Not surprising; I figured this day would eventually come.
In a historic vote, the United Church of Canada has elected its first openly gay moderator.
After six ballots and nearly eight hours of voting at the church’s 41st general council in Ottawa Thursday, Rev. Gary Paterson emerged from a record field of 15 candidates to win the top job at Canada’s largest Protestant church. He is thought to be the first openly gay person to head any mainstream Christian denomination.
The 350 voting commissioners at the general council greeted the announcement with cheers and a prolonged standing ovation, and quickly voted to make Paterson’s election unanimous.
He wasn’t the only homo running, either:
Paterson was only one of three openly gay candidates for the moderator’s job.The other two were eliminated early, as was Rev. Tom Sherwood, an Ottawa minister who served as Carleton University’s ecumenical chaplain from 1999 to 2009.
And his ‘husband’ was the first openly gay ‘minister’ in the UCC, two decades back:
In 1992, the United Church ordained Tim Stevenson, currently a Vancouver city councillor, as its first openly gay minister. Today, the church boasts many gay and lesbian ministers, and the issue is no longer contentious for most United Church members.
Paterson is married to Stevenson, who has been his partner for 30 years. After the election results were announced, Stevenson joined Paterson on the Dias and the two embraced as attendees cheered and applauded.
Paterson, who has been an ordained minister for 35 years, also has three daughters from his first marriage, now all in their 30s.
They really should rename their denomination ‘Sodomites and Feminists ‘R’ Us’, because every UCC minister one comes across seems to be either a woman or a queer, these days…
Other matters of importance at this year’s general council included taking a stand against an oil pipeline, a proposal to boycott Israeli goods, and a proposed resolution on condemning gossip. {Yawn} I haven’t seen any word in the media on what they decided about the boycott or gossip, but it’s not like it really matters, anyway…
IOW, the United Church continues its slide into irrelevance, ignoring its impending collapse, ignoring the huge decline in membership, just like other mainline Protestant denominations…
And with this decision, they will only exacerbate their problems.
Good, I say! They have a deathwish; let it come upon them, and soon.
Will S.
August 17, 2012 at 5:26 am
I was raised in the UCC, which I’ve mentioned at this blog before. But I left it twenty years ago, when I realized how far they’d departed from God’s Word, and haven’t once regretted my decision, at all.
DC Al Fine
August 17, 2012 at 5:55 am
I went to a UCC service once with an ex-girlfriend who attended there. The woman minister literally preached a sermon on how the resurrection didn’t happen. I walked out 10 minutes into the sermon and that was all I needed to hear from the UCC
Carnivore
August 17, 2012 at 8:25 am
It’s an interesting attitude and very similar to the government. Is it a matter of not seeing the collapse or not wanting to see it? Is it hubris, stupidity or both? It’s probably just a matter of being very difficult to admit one’s position is wrong. The red pill is always hard to swallow.
BTW, what’s a moderator?
chesterpoe
August 17, 2012 at 8:31 am
I wonder how their sermons regarding Sodom and Gomorrah are like? How can they be so Christian as to become ministers and moderators while completely denying the Biblical texts concerning these damned cities? I suppose they either do not see it as sexual condemnation or they would speak out against it. If the latter is true, then how can someone be Christian and deny the validity of any part of the Bible without simultaneously denying the validity of YHWH? (This is not to say one cannot view parts of biblical text as allegorical, which has been done by faithful since Saint Augustine)
This is just one more reason I am glad to call myself Catholic. We may have a lot of problems, but openly sodomite priests and women in Church authority are not among them.
Will S.
August 17, 2012 at 10:10 am
@ DC Al Fine: Yes, the United Church has sunk that low; it wasn’t that bad yet during the years I belonged (I actually came to a saving knowledge of and faith in Christ through solid teachers in it), but in the two and a half decades since they not only decided homosexuality was okay but that they would immediately start ordaining gay ministers, it has come to the point where one can deny cardinal doctrines and still belong – as long as you endorse their politics, of course. Sad.
@ Carnivore: The moderator is the head of the UCC. Quite an uninspiring, bureaucratic title, isn’t it?
