CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/19/2022 (Twelve Tribes, Interfaith Marriages, QAnon)

Twelve Tribes, Interfaith Marriages, QAnon

The Gazette: Twelve Tribes group, with a Manitou Springs connection, finds itself in spotlight after Marshall fire

" ... Twelve Tribes members trace their origins to the New Testament book of Acts: "Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. … All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. … All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need."

They believe they are gathering together the 12 biblical tribes described in the book of Revelation in preparation for Christ's return. They don't proselytize, but are more than willing to talk about their faith. They spread their message through their Freepaper, which is distributed through their cafes and restaurants, which are their primary means of both financial support and community outreach.

Members receive no pay because they work as volunteers. And because of their common treasury, the IRS classifies the group as a 501(d) "religious and apostolic association or corporation," similar to monasteries.

They comprise more than two dozen communities in the U.S., as well as Canada, Argentina, Australia, England, France, Japan, Brazil (where they harvest the mate used for drinks) and Spain (where they make olive oil). They look like Amish or Mennonite believers, with males wearing simple beards and bound hair, and women dressed in simple, homespun clothing.

At the Manitou Springs community, which is led by three male "shepherds," members gather for worship every morning and evening, and welcome guests to their Friday evening services. During the day, some work at the café while others home school the children or do other tasks. They don't watch TV or read the news. "Sensationalism," one member said.

They follow a strict morality that some see as family values on steroids, and practice corporal punishment on disobedient children. Twelve Tribes communities have frequently been accused of — and occasionally found guilty of — child abuse and labor violations, and have faced penalties for requiring children to perform adult work by farming and doing crafts.

Twelve Tribes members deny they are part of a cult, and say members are free to communicate with family members and other outsiders. They typically avoid the media, even in good times, but gave The Gazette access to do a story in 2020 because one member had been introduced to the group by a Gazette story years earlier.

RNS: How American couples' 'inter-Hindu' marriages are changing the faith

"The couples marrying and raising the next generation now are redefining what it means to be Hindu in America."

"When my wife and I started dating, we thought our shared Hindu faith would make things simpler. We had friends who had dated non-Hindus who had encountered bumps when it came to how they would tie the knot and how the children would be raised. The fact that we were both Hindus meant we could sidestep those kinds of interfaith hassles.

We soon learned that, even though we both called ourselves Hindu, some key differences in the way we each practiced the faith complicated our relationship.

The oldest of the major global faiths, Hinduism formed more than 4,000 years ago out of widely diverse sects across what we now call India. As it spread to the four corners of the globe, thanks in part to the Indian diaspora prompted by British rule, Hinduism took on local colors.

The Hindu identity of my wife's family was shaped by generations of living in Guyana, a former British colony on the northeast shoulder of South America. Their practice was shaped by the trauma of indentured servitude, pressure from Christian missionaries and cultural hybridity passed down from generations in the West Indies.

My family traces its lineage to the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where our faith was shaped by thousands of years of rituals and rites of worship, some of them germane only to Tamils.

As our lives were intertwined, I adapted to singing bhajans, devotional songs that were foreign to me growing up. I learned to celebrate Holi, or Pagwah, the spring holiday called the festival of colors, which is less known in South India. My wife, for her part, had to familiarize herself with my family's observance of regional festivals such as Pongal, celebrating the sun deity Surya, which is observed widely in the Tamil diaspora on Jan. 14.

Our conflicts may not have the same implications as a Catholic marrying a Protestant, a Sunni marrying a Shia or even an Orthodox Jew marrying a Reform Jew, for whom the theological differences may go beyond devotional customs. Nonetheless, nearly two decades after we met, we still occasionally encounter tensions about when to celebrate a given holiday or which mantras — prayers — are correct in certain religious observances.

But over time we have come to understand that our differences are cultural deviations and that our spiritual practices are enriched when we meld the best of both of our backgrounds.

In raising our child, we are combining elements of both of our cultural practices and theological interpretations of Hinduism, making sure that he participates in the Hindu devotionals his Caribbean ancestors did to maintain their religion through a life of bondage, while teaching him how to identify religious symbols in Tamil, my ancestral language."

RNS: Muslims in interfaith bonds are proliferating. Imams willing to marry them are not.

One out of five Muslims is in an interfaith relationship, surveys suggest. But few imams are willing to conform the traditional Muslim wedding ceremony to their needs, couples say.

" ... According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 79% of U.S. Muslims who are married or living with a partner are with someone of the same religion. That leaves 21%, presumably, in interfaith relationships.

The rules about intermarriage favor men, according to Imam Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, head of the Islamic Law program at Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts school in Berkeley, California. Ali said the Quran is clear that men are allowed to marry non-Muslim women as long as their brides are "People of the Book" — Christians or Jews, both of whom recognize Abraham as their spiritual forefather, as Muslims do.

A Muslim woman, however, cannot marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts.

Whether the conversion is sincere or a matter of convenience, Ali said, is a question between the person and God. "If he converts because he really desires to be with his wife, we don't know, we only know his testimony of faith, which is indicative of his conversion."

Another interfaith couple whom Sayeed married via a big-screen Zoom call last year said they, too, had consulted other imams who expected the husband's conversion.

Sayeed, who thinks the Quran's rules for marriage are open to other interpretations, sums up his attitude with the logic of love. "I believe that two people coming together and leading a life of commitment and love is a beautiful thing," Sayeed said. "And why would God not bless that?"

"I don't require anyone to convert, because conversion is something that happens from the heart," he said. "We have to stay true to who we are, and I also don't want to ostracize these couples from Islam," Sayeed said.

Muslims for Progressive Values, a nonprofit organization, founded its Marriage Celebrancy division, offering wedding celebrations for couples with diverse religious backgrounds, in 2006 and claims on its website that its practices are "deeply rooted in both Islamic and democratic principles." In 2020, MPV's network of officiants celebrated about 75 weddings in the U.S. and, with partner organizations, another 20 in Canada, the U.K. and Europe.

