WILMINGTON — Over the last few years, several Christian denominations have been embroiled in debates and fractures over the acceptance and inclusion of those in the LGBTQ+ community, with reverberations felt here in the Port City.
READ MORE: Lawsuit filed to keep Fifth Avenue Methodist Church open
Last month, the congregation of Fifth Avenue United Methodist Church filed a lawsuit against its higher authority, the UMC Southeastern Jurisdiction, after the downtown church was shut down by the UMC. The church was undergoing a disafilliation from the UMC when the downtown building was seized.
“The UMC has undergone changes in recent years, and after a period of reflection, the congregants at Fifth Avenue felt that the UMC no longer met their needs,” Fifth Avenue’s attorney Gavin Parsons told Port City Daily.
Fifth Avenue has joined the mass exodus of Methodist churches in mainly southern state, abandoning the UMC over key cultural issues, namely on LGBTQ+ rights. Since 1972, UMC doctrine has stated “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching”; the church prohibits LGBTQ+ clergy and same-sex marriage.
Though, not every Methodist congregation has agreed with this, and in 2019 the General Conference met to address its position. It has been at an impasse since.
More than 200 North Carolina churches — 32% of the state conference — have voted to disaffiliate from the UMC since last fall, including Pine Valley Methodist in Wilmington. Pine Valley chose to join the more conservative spin-off denomination, the Global Methodist Church.
The UMC is not the only denomination facing an identity crisis amid declining church membership as younger generations tend to associate the faith with decades of intolerance and abuse. Throughout the years, the Roman Catholic Church has had to contend with its endemic sex-abuse scandals. The Southern Baptist Conference, the largest sect under the Baptist tradition, just voted to exclude women from leadership roles in the church.
It’s important to note ideological differences — from major issues such as slavery to bickering over the use of musical instruments in worship — are part of the fabric of the Christian faith extending back centuries. Each denomination moves at its own pace reviewing issues of the day, yet Wilmington is host to many churches who have chosen inclusivity of LGBTQ+ Christians.
Perhaps the most recent is the Mosaic New Faith Community, a social justice-focused church affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
Led by former Baptist preacher Kelley Finch, Mosaic holds worship Sunday nights in St. Jude’s Metropolitan Community Church near downtown Wilmington. Each service features a local activist, organizer, educator, or person from a marginalized community to share their stories and how attendees can connect with underseen pieces of the community.
Port City Daily requested an interview with Finch, but the pastor said Mosaic’s board has asked the church to clarify its vision before doing any more press.
But there’s a host of others — some opened for the purpose of reaching the excluded and some who have evolved to get there over hundreds of years.
Port City Daily spoke with one pastor and two reverends at Church of the Servant Episcopal, St. Jude’s Metropolitan Community Church and First Presbyterian, along with two LGBTQ+ Christians on their individual and collective journey of acceptance.
For Wilmington resident Jordan Hathaway, it was singing in the choir that brought him to church in the fourth grade. He never left, attending worship in Greensboro through college and becoming a paid singer and choir member at First Presbyterian on Third Street. He’s been a member there for 10 years now.
A gay man, Hathaway lauded the 238-year-old church’s Open Arms ministry, one of the many outreach programs First Presbyterian offers, but this one dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ Christians. The group puts together potlucks and social events, inviting people to join in fellowship.
“That is something that I was very excited to hear about when I got here and started getting to know more about the church,” Hathaway said.
First Presbyterian’s Rev. Daniel Lewis told PCD the ministry, which predates his six-year leadership, started as a grassroots movement, as many initiatives in the church do.
“[Members of the congregation] said, ‘We want to make sure that there’s at least a segment of the church that is explicitly devoted to making sure that our LGBT friends feel welcome here,” Lewis said. “They decided early on in that ministry that their focus would be less about policy and advocacy and issues and it would just be more welcome.”
That’s part of First Presbyterian’s continued success, Lewis said — conceptualizing the church as one big tent, under it an intentionally diverse congregation with different viewpoints but united in faith. Lewis described First Presbyterian as a “purple church.” But that doesn’t mean it will compromise on core values of respect and love.
