Analysis: Trend shifts in U.S. churches

WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) -- You might say that mainline Protestant bodies have reacted somewhat nonchalantly to the Roman Catholic Church's sex abuse woes.

As advocates of traditional Christian standards in these denominations noted ruefully Thursday, many of their leaders act as if the scandal had no implications for them whatsoever.

The Rev. Christopher Hershman, president of the newly founded Evangelical Lutheran Confessing Fellowship, reminded this correspondent of the findings by historian Phillip Jenkins that what has been labeled a pedophilia scandal was in reality a homosexual problem.

Jenkins, who teaches at Pennsylvania State University, had shown that in 98.5 percent of all cases did not have sex with children but adolescent boys. Hershman also pointed out that according to a recent Newsweek report at least half of all Catholic seminarians were homosexuals.

By implication, then, this is a cross-denominational issue, for great is the mainline agitation in favor of ordaining men and women who are openly sexually active with members of their own gender. Equally intense is their advocacy for the blessing of same-sex unions.

"Yet when you check around all you hear is, 'Who cares?'" lamented Hershman, whose 5.1-million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has last year commissioned a task force to conduct a four-year study of these issues.

Confessional Lutherans such as Hershman entertain little doubt about the outcome: The ELCA will heed its homosexual lobby's demands -- and probably suffer a schism in the process.

Erik Nelson and Mark Tooley, who monitor the Episcopalians and the Methodists, respectively, for the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, report similar attitudes within hierarchy of their own denominations.

"After all, they are fully in acceptance of the homosexual camp," said Nelson about Episcopal bishops.

But then mainline Protestantism has even more egregious issues to contend with -- outright heresy, as some traditional Christians would term it.

For example, Washington's new Episcopal bishop John Bryson Chane, termed Christ's resurrection conjectural in his Easter sermon.

A Chicago's United Methodist bishop Joe Sprague went even a step further. At Iliff Seminary in Denver, he roundly denounced Christian beliefs in Christ's full divinity and virgin birth. Sprague called the doctrine of Jesus' physical resurrection "idolatry."

Compared with this, Sprague's relentless opposition to the UMC's traditionalist stance against homosexuality seemed positively harmless.

But then, this is not the full story, either. Slowly, the climate is changing in mainline Protestantism. Sprague, a leftover from the 1960s, will be retired in a couple of years' time, according to Tooley, the IRD's Methodist watcher.

Presbyterians and Methodists have defeated hands down their leaderships' attempt to legalize the ordination of practicing homosexuals in their denominations.

In the UMC, the Rev. Rebecca Ann Steen, 47, who until recently was a father and grandfather by the name of Richard A. Zomastny, is now struggling to be readmitted to the pastoral ministry after what she/he termed her/his "gender reassignment." The opposition is strong.

Morris Hawkins, president of the Conference of United Methodist men, called this sex change the "ultimate sin of selfishness," according to his denomination's news service. "You're saying to God, 'You are making a mistake that I can correct,'" Hawkins chided the Maryland minister.

That the atmosphere is gradually shifting in mainline Protestantism becomes clear as one follows the developments in the troubled Presbyterian Church USA, whose General Assembly is currently sitting at Columbus, OH.

Thursday it declared after a debate of only 10 minutes that that Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth and the life and that no one is saved apart from him -- an astonishingly orthodox statement from a church body that only recently made news with less faithful assertions.

A mere two years ago, a minister had demanded that Presbyterian recognize other ways of salvation. "What's the big deal about Jesus?" he asked.

This change did not come a moment too soon. In response to the deviation from traditional doctrine, Presbyterians have left their denomination in drives -- and are continuing to do so. In 1966, the PCUSA had 4.2 million members; today it has less 2.5 million. Last year alone lost 31,449.

At the same time, though, a grassroots confessional movement is burgeoning within the denomination. In a little over one year it has grown to 1,263 congregations with a total of almost 420,000 members.

These confessional Presbyterians are now networking with likeminded faithful in the Methodist, Episcopal and other Protestant churches. October 24-26 there will be the first-ever gathering of these "Evangelical, Confessing and Renewing Christians in the Mainline Churches."

According to its organizer, Methodist theologian Thomas C. Oden, it will be the object of this convocation "to unify and encourage mainline Christians in North America in their reaffirmation of classic and orthodox Christianity."