Ani Zonneveld, founder and president of MPV, said that the way marriage is interpreted in Islam today is "cultural," and it's not prescribed in the Quran. While men are clearly limited to marrying within Abrahamic religions, women are advised to marry "believers," Zonneveld said, but the term is ambiguous.

Zonneveld said there is also evidence of mixed-faith marriages in the hadith, the commentaries on the Quran and Muhammad's teachings. Several Muslim faith leaders warned that Zonneveld's scholarship is outside the mainstream."

SFGate: Popular QAnon promoter dies of COVID in California

" ... Cirsten Weldon, who went by the name "CirstenW" online, died at a hospital in Camarillo, Calif., the Daily Beast reported.

On her last video, posted on December 28, Weldon was coughing and admitted she felt "exhausted" and "weak."

Weldon was virulently anti-vaccine, both online and in real life. In one video posted to her social media channels, she can be seen harassing people in line to be vaccinated against COVID-19. "The vaccines kill. Don't get it," she shouts. "This is how gullible these idiots are. They're all getting vaccines."

Weldon was so well-known as a QAnon influencer that she even live streamed with comedian Roseanne Barr, who has now devolved into a full-time conspiracy theorist. An October livestream with Weldon has over 70,000 views on Barr's YouTube channel. In it, Weldon rambles about how Donald Trump is still the "real" president and claims without evidence that "arrests are happening in California'' of her political enemies.

Weldon livestreamed constantly and posted relentlessly on Instagram, Telegram and Facebook, inadvertently tracking her own symptoms. She began showing signs of illness around Christmas. In a December 27 stream, she started off by saying, "Good morning, patriots, I didn't think I was going to make it. I'm sorry. I'm exhausted, and I'm very, very weak. I have no strength. I haven't eaten in four days."

On December 31, she posted a photo of herself wearing an oxygen mask with the caption, "Almost died at hospital in CA from Bacterial Pneumonia." "Bacterial pneumonia" is a phrase commonly used in anti-vax circles to explain a COVID-related hospitalization without admitting to contracting the virus.

Weldon also posted on Telegram, where she had nearly 100,000 followers, that she rejected treatment with remdesivir."

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The Tragic Results of the Mormon Church’s New Policy Against Gay Members

Mark Joseph Stern
Slate
February 8, 2016

This past November, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a stunning new policy declaring gay Mormons in same-sex marriages to be apostates in risk of excommunication. The church also decided that the childrenof same-sex couples could not be blessed or baptized until they turned 18—and even then, only if they renounced their parents’ marriage. Immediately, a shock wave rippled throughout the sizable gay Mormon community. Wendy Montgomery, a Mormon mom who has a gay son and works with the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, believes that at least 32 gay Mormon youths have killed themselves since the announcement of the new policy.

MARK JOSEPH STERN

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

Montgomery’s decision to go public with that number brought sudden interest to Mama Dragons, the support group she co-founded. Mama Dragons connects the mothers of gay Mormons, in the real world and virtually through Facebook. The group’s members have sheltered gay Mormons fleeing their homophobic families, invited LGBT Mormons into their homes when they feel depressed or suicidal, invited gay-friendly speakers to address Mormon communities, and evenhelped to plan funerals on behalf of Mormon moms whose gay children committed suicide. On Friday, I spoke with Diane Oviatt, a pediatric oncology nurse, and Hollie Hancock, a clinical mental health counselor—two founding members of the group—about their efforts to help gay Mormon youth. 

How did Mama Dragons begin?

Oviatt: We started about three years ago as eight moms private-messaging each other on Facebook. We’d connected through Affirmation, an international LGBT Mormon support group. Eventually we created our own Facebook group, and we needed a name. One of our founding moms had written a blog post about her son coming out. She said she needed to be more than a mama bear because her son was extra vulnerable—he was really struggling. “I am a mama dragon,” she said. “I would breathe fire for my son.”

What was your reaction to the new policies?

Hancock: This was a shockwave, a blind side—it pulled the carpet out from under me, and so many people. I cried for a week. It was difficult, because every time I opened my door to welcome a new patient in, red puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks greeted me. I cried with my patients. That first week—I have never experienced anything like it as a therapist and hope I never do. I can’t imagine how painful it was for my patients. 

I’ve been getting calls and messages from LGBT Mormons who’ve said: I’ve been excommunicated, I’ve been done with the church for 20 years, I thought I’d dealt with this, I thought I was OK—but the policy change ripped open the wounds anew. These people are experiencing the same trauma and emotion and hurt and pain that they felt with that very intersection of faith and sexuality.

Why do you think the church introduced these policies? And why now?

Oviatt: My opinion is that they didn’t want the rank-and-file members to get to know and love gay Mormons, to get to know and love these couples and their children and to see what amazing parents they are. There would be an uprising of your regular members turning into allies. This was a pre-emptive strike on the church’s part. I truly believe that the LGBT community having a place in our church and in our theology upends everything that our church has stood for forever. One man, one woman, and all that.

If that’s the case, why don’t you and your members just leave the church?

Oviatt: Here’s my point of view as a mom: I have a gay son and a gay brother who struggled his whole life. (He came out in the ’70s. It was really rough.) I’ve seen the damage firsthand. I’ve seen my own son have suicidal ideation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve contemplated walking away. Every time the church puts another dagger in your heart, you sit there and think, this is the time I’m going to finally walk away. You’re embarrassed to be part of an organization that treats people like this. But you know that saying—Mormonism doesn’t wash off easily. It’s a culture as well as a religion. Many of us have pioneer ancestors. It’s a hard thing to walk away from.