“The Presbyterian way to do it is sort of lay out ground rules or parameters that don’t dictate that we should all agree about everything, but they sort of say, ‘Well here are the kind of guard rails where the boundaries within which we can have this conversation,’” Lewis said.
Lewis subscribes to the view that the Holy Spirit leads the church to go back to ancient scripture with new eyes as a group, more so than individually. Akin to a judicial pragmatist’s view of the Constitution, the church emphasizes the Bible as a living, breathing text that promotes continual understanding, rather than a focus on literal meaning.
“One of the rules is to remember the rule of love in reading the scripture,” Lewis said. “And what that says, basically, is that if we’re coming to any conclusion, having read scripture, that leads us to demonize or hate particular people — or whole groups of people — it is probably wrong.”
This doesn’t mean to then throw out the scripture, but it acts as a deterrent to weaponizing uncontextualized parts of the Bible to meet a certain narrative.
“One thing that I like about worshiping here is that we try to relate scripture to our modern day life,” Hathaway said. “So, you know, we read it and we learn about it and a lot of it can be applied to every day. Like this past Sunday was the 99 sheep and the one lost sheep. And the shepherd leaves the 99 to go find the one right? Because it’s about everybody.”
In 2010, The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) — the denomination Lewis’ church is part of — removed its prohibition on ordaining members of the LGBTQ+ community, allowing local churches to make their own decisions. The same applies for presiding over same-sex marriage in 2014. First Presbyterian voted to allow both in recent years.
Lewis noted this was not a top-down decision in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), different from a conservative sect that split off to form the Presbyterian Church in America. Each church was given the freedom and flexibility to choose what rules work for its congregation.
While that has led to Presbyterian churches on both sides, it doesn’t seem to have caused a major rift like experienced by the UMC, which has a more hierarchical structure.
Flexibility has also benefited Wilmington’s Church of the Servant Episcopal church, led by Rev. Jody Greenwood, a married gay woman. It marked its 50th anniversary last year.
“[The church] sort of saw an opportunity for a different kind of church, a church that sort of reaches those who — if you think about what was happening in the 1970s — those who weren’t finding connection with the established church and that were either leaving church or just weren’t, weren’t connecting with it,” Greenwood said. “And so this Church was founded with the idea that it would sort of be more communal, it would just be more open and collective and make decisions together as a group and that sort of thing.”
Greenwood explained that was made more possible because of the American Revolution. When the United States severed ties with England, that also meant the Church of England; the Episcopals still follow the guidance of the Anglican Communion, though it has its own governance.
“And if that hadn’t happened, if we were still under a worldwide denomination like the Methodist Church, then we’d be in the exact same situation,” Greenwood said. “So we just created a different path 200-however-many years ago.”
Greenwood deacribed the church as a safe place for a group of teenagers exploring their sexual orientations or gender identities, plus for UNCW students seeking an inclusive atmosphere. However, most of the congregation is cisgender and straight, with more than half above the age of 50. Yet, the church can serve as a bridge between different perspectives.
“What I have found really interesting and exciting is that, of the grandparents sitting among us, finding out they have grandchildren who have an either sexual orientation or gender identity that’s different than what they had expected, [they] are worshiping in a space, being in a place where we can have those conversations,” Greenwood said.
Church of the Servant does not have an LGBTQ+ dedicated ministry, but those in the community are enmeshed in all parts of the church that, much like First Presbyterian. It’s about focusing on using God’s love for all as its compass.
“Jesus didn’t come to create a church. … Jesus came to create a movement,” Greenwood said. “It is about being open to everybody, but that’s my theology — or that’s our church’s theology.”
That concept isn’t rare, as described by Jeff Phillips, a spiritual Wilmingtonian who studied religion in college and who is also gay. Describing himself as a “theological mutt,” he was raised around Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, and Jewish family members in Asheville, North Carolina.
