the victim? Mount Auburn Presbyterian's pastor, the Rev. A. Stephen Van Kuiken, could lose his job over this.

        Yet he explains that this is not personal, it's a clash between those who interpret the Bible literally and those who don't.

        “The Presbyterian church has always been known as a moderate, forward-thinking denomination,” the Rev. Mr. Van Kuiken says. “Some people feel they are the guardians of the "true church' .... They want to make sure the church is pure.”

        But whether purity means rejecting homosexuals, he says, is a matter of conscience, not just church law.

        Rejection by others has to be the hardest test of Christianity. It takes fortitude, understanding and divine grace to love those who reject you, and much more to want to worship with them.

       Call Denise Smith Amos at 768-8395, or e-mail damos @enquirer.com.

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