My son and I live in the Bay Area. We have nothing but inclusive, loving, caring leaders. My son couldn’t have had a better experience coming out. And yet, the doctrine is still so painful—there’s no place for us in the theology. But every time I think about walking away, I think about those teenage kids sitting in the pew with their family who aren’t being properly loved, embraced, affirmed. And I am a voice for change, a thorn in people’s sides. I stick around to educate, to speak up. Whenever I think I might leave, I wonder: Who will these kids have? Who will be there for them?

Hancock: Every time something surfaces that is harmful to the LDS LGBT community, it strikes a hot dagger in our hearts, as well. It pushes me to that crossroads—do I stay or do I go? I’ve had serious faith crises. But I stay connected and involved, for all those kids who are hearing awful things from the pulpit.

During Prop 8, I spoke with my bishop in tears and said, “This is not right.” He told me I needed to explain why to our congregation. “People need to know what you’re doing, the community you’re serving,” he told me. I was shocked that he gave me an open mic. After that, gay members of my congregation started pulling me aside and saying, thank you, I’m so glad you’re here. It’s those people for whom Diane and I stay.

Your group drew a hailstorm of media attention after Wendy Montgomery claimed that the new policy had spurred 32 suicides. How did she come up with that number?

Oviatt: Wendy works with the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University. It’s a best-practices initiative that helps families with gay children. The project made a documentary film featuring Wendy and her family, and she quickly became the face of Mama Dragons. Since then, a lot of people have contacted her with their personal stories. She has been contacted numerous times since the new policy about a young gay family member who committed suicide, and she decided to start keeping track of the stories she heard. There’s an underground information circuit about the situation, because there’s so much shame and stigma around suicide, especially in Mormonism, which says suicide is akin to murder.

What has the reaction been to Montgomery’s report?

Oviatt: Within our community of activists, people are glad that we’ve pushed this issue to the forefront so we can start talking about it. There’s also a lot of concern within the LGBT Mormon community about the idea of suicide contagion, though, which we totally understand—it’s a double-edged sword. We don’t want to induce despair or make people feel like they’ll just be another statistic. We’re pushing the educational piece of it now. The Family Acceptance Project is disseminating information so families know how to prevent these things from happening.

Hancock: Many outside Mama Dragons have criticized us harshly for releasing these numbers. But I see it as a springboard to raise awareness of the bigger discussion that should be going on about suicide awareness and prevention. Nobody wanted to see the reality of what’s going on.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/02/08/mama_dragons_respond_to_gay_mormon_youth_suicide.html

New Mormon policy on gay couples 'analogous' to its polygamy stance? Yes and no

PEGGY FLETCHER STACK

The Salt Lake Tribune
December 5, 2015

While same-sex marriage has always been immoral in church’s eyes, plural marriage was not — until the 1890 “Manifesto” that signaled its demise.

At one time, Mormonism practiced and preached polygamy. Then it discontinued and disavowed it, dubbing members apostates if they promoted and participated in it.

Now, the Utah-based faith is taking aim at another unconventional approach to coupling: same-sex marriage.

Last month, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints updated its "Handbook," which provides guidelines for lay leaders of the 15 million-member faith, labeling same-sex couples (either married or cohabiting) as "apostates" and generally forbidding their children from baptism or other religious rites until they are 18 and willing to renounce gay marriage.

The new policy's wording parallels the Handbook's instructions for dealing with the offspring of polygamist parents.

"For generations, we've had these same kinds of policies that relate to children in polygamist families that we wouldn't go forward with these ordinances," LDS apostle D. Todd Christofferson said in a videotaped interview explaining the new policy on gays, "while they're in that circumstance and before they reach their majority."

The two approaches, the apostle said, are "analogous."

Christofferson and many Latter-day Saints see the policy as protecting children from dissonance created when their parents teach them one form of marriage and they hear about the Mormon "ideal," which the church defines as one man and one woman.

Not all LDS observers agree with the juxtaposition and some find it troubling, even offensive.

"The polygamy comparison is fallacious, unhelpful and insulting," says Kendall Wilcox, an LDS gay documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Out in Zion, a podcast about Mormonism and homosexuality. "My inherent drive to bond with another human being is not comparable to someone's desire to take part in a religiously motivated polygamist practice."

The most obvious distinction, of course, is that polygamy is illegal, while same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. The first is a practice that can be taught; the second is based on attraction.

Beyond that, the two marriage systems have played opposite roles within the faith's development. Polygamy was once fully embraced, even central to Mormon teachings. Gay marriage never has been.

"Once you understand the church's history," says W. Paul Reeve, author of "Religion of a Different Color," "you see more differences than parallels."

—

Paths diverge • The practice of LDS men marrying more than one wife began in the early 1840s with what Mormons believe was a divine revelation to church founder Joseph Smith, according to the denomination's own essay on polygamy. "For more than half a century, plural marriage was practiced by some Latter-day Saints."

LDS leaders viewed polygamy not only as tolerable, but even "superior to monogamy," says Reeve, who teaches Utah history at the University of Utah. "There is all kinds of evidence they were preaching that from the pulpit."

By 1890, however, the U.S. government had made it nearly impossible for Mormons to continue the practice, so then-church President Wilford Woodruff announced the "Manifesto," declaring the faith's intention to give it up.

That proved tough for members who had banked their emotional and spiritual lives on the practice, he says, and thus began a painful period of transition.

"Seven members of the Quorum of the Twelve [Apostles] took wives after the Manifesto," Reeve says, and many Mormons couldn't believe the church truly was abandoning a practice so central to their lives and families.

In 1904, the church got serious about ending plural marriage, threatening sanctions against members who continued it — which only spawned splinter groups.

Such groups, including the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, "describe Woodruff as a fallen prophet," he says, "and polygamy as essential to the identity of Latter-day Saints."

So mainstream Mormonism and its offshoots had to wrangle over the notion of authority — who really speaks for God?

