The answer, they decided, was to be together. They spent a year studying Scripture on their own and setting up house in a cozy trilevel in the suburbs. They found a new church, where they attended Bible study, joined prayer groups and went to potluck suppers at the pastor’s house. They remained closeted at first, but last spring they called the pastor with a brave request. They were lesbians, they told him, and they wanted, finally, to live their Christian lives honestly. They asked for his blessing to come to church as a couple on Easter Sunday, to hold hands and show affection. The minister told them not to return. “It was the final rejection,” says Kunst, 46. “It broke our hearts and our souls.”
Dejected, the couple gave up on finding a church until they saw a listing in a gay circular for Fellowship United Methodist, “a diverse and welcoming church.” With Easter just a week away, they decided to visit. Tucked off the road, in a prim upper-middle-class neighborhood in Troy, Mich., the tiny church looked very traditional. The congregation consisted of mostly older, button-down and carefully coifed married couples and widows. But the pastor wore a rainbow stole, a symbol of diversity. And members seemed genuinely friendly. After church Kunst put them to the test. She nervously introduced Meeker as her “partner” and steadied herself for the rebuff. Instead, the strangers responded with warm hugs and offers of coffee and bagels. The two women broke down and cried.
For Fellowship, welcoming Kunst and Meeker was a broad leap after years of baby steps. Built in the 1960s, the ethnically mixed church had long taken pride in its diversity. But that didn’t include homosexuals until six years ago, when the congregation needed an organist. Bruce Grayden, a former high-school music teacher and men’s chorus leader, had just the right experience. When the church offered him the position, he made an announcement to the pastor and choir: he’d take job, as long as they could accept that he was gay.
His stance sent anxious murmurs through the congregation. After all, the United Methodists, like most other mainline denominations, taught that homosexuality was immoral. A handful of families angrily left the church in protest. “I hated that it was because of me,” says Grayden, 70. “But I had lived two lives before, and it was just too damned dangerous.” The dust soon settled, and Grayden became an integral part of the congregation. When the church was in line for a new minister two years ago, members told the district superintendent they needed a pastor who was accepting of gays.
They got more than they bargained for in the Rev. Marjorie Munger, a straight minister who campaigns for gay rights. A soft-spoken wife and mother of two, she accessorizes her pastor’s garb with iridescent gay-pride stickers, includes lessons on homosexuality in her sermons and lists the church in gay magazines.
With Grayden, the congregation could maintain a safe comfort level. He was just one man, and his partner didn’t come to church. It was easy not to think about his homosexuality. Munger’s openness on the issue made even the most welcoming members uncomfortable. “Initially we thought, ‘Oh, boy, is she going to preach about the gay issue every week?’ " says lay leader Robin Ostergaard. “As a parent, I tossed back and forth about whether this was the right church to bring my kids up in. But in the end, this is our family, and you don’t just leave your family. You work things out.”
And that has meant education. Last fall Munger held a six-week series on homosexuality and the church, examining Scripture, the United Methodists’ official positions and the real-life experiences of gay Christians. Only about 10 people–half gay, half straight–attended the frank, sometimes tearful discussions. But as each session ended with clasped hands and a prayer, the group was drawn closer together. “It got me past the idea that homosexuals are sinners,” says Ostergaard. “I realize now that this is not something you choose or you can willfully change.”
Not everyone has come so far. The congregation coexists happily now. There are just a handful of gays among the church’s 130 members. But some worry Munger’s open advertisements are courting too much attention. “People are afraid that we’re going to become a gay church,” says Ginny Read, 75, a member for 26 years, and an advocate of welcoming gays. (A small, vocal contingent in the church worried that NEWSWEEK would portray the congregation as gay.) “Who am I to say that someone can’t come and hear God’s word?” said one member, who asked not to be named. “But none of us want this to become an overriding issue in the church.” Gay church members agree. “We could go to an all-gay church. We didn’t want that,” says Craig Schwarze, 39, who started attending Fellowship last spring with his partner, Joe Rorick. “We didn’t want all the politics. We just wanted to come worship like everyone else.” Still, they want the church to back them up. The couple, who have been together for five years, had a holy union last August in a private ceremony at their home, performed by a minister from Metropolitan Community Church, a gay church that operates without official recognition. Munger attended, but could not officiate, for fear of losing her ordination. (The Methodists defrocked one minister and suspended another last year for performing holy unions.) Eventually Schwarze and Rorick would like to see the Methodists and other mainline denominations change their laws.
So would Munger. In May the United Methodists will debate their position on gays at a major denominational meeting. Munger will attend as a supporter of the Reconciling Congregation Program, a reform group within the Methodist Church that advocates full acceptance of gays. As delegates file into the meeting, she’ll be handing out testimony cards with brief biographies of Christians rejected by the church. Among them will be a card telling the story of Sylvia and Linda. “Right now the church is intricately involved in creating a climate of spiritual violence,” says Munger. “If you don’t say anything at all, then you allow the voices of hate to be the dominant voices.” Still, she says she will never push her congregation past its comfort level. For real growth, she believes, the whole church has to move together as a community.
At Ash Wednesday services last week, Sylvia Kunst and Linda Meeker sat in the dimly lit sanctuary reflecting on the blessings of the past year. As the one-hour service drew to a close, and the small gathering of parishioners quietly sang “Have Thine Own Way, Lord, Have Thine Own Way,” Kunst glanced down at the Lenten lesson booklet, which read “From Fear to Love,” and gently took Meeker’s hand. “I know these people are struggling, but they have opened their hearts, and my woundedness is dissipating,” said Kunst after the service had ended. “I had lost my faith, and they have welcomed me home.” With that, she put her hand on Meeker’s shoulder, and the two stood side by side, silent and content.
