Churches That Minister Gays Bid to Join Council

The Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination that ministers to the homosexual community and professes orthodox Christian beliefs, is making a renewed effort to affiliate with the National Council of Churches seven years after its initial application was indefinitely postponed.

In a letter earlier this month, the council’s General Board was asked to consider the issue at its 1991 meeting. In 1983, the council considered the Los Angeles-based church’s application for membership, but voted to postpone a decision indefinitely, an action that left the council’s position ambiguous.

Supporters of membership interpreted the postponement as leaving open the possibility of joining at a future date. Opponents said the postponement constituted a “polite no” to the denomination.

The vote was taken about a week after some of the NCC’s nine Orthodox member denominations, which strongly oppose homosexuality, threatened to leave the council if the Metropolitan Community Churches were admitted.

National Council members subscribe to a constitution that describes the 32-denomination body as “a community of communions, which in response to the Gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord.”