The Salt Lake City-based faith then branded polygamists "apostates," and children being raised by them could not be baptized into the LDS Church.

It was essentially a sectarian battle, Reeve says, not a sexual one.

But it also posed an image problem. Even into the 21st century, outsiders still "label us polygamists," Reeve says. "We've tried for more than a century to get rid of that moniker. You can understand why the church would not want to baptize children of polygamists. It fears the public perception mistaking us for them."

But, he wonders, would anyone confuse the LDS Church as being in favor of same-sex marriage?

—

Inculcating attraction • Children of polygamists don't always turn out to be polygamists, notes Grant Hardy, a University of North Carolina at Asheville professor of history and religious studies, "but it is a culture they are inculcated into."

Polygamous groups generally are organized in some way "that directly undermines the authority of LDS leaders," says Hardy, a Latter-day Saint scholar who wrote "Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide." "They appeal to a higher authority and perform ordinations outside of LDS Church channels."

Anyone from a polygamous background who is baptized into the LDS Church must "disavow polygamy" before serving a mission for his or her new faith, he says. "That makes sense because belief in polygamy can be spread by missionaries, armed with quotations from early church authorities. You do want to make sure that missionaries are not going to be agents for polygamy."

Plus, many Mormons believe plural marriage is just "in abeyance," Hardy says. "Plenty think it will be practiced in the next life."

Even LDS temple ceremonies allow men to be "sealed" to more than one wife for the hereafter.

People in same-sex marriages "are generally not organized and don't have a claim to higher ecclesiastical authority," he says. "The church has never practiced it, and there is no sense that God is going to command the church to embrace the practice of it."

Sexual attraction is not something that can be passed down from one generation to the next. Try as they might, gay couples cannot teach their offspring to share their attractions.

In fact, the vast majority of children of same-sex couples are heterosexual.

Hardy also worries about designating gay couples as "apostates."

In the past, being an apostate has meant not only serious sin, he says, but also working to "thwart or undermine the leaders' authority."

But, Hardy adds, "no one enters a same-sex marriage to thwart the church."

Some, however, argue that is precisely what gays are trying to do — change God's definition of marriage. And by marrying, they openly defy the faith's teachings.

—

'Deeply wrong' • Ralph Hancock, professor of political science at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, sees similarities — and differences — in the two policies.

In both cases, he says, "the church must attend both to the challenge of apostasy and to the interests of the child, which must ultimately be understood as separating the child from the belief-environment of the apostate household."

In any case, all of the "huffing and puffing and hand-wringing over the new Handbook policy," Hancock says, "is finally a distraction from the main question: the moral status of homosexual relations."

The LDS Church's position is that acting on same-sex attraction "is deeply wrong," he says. "Members who understand and support this position are not at all troubled by the policy regarding children of homosexual households. They understand that the real harm to children is not that of granting them some space and time to separate their own moral and religious identity from that of their unfortunate household. The real harm is to put the child in that environment in the first place."

The "homosexual household," Hancock says, "presents a deeper, more radical challenge [than polygamy] to the LDS idea of the very meaning of human existence and of human happiness."

Though thoroughly repudiated in modern Mormonism, "polygamy has been not only accepted but commanded by God in some instances," he says. "And polygamous households can produce offspring in the natural way. But homosexual unions have never been and could never be prescribed or tolerated by LDS Christians."

Gay marriage, Hancock argues, "offends the very understanding of reality that is fundamental to Mormonism."

To Wilcox, the gay filmmaker, that view lacks empathy.

"It denotes a woeful misunderstanding of the nature of human sexual orientation," he says, "and how it functions."

The only comparison that makes any sense, he says, is not with polygamy but rather with straight Mormons seeking a mate, a stable household and a place in their community of faith.

pstack@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/3266412-155/new-mormon-policy-on-gay-couples?fullpage=1

Gay and Mennonite

The Atlantic

Emma Green
March 18, 2015

On a Saturday in March, the Allegheny Mennonite Conference met in Springs, Pennsylvania, to determine the fate of Hyattsville Mennonite Church. A decade earlier, the Maryland congregation had been formally “disciplined” for accepting gay and lesbian members. Now, there were three resolutions on the ballot: let Hyattsville back into the conference as a full member; remove Hyattsville from the conference altogether; or, if no agreement could be found, dissolve the conference.

When a Mennonite church gets called out for its conduct, that judgment comes from its peers. As of 2010, roughly 296,000 Mennonite adults lived in the United States, but the small Christian denomination is broken up into several dozen oversight organizations and church bodies. These tend to be decentralized and democratic: Church representatives vote on everything from budgets to service projects and summer camp.

They also vote when they want to punish other churches. In 2005, when Hyattsville was disciplined, the church had already been welcoming gay members for nearly two decades. But other congregations in the organizing body they belong to, the Allegheny Mennonite Conference, felt like things had reached a breaking point. A Pennsylvania pastor, Jeff Jones, decided to issue a formal complaint.

“Hyattsville had an active ministry to homosexuals, which I was for, I didn’t have a problem with it,” Jones said. But when the church “started putting active, practicing homosexuals in positions of leadership, as delegates in voting bodies here at conference—that became more difficult for me to take.”

For the last ten years, representatives from Hyattsville have not been allowed to vote at conference meetings. Its members have not been able to serve in leadership, and its pastor, Cindy Lapp, was put under review. Even so, they kept coming.

Since the first Mennonites arrived in America from Germany in 1683, the denomination has gone through many schisms, often over issues of tradition and modernity. At one time, it was buttons vs. eyehooks on blouses, and whether women should have to wear bonnets; more recently, it’s been women’s leadership in the church and acceptance of those who identify as LGBTQ. Each time a split happens, a new version of the faith is created, while an older version is preserved as if in amber—even now, many people associate Mennonites with anachronisms like horses and buggies, when in reality, this kind of traditional lifestyle is only followed by roughly 13,000 American adults, called Old-Order Mennonites. (People often confuse Mennonites with the Amish, too; although both groups are part of the Anabaptist tradition, meaning that they baptize believers as adults rather than infants, Mennonites were historically followers of Menno Simons, a 16th-century preacher.)