“I grew up loving going to church; I grew up loving hearing the stories,” Phillips said. “The pageantry, the music, is a place that as I grew up into my teens and into high school, I was there four days a week whether it was Sunday school or choir or youth ministry or whatever it may be.”
Phillips lived with the understanding that God doesn’t condemn, a faith passed down by his grandfather who read the Bible multiple times a day. But as he grew older, he began to distinguish between faith and religion, the latter of which he realized tended to twist the gospel into exclusionary teachings.
“The term ‘homosexual’ didn’t exist until 1882,” Phillips said. “So some modern Bible translations might say the homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God, but that’s not the original concept.”
Phillips described wanting to get married to his husband, now deceased, in a church he had sung in for 30 years. He was rejected, but the church still wanted him to share his talent.
At another point in his life, he drove a friend to Birmingham, Alabama, to attend the funeral of his friend’s partner, who had passed away from AIDs. Because they were not legally married, he was told he didn’t have the right to be there. They broke into the back of the church and watched the procession through the organ pipes.
“Gays and lesbians are still coming despite knowing that they’re not wanted in a place, but their faith is stronger than the religion,” Phillips said. “And so I think that’s the differentiating factor. I’m not going to let anyone define my faith for me.”
Despite holding fast in his belief, Phillips said he doesn’t currently attend church due to his lack of faith in organized religion and it’s too-often political nature. He expressed that sometimes he just wants to go to church to worship.
While straight and cisgender people can try on churches based on the different styles of worship, different Bible groups they offer, differing ways of reading scripture, often LGBTQ+ people’s options are limited to the churches that will accept them — and finding that out can be exhausting.
Phillips is not alone. In 2020, a study found 67% of LGBT Americans identify with a specific or general religion, lower than the 83% of non-LGBT adults who identify with one.
As some move away from the church due to disillusionment or to protect themselves, others have found the answer in sanctuaries dedicated to providing a safe community for the outcasts.
St. Jude’s began in 1992 as part of the Metropolitan Community Church, a relatively newer denomination. It was founded in 1968 by Rev. Troy Perry, a gay man.
“It was?very difficult, but also very, very liberating,” St. Jude’s Rev. John McLaughlin said. “It’s just what this town needed for a long, long time because it was the only place that an open LGBT person could come and worship and could be Christian and not have that, you know, taken away from them.”
Throughout the years, outsiders have often put the MCC in a box as “the gay church,” “the AIDS church,” “the queer church,” as if by making it a refuge for LGBTQ+ believers that’s all it could ever be.
As McLaughlin points out, that is not how the majority of people come to learn about St. Jude’s. Since the beginning of the pandemic, McLaughlin said his congregation has doubled due to its message of God’s universal love and service to the community. Its biggest outreach ministry is assisting and feeding the unhoused and hungry population.
“That’s just exploded,” McLaughlin said. “People have just been coming to maybe only help out with those programs, and then they stay in the church, or maybe they’ve never come to church on Sunday and that’s not the goal. They realize that there’s no faith agenda.”
St. Jude’s is a place of God’s teachings in action, McLaughlin noted. He said he would much rather find homeless camps, bring people lunch and sit down to chat with them rather than complete an individualized Bible study. And that’s part of the church’s foundation. The ancestors of St. Jude’s were activists in the streets fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
McLaughlin wanted to continue that crusade against the exclusion of LGBTQ+ Christains when he became pastor.
“I first thought I would become an MCC pastor to combat those messages,” McLaughlin said. “And that’s kind of how I started out and I wanted to get in the fight. I still want to combat those messages. But I learned, I realized early on, that what people needed was a word of love, not another word of hate and anger.”
This sentiment was echoed by the other two church leaders — to provide a refuge from society’s turmoil, without messages of division and shame. While each congregation stands firm in its protection of the LGBTQ+ community, they would rather focus energies on welcoming and supporting the people who share the value of acceptance, instead of change the minds of the intolerant.
“Where we can be most effective is to be a place of welcome, be a place of God’s love,” Lewis said. “And those hot button issues tend to fade to the background when we focus on the love of God and the connection.”
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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