I really think they’re blinded by their progressive ideology; one could use the blue pill analogy, in that they really just don’t see things as they are. Oh, they do to a point; they can’t deny their declining membership: they’ve had to sell several old church buildings and amalgamate congregations together just to keep afloat (in my hometown, there once were eight UCCs, now there’s only three or four, AFAIK), but they say that’s okay, they’ve got better quality, more committed members – an argument I’d possibly endorse for a solid denomination, certainly, if they were preaching Biblical truth and still declining, because that does happen in solid denominations, for various reasons, though I still think a solid church denomination in that position should do some serious self-examining too – but it’s absurd, in their case, esp. how they take grandiose political positions on things as if they still were the giant church with the clout they once had, when they’re now a shadow of their former self… It’s pathetic. Truth be told, I don’t think they’ll pack it in till they’re down to one single church somewhere, and then that one folds, so they may limp along forever, but I hope not. I want to see mainline liberal Protestantism literally die out.
@ chesterpoe: Oh, they either (a) won’t bother preaching Sodom and Gomorrah at all, or other texts they now fail to understand, or (b) will somehow reinterpret it and them in a novel fashion; for example, some try to argue that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was failing to treat guests to their land in a hospitable fashion, or that it merely was about rape, forcing such guests against their will to have relations with them – but then they have to ignore the other, clear texts against homosexuality elsewhere, in Leviticus (they’ll say that’s Old Testament law so doesn’t apply any more) or in Paul’s letters (they’ll say that’s just Paul’s interpretation, and we’re not bound by it, because it was a cultural bias of Paul’s day, and no longer applies, etc.)
As you can see from DC Al Fine’s anecdote, one no longer has to believe in the Resurrection, or that Christ is God (a moderator a decade and a half or so back actually denied Christ’s Divinity and Sonship). As for YHWH, no doubt in their estimation he’s a kindly non-judgmental figure who accepts everyone, provided they have the correct (i.e. left) political views, of course.
Yes, the problems of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and confessional Protestantism pale beside those of liberal mainline Protestantism, who have really altogether left the historic Christian faith, and are either heretical at the least, or apostate at the worst, as far as I’m concerned.
DC Al Fine
August 17, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“Yes, the problems of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and confessional Protestantism pale beside those of liberal mainline Protestantism, who have really altogether left the historic Christian faith, and are either heretical at the least, or apostate at the worst, as far as I’m concerned.”
It’s apostasy. They were heretics when they started ordaining women 40+ years ago. If a minister can deny the resurrection or the divinity of Christ and not be defrocked, they are apostate in my eyes.
Will S.
August 17, 2012 at 3:34 pm
I’m inclined to agree, in the case of the UCC, DC Al Fine. Other liberal mainline Protestant denominations, I might for the time being, withhold judging, till I learn more or till they more explicitly deny the most important doctrines, and I hear about it. But I still condemn them as having strayed very far…
Chris
August 18, 2012 at 2:34 am
The trouble is that those damned Canadians come over to NZ and OZ… suddenly apply for jobs in the still functional (barely) Presbyterian and Anglican churches and start the rot all over again.
The reasons that the Presbyterians and Anglicans are still functional are (a) there are confessional standards… just (b) both churches have evangelical wints (c) both churches have large minorities that are celebrated (multiculturalism is so politically correct) but are quite anti-gay and anti-women.
The poor gays and women that get the B.Theol here have difficulty getting “callings” to churches.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 2:40 am
Sorry you Antipodeans have to deal with our lib / radfems, Chris. That sucks…
Glad to hear that your Presbyterians and Anglicans still manage to hold the line, at least to a degree, anyway…
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 3:21 am
The Sydney Anglicans hold the line on women ministers. The other dioceses not so much. Historically, the Anglican Church in Sydney has been “low” and evangelical. Also the richest, although a friend who knows about Sydney told me they lost a lot of money recently. Historically not very friendly to us Papists, there has been a lot more working together recently on issues like gay marriage (against of course), with the third leg being provided by the Muslims, some of whom are quite chummy. (There are Muslims at my daughter’s Catholic high school. And a mosque dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Melbourne, as a friendly gesture.)
Abp Jensen and Cdl Pell in Sydney seem to have a friendly working relationship. They are the two “weightiest divines” in Australia.