Now, Mennonites are wrestling with the same questions faced by other churches across the country, made all the more complicated by their heritage: How should the faithful balance tradition and modern life? How should scripture inform people's understandings of same-sex relationships? And when members of a denomination disagree, how should they find their way forward?

For the Allegheny Mennonite Conference, these questions culminated in a choice: Either change together despite differences, or cease to exist.
I. Sing the Story #45: “Calm me, Lord”

Springs Mennonite Church is a fairly plain house of worship: tall, pitched ceilings; wooden pews; a couple of stained-glass windows toward the back of the sanctuary. But for all its plainness, the church has phenomenal acoustics.

The Allegheny Conference started its meeting there with song—a central part of Mennonite worship. A smiling woman named Naomi led the congregation through rounds of “The Wonderful Grace of Jesus” and “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” conducting the verses with floating, patient arms. Without being asked, the group sang in perfectly balanced four-part harmonies, a common element of Mennonite worship. Roughly 150 pastors and lay leaders from Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia easily filled the church. Together, they concluded their opening hymns: “Calm me, Lord, as a you calmed the storm … Let all the tumult within me cease.”

Although the morning’s agenda was supposed to be separate from the afternoon’s vote about Hyattsville, many of the talks had a pointed theme: unity. The pastor from Springs, Eric Haglund, gave an opening sermon on Acts 15, which describes a council held by Paul, Barnabas, and some of the Jewish elders in Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas were trying to persuade the Jews that circumcision was not necessary for salvation.

“We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God,” another apostle, James, said.* “For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

Listening to the sermon, it was clear that Haglund was trying to make an argument, veiled though it was in scripture. “In Acts, they found their way through disagreement,” he said. “We see that the very essence of the gospel could be derailed over a theological debate.”

A Mennonite pastor from Ohio, Myron Weaver, then spoke to the group about his experiences with homosexuality in church communities. He told the story of attending Maple Grove Mennonite Church in Hartville, Ohio, in his teens and watching a family who was part of the church deal with the revelation that their son was gay. This was in the 1970s, when many Americans didn’t necessarily know much about homosexuality, but he said members of the congregation didn’t react with fear; instead, they offered prayers.

“When people are vulnerable, regardless of what the situation may be, we as humans must often offer love and grace, even if in fact we may not understand,” Weaver said to the group. “Safe places, safe churches, allow people to be vulnerable. The problem I’m finding, though, is that there appears to be fewer and fewer safe churches.”

In his role as a pastor, he said, he has often encountered church members who are trying to figure out what it means to be gay—or to have a gay family member. Once, he invited a group of 10 church members to his house to talk about this topic. As one woman spoke, “she started to shake, and soon she was sobbing, and soon she fell off of her chair, and she clutched ahold of the carpet, and she simply cried out, ‘I have attended my church for 35 years, and I cannot find a safe place to talk to anyone about my gay son.’

“For those who claim to be followers of Jesus today, we, too, must display the heart of God to the marginal in our culture,” Weaver said.

He said he recognized that there might be theological disagreements over the issue of homosexuality in the church. He spoke about a split that happened in his home church in 1954: Members disagreed about the appropriate kind of buttons for women’s dresses. “It seems pretty ridiculous today,” he said, but splits like this happen “because for generations, families have been modeling that when you disagree, you simply walk away.”

Since 2005, nine churches in the Allegheny Conference have made the choice to walk away—mostly over the issue of women’s leadership in the conference. Currently, the conference is led by a woman, Donna Mast, and many of the churches that left over this issue did so before she became the leading minister. “Do I take it personally? No I don’t,” she told me. “I grew up with the understanding that women should not be in pastoral leadership positions. I ran from the call that I was sensing from God. I ran as hard as I could, until the day when I decided that it was more difficult to be ostracized from God than to follow God into areas where I didn’t understand where God was leading.”

Mast is part of the leadership council that invited Weaver to speak. “I frequently remind people that people with whom they disagree with are also people who love God, and who are doing their very best to follow Jesus,” she told me. But as homosexuality and gay marriage have become a bigger part of American culture and politics, Mast said, “I think it’s been confusing to the church. There are those that would ask that we not let society drive our decisions, when perhaps society is actually driving us to the need to do our scriptural and theological reflections together more carefully.”

But even with such strong nudging from the conference leader, members I spoke with didn’t seem convinced after the morning’s sessions that the conference would stay together. Even budget discussions were tentative, full of phrases like “if we move forward” and “depending on what happens…” Nobody knew whether there would be a conference left to spend money by the day’s end.
II. Hymnal, a Worship Book #575: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”

During lunch, most people headed to the church basement to eat, but a few milled about in the sanctuary. The former pastor of the Cornerstone Fellowship at Mill Run, Jeff Jones, stayed upstairs to talk with me, as did the church’s current pastor, Steven Olivieri. Jones was the pastor who initiated the discipline against Hyattsville in 2003, after the church brought an openly gay delegate, Larry Miller, to a conference meeting. Eventually, the church was censured for not complying with the confession of faith used by Mennonite Church USA, the national organization that Allegheny Conference belongs to. In a section on “family, singleness, and marriage,” it states: “We believe that God intends marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman for life.”

Mennonite Church USA, has seen declining membership over the past half decade—a drop of roughly 16,000 adult members and 45 congregations, or 15 percent of its members. This doesn’t necessarily reveal what’s going on in the denomination as a whole. According to 2010 research by Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College, American Mennonites belong to roughly 60 different organizing bodies, and some of the more traditional groups are growing rapidly because of their high birth rates.

