Baptist Ex-Leader Reaches Out to Gays

The former president of the Southern Baptist Convention stepped across a theological divide in Los Angeles on Friday and told 1,500 delegates to an international convention of the world’s largest homosexual church that the time had come to open a new dialogue that reaches beyond differences.

The unprecedented appearance of the Rev. Jimmy Allen, who led the nation’s largest Protestant denomination from 1971 to 1979, was loudly applauded by members of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.

But a spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, which has grown decidedly more conservative since Allen was its president, said that Allen’s appearance may alarm some Baptists who will worry that he may be “forwarding the agenda” of the predominantly gay and lesbian Metropolitan Community Church, which reports 42,000 members in 15 countries.

Standing before a lectern emblazoned with the church’s insignia and a large gay and lesbian rainbow banner as a backdrop, Allen told cheering delegates, “I felt God wanted me to be here!” He added, “We’ve been talking past each other and it’s time for us to talk to each other.”

Allen made clear that he disagreed with his listeners over issues of human sexuality. He said he continues to believe that homosexual acts are contrary to biblical morality. “Our theological perspectives are different,” he said. “But there’s something about what God does in the human heart that reaches beyond those differences.”

In an often poignant, sometimes tearful address, Allen, 71, said his willingness to enter into dialogue with Christian gay men and lesbians was born out of the crucible of his own family’s struggle with AIDS. He said one of his sons, Skip Allen, is gay and carries the virus that causes AIDS. He said the wife of his other son, Scott, was infected with HIV by a transfusion of tainted blood and that she passed the virus on to their two young sons. All three died.

Allen said he learned what it was like to feel rejected when his straight son, Scott, was fired as a pastor in Colorado when word got out that his wife, Lydia, and their sons were infected with HIV. One church after another turned away his grandchildren, who wanted to attend Sunday school, he said.

“I found out something about perfect love that casts out fear,” Allen said, his voice trembling. “In our case, fear cast out perfect love.” Then, in a line that brought the audience to its feet, Allen declared, “We all felt the shaft of pain to be untouchable. Nobody should be untouchable!”

It is a story that Allen has been telling for the past four years and has related in a book, “Burden of a Secret,” published in 1995.

But Allen’s appearance Friday at the Bonaventure Hotel marked a watershed in lesbian and gay churches’ ongoing efforts to win acceptability among mainline Christians. Also attending the conference was John H. Thomas, the incoming president of the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination that officially ordains non-celibate gay men and lesbians and approves of blessing same-sex unions.

The Rev. Elder Troy Perry, founder and moderator of the Metropolitan Community Church--and a former Southern Baptist pastor himself--said his church has long sought dialogue with other churches.

“We’re not going to give up on the Southern Baptists or Pentecostal or evangelical churches,” Perry said.

Still, he said the decision to invite Allen was not without some controversy. About 20% of his membership, Perry said, came from Baptist churches where they felt unwelcome because of their sexual orientation. But Perry defended the decision to invite Allen, whom he met a year ago at a conference in Georgia called by former President Jimmy Carter.

“After 30 years, if we’re not mature enough to hear from someone who disagrees with us theologically, then there’s something wrong with us,” Perry said.

But Perry and others said that based on the reception given Allen, any worries about a backlash among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members was unjustified.

Allen received a standing ovation from delegates who filled a large banquet room and broke into a traditional Baptist hymn: “On Christ, the solid rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

“I appreciated his honesty,” said the Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, senior pastor at the West Hollywood Metropolitan Community Church. She said Allen made clear that he has differences with the members of her church over sexuality and morality.