Chris, who are the anti-poof, anti-chick minorities? Where I am we have quite a few Sudanese Anglicans. I can’t imagine they are big on gays or girls in the pulpit.
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 3:23 am
The Presbyterians here are those who did not join the Uniting Church in Australia. The latter do some good work socially but they are a bit dodgy theologically.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 3:31 am
Thanks for the clarification re: the Aussie situation, David. Good on that Sydney Diocese, anyway…
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 3:40 am
Will, the Sydneysiders took a lot of flak on the woman question. Abp Donald Robinson got a lot of grief over it. I have the honour of having appeared as an author in St Mark’s Review, the Australian Anglican journal, years ago in the same issue as Robinson. I was a bit surprised they published him because it is a trendy little publication.
If you are ever interested in Sydney’s Anglican and convict past, you might enjoy reading up on the Revd Samuel Marsden, the Flogging Parson of colonial Sydney.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 3:44 am
No doubt they did take flak, what with the zeitgeist…
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 3:50 am
The Presbyterians in Australia actually turned the clock back and defrocked (refrocked!) the women ministers they had several years ago. Tough on the women. For some reason though, a local kirk has a woman minister. Don’t know how that works.
I met an Afghan Hazara refugee recently. He is a Shi’ite, as are most Hazaras. He told me that the only proper mosque here, which is Sunni, wouldn’t provide the funeral rights for a local Shi’ite.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 3:55 am
But they’re now ordaining them again, it would seem, if that local church has one…
Hey David, here’s a post for you (and Kathy), at my other blog:
http://happolatismiscellany.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/australias-nanny-state-laws-result-in-stupid-outcomes-too/
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 4:02 am
Interesting article. Australia is much tighter and more regulated than it was when I was a kid in the 1960s.
But my sister-in-law, an Army psychologist, says Australian men are still hard on women. So maybe that hasn’t changed completely. At my Catholic boy’s school, we were actually given a textbook that said that women are inferior in some senses to men. That was in about 1970.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 4:06 am
As I’ve said before, despite Australia’s relative isolation, and therefore higher degree of insulation thus far, from many social and political trends affecting the rest of the Anglosphere, nevertheless, they are coming…
This guy does a good job of tracking such, as well as trends in Britain and America:
http://ozconservative.blogspot.ca/
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 4:09 am
But you must know that, as he’s on your blogroll, too…
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 4:10 am
I should get some sleep. 🙂
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 4:36 am
Yeah, I know that bloke and I have been on his blog commenting. As you know, I don’t think Oz will go so far. The current female PM is so bad that she has set the feminist movement back twenty years. The blogger Social Pathologist thinks we are not as susceptible to feminism as the rest of the Anglosphere, and I think he is right. I have written at my blog on why this may be, based on our original ethnic makeup. Also, we are isolated on our remote island and that keeps us intellectually isolated to some degree. We sort of missed the 19th century. Perhaps that is why, as my SIL said, it is very nearly socially acceptable for a man to punch another man, for a good enough reason.
I agree with my sister-in-law that Australian men have a more generally dominant attitude to women than some places. I think we have a pretty good society in that regard, a mild patriarchy. I was very amused by a National Geographic cover article on Australia, not that many years ago, which had an illustration of an Australian man and his son with a caption expressing the hope that Australian men might start seeing women more as equals. That kind of thing makes me feel like The Other. It was like watching the English TV program Wire in the Blood recently. The protagonist was going on about those Catholics and their habit of naming children after saints, with names like Vincent. To the English, us Catholics are colourful tribesmen.
A certain amount of jocular male chauvinism is more acceptable here than in many places. Also Oz women seem a bit humbler and less pretentious than in some countries.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 8:45 am
You all are certainly lucky, indeed, thus far.
David Collard
August 18, 2012 at 8:55 am
I hope you got some sleep.
Will S.
August 18, 2012 at 8:56 am
Some. 🙂
electricangel
August 20, 2012 at 6:34 pm
@DC,
Revd Samuel Marsden, the Flogging Parson of colonial Sydney.
I see an opportunity for the first Christian porno! Sadomasochism for Christ, and all that.