But throughout the denomination, there’s tension over what it means to be a Mennonite in 2015. Jones told me that “the Mennonite church has always viewed itself as counter-cultural. Our country goes to war, we hold up peace signs.” Although gay marriage is now legal in 34 states, and the Supreme Court will possibly issue a decision on same-sex marriage by mid-summer, “generally speaking, I view homosexual behavior as sin,” he said.

In general, “the Mennonites can be clanish,” he continued. “Historically, that was survival. The broader category is Anabaptist. They came out of fire and brimstone—all the other churches in the Reformation persecuted Anabaptists. Lutheran, Reformed or Calvinist, and Catholic—they all burned Mennonites at the stake. To survive, they were not part of organizations as much as they were groupings of families, and that became the center of their witness.”

Even so, there’s an inevitable feedback loop between how Mennonites see homosexuality and how it’s discussed in American culture more broadly. Jones acknowledged that fundamentalist Christians—including Southern Baptists and other evangelical groups that are vocal on the issue of same-sex marriage—have influenced Mennonites’ views.

“To me, the scriptures say that people who decide to actively practice [homosexuality] are not to be within the church the same way as someone who has tendencies toward it,” Jones said, expressing a view shared by other conservative Christian leaders. “I think we all have tendency toward various sins. We decide to either practice these things or not practice.”

Jones himself was raised a Presbyterian and ordained as a pastor in 1976 as part of a group called the Evangelical Church Alliance. In 1995, he was asked to be a pastor at Mill Run, a small Mennonite church near Altoona, Pennsylvania. He said he liked the community orientation of his adopted denomination. “I’m very connectionally oriented—committed to the conference,” he said. “We don’t have a priest, or bishops, as many churches do. The congregations decide.”

This sense of community: That’s why being in a conference matters, he said. “I’ve seen too many independent churches … go off and do strange things. We need to have a certain degree of interconnectedness to keep us all Mennonite—to keep an identity.”

This is a little ironic; after all, Jones was the one who started the discipline process against Hyattsville, which is why the conference was considering dissolution. “To me, conference is very important, but not more important than the difference, at this point,” he said. “All of us have been waiting for Hyattsville to repent, and they haven’t. We’re all reluctant—we’d rather be together.”

When the initial complaint was brought against Hyattsville in 2003, Larry Miller offered to step down from his position as a representative in the conference, but his fellow churchgoers firmly and politely told him that they wanted him as their delegate, no matter the consequences. And when same-sex marriage became legal in Maryland in 2013, the congregation had a discussion about whether they wanted ceremonies to take place at their church.

“I thought there would be more people saying, ‘No, we shouldn’t do it, it will get us in trouble,’” said Cindy Lapp, the head pastor at Hyattsville. “But what we heard was, ‘Well, we’ve already been in trouble. These are people in our congregation. Of course we’re going to marry them.’”

By that time, Hyattsville had already gone through its own time of transition—and division—on its stance toward homosexuality. In the mid-70s, four families from Hyattsville broke off and founded an Anabaptist “house church,” which met in a rotation of living rooms in the the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. John Swarr, one of the founding members of the church, said the group had wanted a community that was more compatible with urban life. In part, he said, a “house church is made up of people who have come from … somewhere else that was not so good, that they wanted to get the hell away from. But they were still dealing with a spiritual something in their life,” he said. Starting in the early 1980s, this included gay men.

When some of the members of the house church—including a gay man, Jim Derstine—expressed an interest in attending Hyattsville, the suburban church started a yearlong, committee-based investigation into the question of gay membership. In 1986, by a vote of 94 percent, the congregation accepted Derstine. The pastor at the time, Robert Schreiner, went to Allegheny Conference to discuss the vote, but the conference overseer agreed that it was a matter for the congregation to decide, not the conference.

But two and a half decades later, the conference did start voicing disapproval over Larry Miller’s role. “The big thing in the Mennonites is ‘give and receive counsel,’” Lapp explained. “We say, ‘Well, we did receive your counsel, but we didn’t agree with it.’ Most of the time that is not acceptable, but we’ve just been obnoxious and stuck around anyway. And I think in the end it’s a really good thing that we did.”

There are a few formal benefits to being part of a conference: Its leaders can offer support during times of transition, for example, and it licenses pastors. But most of all, it provides a community.

“As much as we have struggled with the conference, I really value having outside relationships and outside accountability,” Lapp said. “Part of the reason that we stay in the conference is because we want to have connections with people who aren’t like us.”

For Hyattsville’s members, who live only a few Metro stops away from D.C., being part of the Allegheny Conference is also a way to stay in touch with Mennonites from rural communities—farming is a big part of Mennonites’ historical identity. “I think there really is a rural-urban divide,” Lapp said. “It’s a way to connect back with our roots,” she said. “There’s so much wisdom there, from people who are on the land and near the land.”

But there are also important cultural differences. When Larry Miller, the gay delegate from Hyattsville, stood during a conference meeting in 2002 and offered to speak with other Mennonites about his experience as a gay Christian, only one or two people took him up on it—including the pastor at the conservative Barrville Mennonite Church.

“We sat across from each other at a picnic table at one of our summer sessions, and we talked for a good long while,” Miller said. “I just felt like we were talking apples and oranges when we were talking about the gays and lesbians in our lives.”

During conversations like these, pastors and church members who object to same-sex relationships tend to return to certain passages in the Bible. At Springs, they quoted Leviticus 18:22, which states that “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination,” and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, which says that “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men … will inherit the kingdom of God.”

For Christians who are gay, words like these could be taken as a direct assault on both their faith and their gender identity. But Miller said he tries to ignore them. “I don’t react very much any more—maybe an eye roll. Anything that biblical writers were addressing had nothing to do with modern same-sex couples,” he said. “Some people’s whole focus about gay and lesbian relationships is all about sex—thinking below the belt, and that’s not the totality of what our life together means.”

