Spirit of a Liberal

Whew!

There’s a reason I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been busy.  660 double-spaced pages.  173,871 words.  829 endnotes.  But, now the manuscript for Gays in the Pulpit is complete, and I have sent it off to Pilgrim Press, the publisher.  To be sure, there will undoubtedly be further revisions based upon editorial feedback, but I have reached a significant milestone in the process.  I think that the timeline of Pilgrim Press is for a release in the summer/fall of 2013.

In the early-spring of 2011, I thought about using some of the hundreds of Spirit of a Liberal blog posts as the core of a book, but that idea soon morphed into a much broader project.  Rather than just writing about the ELCA decisions of 2009, I would go back to the beginning of LGBT activism within the Lutheran predecessor bodies.  That idea, too, soon mushroomed into a pan-denominational historical retrospective of each of the five principal mainline denominations (United Church of Christ, Episcopal, ELCA, Presbyterian, and Methodist) .  Later, while lunching with early Methodist activist Mark Bowman, he rightly suggested that I was taking on a “huge universe.”

I sent queries to the major denominational publishing houses.  Pilgrim Press of the United Church of Christ expressed interest but said it would be after the first of the year (2012) before they would seriously look at the project.  I started writing anyway, but didn’t get very far before a residential move from Northfield, Minnesota to Arlington Heights, Illinois interrupted the process.  Settled into the Chicago suburbs by October 1, I had forty or fifty pages written by Thanksgiving, and by February Pilgrim Press had accepted the project.

Contacts with leadership of the various gay-advocacy organizations in each denomination resulted in “leads,” and one led to another.  I have benefited from face-to-face interviews with iconic figures in each denomination.  Private collections of early documents have been graciously shared.  Many early pioneers have offered assistance via phone calls and emails.  Still others have fact-checked my writing.

One of my early concerns was that I was an interloper, a straight man writing a gay history, but the support I have received has calmed my apprehensions.  A common refrain has been that these are stories that need to be told.

I have been thinking a lot these days of our lesbian, gay, and bisexual sisters and brothers and supporters who have gone before us to bring us to this time and place. I wish that I knew more of their names. I wish I knew more of their stories.

I have been moved to tears by the poignancy of the stories, and my ongoing worry is that my retelling does them justice.  Conflict and celebration.  Hope in the face of despair.  Struggle for human dignity.  Stay tuned.

In 1620, a group of dissidents departed England aboard the Mayflower for the wilderness that would become Massachusetts and religious liberty.  Their pastor encouraged them to keep their hearts and their minds open to new ways in the new world because God “hath yet more truth and light to break forth out of his holy Word.”

The Pilgrims had been printers and publishers who incurred the wrath of King James the 1st before they left England.  Twenty years after they established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a printing press arrived from England, and the first American religious publication was the “Bay Psalms Book” in 1640.

Of course, the religious progeny of the Pilgrims would become a central feature of American educational and religious life.  Three of their earliest colleges became Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, my alma mater.  When I attended college, the UCC church in the center of Hanover, New Hampshire was known as the “White Church”—not for racial reasons but because it was painted all white.

The UCC and her predecessor church bodies going back to the Pilgrims boast many “firsts”, including a stand against slavery 150 years before the civil war, support for the Boston Tea Party, the first African-American ordained minister, the first female pastor, and the first gay man to be ordained in 1972.

And, the progeny of those original publishers would continue to offer cutting-edge religious publications  through the centuries.  Three centuries after becoming the first religious press in the colonies, The Pilgrim Press would publish the first book of a young, black minister of the south, Martin Luther King, Jr.  The Pilgrim Press, like all religious publishing houses and the publishing industry generally, has cut back in recent years.  Currently, they are only accepting 15-20 manuscripts annually for publishing.

And, I am pleased to announce that my book has been selected by Pilgrim Press for publication next year.  Gays in the Pulpit will be a look back at the historical journey of the mainline churches toward full inclusion of the LGBT community.  The manuscript is about 70% complete.

Well, at least for the moment.

I have been pouring hours and hours into my book project, Gays in the Pulpit.  My working draft is now over 170 pages, which is probably half.  And the stories!  And the people!

Chicago is home to Reconciling Ministries Network—the Methodist LGBTQ advocacy group–and I have visited with Troy Plummer (their director), Pastor Bonnie Beckonchrist (their board chair), Pastor Morris Floyd (activist in the 80’s and 90’s), and Mark Bowman (original founder).  Bowman is also the director of LGBTran Archives, which contains biographies and more about leading LGBTQ icons.  Turns out I already knew Steve Webster of Madison, Wisconsin who organized the first Methodist gay caucus back in 1975.

Thanks to these excellent resources, my draft includes chapters covering the Methodist history up to around 2000.  The Methodists are the remaining holdout among the five principal mainline Protestant denominations.  The others (ELCA, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ) all ordain gay clergy, but the upcoming UMC quadrennial General Conference may change that.  It’s close, with US delegates firmly on board, but because the UMC also has delegations from Africa, the Philippines, and elsewhere who tend to be very conservative vis a vis LGBTQ issues, the US delegates may need around 65% positive to offset the likely 90% negative from outside the US.  The Conference is scheduled the end of April in Tampa, and I’m thinking I may attend and do some live-blogging as I did during the historic ELCA Assembly in 2009.

I am also up to around the year 2000 in my ELCA chapters.  Chicago is home to both the ELCA archives and the Lutherans Concerned (LCNA) archives.  I recently returned to Minnesota and had a delightful lunch with Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart of the famous extra ordinem ordinations in San Francisco in 1990, and I have been in email correspondence with Pastor Jim Siefkes (who organized the first Lutheran gay caucus back in 1974), Jeannine Janson (who compiled a booklet containing early LCNA history), Amalia Vagts (the director of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries), and others.

Louie Crew, the founder of the Episcopal group Integrity, has been very helpful during phone conversations and email correspondence.  His stories also go back to the mid 1970’s.  I have  exchanged emails with Ellen Marie Barrett, the first Episcopal lesbian priest way back in 1977, who provided a poignant look back at the pain of rejection but also the triumph—“I am a priest forever!”  My Episcopal chapters go  to around 1990.

The Presbyterians and the UCC still require a lot of work—those chapters only cover the very early 1970’s.  I have been in touch with More Light Presbyterians and the UCC Coalition, but I now need to follow up on the leads they have provided.  Retired dean of the United Theological Seminary Clyde Steckel has been helpful with early information about the UCC.  Trips to Cleveland and Drew University in New Jersey are likely in the offing, which is where many key persons and records are located.

In addition to these contacts, I have also kept the nearby Arlington Heights Library busy with dozens of inter-library loan requests.  Many official records of national church conventions are available online as well.