In 2013, after same-sex marriage became legal in Maryland, Miller and his husband were married at Hyattsville. Cindy Lapp conducted the wedding; because she has overseen same-sex ceremonies, her credentials as a pastor were put under review by the Allegheny Conference. Ultimately, the conference didn’t revoke her license—"which is a miracle in itself," Lapp said—and leaders said they wouldn’t review her credentials again.

But it will be a bigger challenge to get Michelle Burkholder, the associate pastor at Hyattsville, officially licensed with the Allegheny Conference. “I grew up Mennonite, in a pastor’s family with pastors as grandparents on both sides,” Burkholder said. “But I am also a person who has a wife and is a woman. In the Mennonite church, that is complicated, if you haven’t noticed.”

Burkholder grew up in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a town of close to 50,000 people with a large Mennonite population. Shortly before she decided to attend seminary in Minnesota in 2001, she and her partner had a commitment ceremony, and she wrote a letter of resignation from her home church. “I knew at the time that me marrying a woman was not in line with the membership guidelines of the Mennonite church,” she said. “There was this tension within me of loving the church a lot and needing to be authentic and honest to myself.”

After graduating from seminary, Burkholder didn’t really look for jobs in the Mennonite community—she knew she probably wouldn’t find a church where she could do direct ministry as an openly gay pastor. Instead, she worked at a lay-led church, and then a Wells Fargo, before finding her way to Hyattsville in 2013. “The gift of Hyattsville … is a community that has been at its work long enough that two years ago, it was willing to hire me and not have my sexuality or gender identity be a part of that equation,” she said. “I do think the Mennonite church as a whole is missing out on the gifts of LGBT people.”

Over and over, Burkholder made a point of saying that her story—and Hyattsville’s story—is not just about a gay Christian pastor at an LGBT-friendly Mennonite church. “When I first got this job, somebody interviewed me for one of the Mennonite magazines and asked me if I thought I felt like a trailblazer,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’ve been called to Hyattsville as a community to serve as an activist. I feel called to Hyattsville to serve as a pastor.”

At Springs, people began returning from lunch, finding their seats in the church pews for the afternoon’s vote on Hyattsville’s future. And they sang: “Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand. … Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light.”
III. Sing the Story #76, “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”

As Cathy Spory, the outgoing moderator of the Allegheny Mennonite Conference, reviewed the Robert’s Rules of Order, there was some tense laughter (as in all democratically minded organizations, Robert’s Rules have apparently annoyed the Mennonites on occasion). Mostly, though, there was silence.

There were three resolutions before the church body: restoring Hyattsville to full membership, requiring a 51 percent majority to pass; removing Hyattsville from the conference, requiring a two-thirds majority to pass; or, if neither of those measures passed, dissolving the conference. Earlier in the day, Lapp told me she was nervous about the first vote, even though it only required a simple majority to pass. The attendance rolls showed that some of the more conservative churches had brought along as many delegates as they were allowed—even churches whose members usually didn’t show up to conference meetings, she said.

The floor opened for debate. Almost immediately, a representative from Springs proposed an amendment: Hyattsville should be allowed back in, but “members of congregations who are living lifestyles not generally accepted in conference should not be eligible to hold an elected position.” This restriction would apply to anyone whose lifestyle wasn’t in keeping with the Mennonite USA confession of faith, he said.

The pastor from Springs, Eric Haglund, rose and said that he had helped draft this amendment and written the morning’s sermon with it in mind—the conference needed time to adjust, he said, and this offered a compromise. “We can’t put deadlines on the Holy Spirit,” he said. “We have all been so bound up, I’m not sure we could recognize the Holy Spirit if he came crashing through the roof.”

But as another woman pointed out, the amendment might have unintended consequences. “I stand here a sinner: I am divorced, and I am an adultress,” she said. “I would like us to consider the challenge that would be before the leadership council if they had to screen people of certain sin categories from the leadership council.”

The moderators were ruthless in keeping the church body on topic. At one point, a man from Red Run Mennonite Church in Denver, Pennsylvania, came to the front of the room and began quoting Leviticus, calling “men who lie with men” an “abomination.”

“What do you believe: God’s word, or what the world wants?” he started to ask, but a moderator cut him off. “We’re speaking to the amendment,” he said—and the man returned to his seat.

The amendment didn’t pass—it got very few votes, in fact—but some expressed a desire for more time to formulate changes. Steven Olivieri, the current pastor at Mill Run, called for “both sides to get equal air time, outside of their two minutes [of allotted speaking time] to present all sides of the issue. I would have liked to have time to discuss this formally with other pastors.”

But a woman from Pittsburgh Mennonite Church stood up—a congregation that also welcomes gay members, but hasn’t been officially disciplined. “I’ve been surprised in a couple of recent comments to hear a call for more time in light of the fact that it’s been almost a decade,” she said.

The conference leaders handed out the ballots—simple slips of colored paper that might have been printed off from Microsoft Word. They weren’t checking who could and couldn’t vote—they even handed a ballot to the only reporter in the room. The conference, it seems, was determining the future fate of a church on the honor system.

“I am divorced, and I am an adultress. I would like us to consider the challenge that would be before the leadership council if they had to screen people of certain sin categories.”

When you’re waiting, time often seems to stretch into endlessness. Allegheny Conference, though, takes time-stretching to an extreme. As the votes were counted, leaders made announcement after announcement about the daily stuff of church life: opportunities to quilt with a neighboring Amish community; invitations to visit the Mennonite guest house in Washington, D.C.; calls for volunteers at Mennonite summer camp. Even after the vote counters came back into the sanctuary with their official tallies, the announcement-makers kept going. “We need prayer, volunteers, and quilts—three things that Mennonites are good at,” one woman said.

Finally, the proceedings resumed. “The vote result is as follows,” Spory said. “72, yes, 70, no. The motion carries, with 50.7 percent.”

50.7 percent—that was the difference of one vote. The Allegheny Mennonite Conference had voted to keep Hyattsville in its midst—but only by rounding up.

Spory called for a moment of silence. As those in the church bowed their heads, a voice in the back of the sanctuary—a voice that sounded a lot like Steven Olivieri from Mill Run—called out, “God save you all.”

Before the vote took place, two congregations had already submitted letters announcing their withdrawal from Allegheny: Gortner Union Church in Oakland, Maryland, and Glade Mennonite Church in Accident, Maryland. Spory read the letters aloud, quick and businesslike. As she spoke, a representative from a third congregation, Red Run Mennonite Church, approached the podium with a letter—it, too, wanted to resign. In the last row of pews, seven people rose to leave the church—but not without first shaking hands with Jeff Jones.

Lapp and Burkholder made a statement, thanking the conference for choosing to walk with them. Earlier, Lapp had told me she was considering giving a different kind of message. “I don’t think I’m brave enough to mention this, but in one draft of my speech, I would say: In 10 years, we will thank the conference for disciplining us, because it has forced us to be clear about who we are.”

Up at the podium, the meeting leaders made a last-minute hymn selection to fit the moment. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” they sang, as still more people walked out of the church hall.
IV.Hymnal, a Worship Book, #311, “The Church’s One Foundation”

As people waited in line to grab their winter coats, Donna Mast cried.

“I was crying over the soberness of the day,” the conference minister told me, “over the reality that we are so deeply divided, but most specifically because we were saying good-bye and releasing from our membership three congregations that day. I was living with the knowledge that this probably is not the last of the congregations who will ask to leave.”

Being a person of any faith means finding a balance between taught tradition and the moral imperatives of modernity. In the Mennonite church, the call of the past is particularly strong across the theological spectrum.

“Sometimes I think those Lancaster Conference bishops had it right in the 1920s and 30s when they said no radios—nobody’s allowed to listen to the radio, because you’re going to get influenced by worldly music,” Lapp said. “Our congregation is quite traditional in our worship: We sing out of hymnals, we have an order of worship, and yet we’re seen as progressive theologically. I think that is actually true in many areas of the Mennonite church: The folks who have progressive theology are holding onto the tradition in terms of worship, wanting to get back to what it means to be Anabaptist.”

Even young Mennonites have a deep respect for tradition. “It’s frustrating to be mistaken for the Amish,” said Jacob Yoder, a 23-year-old from southeast Iowa who I met after services one Sunday at Hyattsville. But “in some ways, I’m honored when people say that, because I have a lot of respect for the Amish and very conservative Mennonites—there’s a lot that we can learn from them. There’s a lot of structure to Amish life that I see as valuable.”

But for the most part, Yoder and his Millennial peers don’t want to go back to riding horses and buggies and having debates over the length of sleeves. On the whole, the church is aging—as Kate Stolzfus, a 23-year-old from Ohio who’s currently working in D.C. for the Mennonite Voluntary Service, described her home church to me: “You look out, and all you see is a sea of white hair.” Whatever form it takes, the future of the Mennonite church will soon be handed to a smaller, younger generation—one that, in general, cares deeply about LGBT issues.

“In a way, [LGBT acceptance] is a surface-level issue,” said Brandon Waggy, a 22-year-old from Indiana, whom I also spoke with at Hyattsville. “Talking to some of my friends who have stayed in the Mennonite church, and some who haven’t stayed, there’s a frustration with how we handle conflict—that’s something that I think is especially frustrating to younger Mennonites. There’s this focus on peace-building—we’re going to solve everyone else’s problems, but we don’t do a good job with our own.”

Jones, Lapp, and Mast all said something similar when I spoke with each of them—there’s something paradoxical about a pacifist church that solves problems by forming schisms.

“The irony is that Mennonites are known around the world for the peace-making work that they’re doing,” Lapp said. “Yet within the Mennonite church denomination, we just struggle so much to figure out how can we bring those same principles to bear,” she said. “Mennonites certainly can be very passive aggressive to try to not be aggressive.”

Even though Allegheny didn’t choose to dissolve, its future isn’t clear. “I don’t know if it can hold,” Lapp said. “What we’re seeing at the conference level is really just magnified at the denominational level. It’s the same struggle: Financially, we can’t sustain all these institutions that we’ve built, there are people that are withdrawing. There are going to have to be hard decisions made.”

“The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord,” the Allegheny Conference sang at the end of its day at Springs. “By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed … Lord, give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee.”

“I think that’s one thing we’ve got going for us,” Lapp said. “We can sing together.”

*This article originally stated that Paul was the apostle in Acts 15 who said that the followers of Jesus should not make it difficult for gentiles who are turning to God. It was James. We regret the error.

Emma Green is the assistant managing editor of TheAtlantic.com, where she also writes about religion and culture.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/03/gay-and-mennonite/388060/

For gay newlyweds in some states, ‘limbo’ may last another year

David Masci
July 7, 2014

It has happened in four states so far, and may well happen in others – a kind of marital limbo where licenses have been granted and vows exchanged, but the marriages themselves have not been officially recognized.

The most recent instance occurred June 25 in Indiana, where hundreds of same-sex couples married during a brief two-day window created after a federal district court struck down the Hoosier State’s gay marriage ban, and before an appeals court put that ruling on hold. The Indiana newlyweds now join thousands of other similarly situated same-sex couples from Michigan, Utah and Wisconsin.

Supporters argue that marriages conducted while same-sex marriage was legal – even if only for a few days – are valid and should be recognized. But so far, most state officials have refused to recognize the marriages, citing ongoing court proceedings. In Indiana, for instance, the attorney general’s office stated that the status of same-sex marriage licenses issued during the two-day window is currently “undetermined.”