COLUMN ONE : A Sexual Agenda at Churches : Major denominations are reappraising their positions on everything from homosexuality to premarital sex. Some fear the authority of the Scriptures is under assault.

As mainline churches try to reconcile notions of modern sexuality with Bible-based traditions, controversies are brewing over whether sexual “thou shalt nots” should be changed to “maybe thou can.”

“Sexuality is as powerful an issue now as slavery was in the 19th Century,” says the Rev. Marvin Ellison Jr., an ethics professor who helped draft a tradition-flouting report that urges greater sexual freedom for Presbyterians.

“There’s no question about it,” agrees pollster George Gallup Jr., who conducts annual polls on religious views. “The sex-related issues are going to be the most important issues facing all churches in the foreseeable future. Abortion, AIDS, premarital sex, homosexuality, all those are going to be at the vortex. . . .”

Until recently, churches have tended to grapple with specific areas of sexuality on an issue-by-issue basis; now, the trend seems to be to deal comprehensively with a wide range of topics. These include homosexual relationships and religiously sanctified same-sex unions, AIDS, the ordination of gays and lesbians, premarital and extramarital sex, women’s reproductive rights and masturbation.

Four major Protestant denominations have had special task forces studying sexual issues, and the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops recently released their first comprehensive guidelines on the subject. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is preparing a paper, to be voted on next year, that would challenge the traditional Christian position limiting sexual relations to heterosexual marriage.

Some religious groups are focusing on whether gay and lesbian candidates are fit for ordination to the ministry.

Last year, the Reform branch of Judaism began openly welcoming gay and lesbian clergy. Episcopalians are also debating the ordination question and will vote on the issue in July. A lesbian was ordained an Episcopal priest Wednesday night in Washington. In addition, a United Methodist study committee has recommended dropping the church’s condemnation of homosexual practice as “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

In addition to obvious changes in society, where is the impetus coming from to overturn the time-honored sexual standards of the churches?

Psychologists, sex counselors and religious professionals cite the increasing visibility and acceptance of gays and lesbians; a strong and vocal homosexual lobby within the major churches; the changing roles of women and the contribution of feminist theology; changing expectations regarding marriage, and an increasing perception that sex and spirituality are inextricably linked.

Those who see the reappraisal of sexuality as a positive step say it’s about time the church said something relevant to a culture that began experiencing a sexual revolution more than 25 years ago.

“It’s long overdue and very refreshing,” says the Rev. Marie Fortune, a United Church of Christ minister and executive director of Seattle’s Center for Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence. “It’s absolutely critical that we deal in some new ways with old questions.”

The Rev. Lloyd Rediger, a Minnesota-based Presbyterian who trains church sex counselors, agrees. The current church stir to rethink sexuality has come about “because so many people are asking what organized religion says about human sexuality. . . . The traditional theology . . . isn’t holding up under the gender revolution,” he said.

“We’ve had sex scandals, sex education in the public schools, the Kinsey Report, pop psychology. . . . The moral values of the church haven’t touched this. Now the church is saying we need to provide moral guidance.”

But this consciousness-raising process has tended to pit conservatives against the liberals: “Sexuality seems to be a yardstick for them to judge each other,” Rediger says.

Indeed, the opposition in many church circles has come with a vengeance. Within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., for example, conservatives--and many moderates--have responded with such indignation to the sexuality report that even its backers concede it will be soundly rejected at the national meeting now under way in Baltimore.

The Presbyterian report was opposed by a minority of its drafting committee; six members issued a separate dissenting paper. The majority, however, said premarital sex, homosexuality and bisexuality should be encouraged if the partners are truly consenting adults. “What matters most is not narrowly whether sexually active adults are married or not, but whether they embody (equal and just love) in their relating,” the majority report says.

Opponents of liberalization contend that, beyond pushing the limits of Christian moral teaching on sex, a deeper issue lurks: the authority of the Scriptures is being tested.

“Can we still trust the Bible’s teaching on sexual matters?” asks the Presbyterian minority report. “Contemporary conclusions from the social sciences, no matter how ‘objective’ they appear, and from changing social conditions, no matter how compelling they seem, which countermand the revealed will of God in Scripture, cannot be either true or according to God’s will.”

Joining in the chorus urging a speedy burial of the Presbyterian report, six former chief officers of the denomination said it “cuts us loose from our moorings in the Bible,” and the church’s statements of faith.

They and others point out that adultery is forbidden in the Ten Commandments, the basic law for the people of God cited in both the Old and New Testaments (Exodus 20:14 and Mark 10:19, among other references). Similarly, fornication, or sexual relations before marriage, is forbidden in both Testaments as are seduction, rape, sodomy, bestiality, incest and prostitution.

Many Bible scholars point to the Holiness Code in Leviticus, specifically Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, as the clearest references to homosexuality in the Old Testament. The first passage says “You must not lie with a man as with a woman,” (Jerusalem Bible version), and the second indicates that the penalty for this act is death.

In the New Testament, according to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the Apostle Paul says: “You know perfectly well that people . . . of immoral lives, idolaters, adulterers, catamites (boys used in sex acts by men), sodomites, thieves, usurers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers will never inherit the kingdom of God” (Jerusalem Bible).

Many who think the precedent-shattering Protestant proposals go too far nevertheless acknowledge that a wide gap exists between the official teachings of most churches and the sexual practices of the average person--including many of their members.

Divorce, for example, is spoken against in three of the Gospels--yet today it has become accepted practice even among conservative Christians.

Clifford L. Penner, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist in Pasadena, believes “that kind of dissonance can exist only so long and then you are forced to do something about it. You either come out strong on the side of the traditional church statements or you change the statements.”

Penner, whose practice is largely from within evangelical Christian circles, sees the mainline denominations attempting to align their positions with “what’s going on out there in society,” while the evangelical community is becoming stronger in its prohibition against sex outside of marriage.

But Dorothy Savage, director of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Family Ministries and Human Sexuality, thinks the 1990s are a time when “sexuality is up for grabs; there are no longer clean guidelines for helping people know what is healthy sexual behavior.”

And Chris Glaser of West Hollywood, a gay Presbyterian who was turned down for ordination in the denomination, says that pastors find virtually no guidance or spirituality available in the church for the increasing numbers of sexually active single adults they counsel.

“It’s time for the church to get real,” said Glaser, whose newest book, “Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians and Gay Men, Their Families and Friends” was published by the official Presbyterian publishing house.

“It’s time,” Glaser added, “to look at sexuality itself as a whole rather than piecemeal. . . . This is too fragmented an approach.”

Glaser makes the point that in the traditional religious view, sexuality had to be suppressed in order for spirituality to be expressed.

“Negative attitudes toward the body have filtered in through the centuries,” he said. “But sexuality and spirituality really walk hand in hand. . . . Feminist theologians are telling us that in fact we need to recover a sense of the erotic to fully experience the presence of God in our lives.”

Rediger, the pastoral counseling consultant, added that both eroticism and spirituality are a powerful form of God-given energy and “part of the same dynamic in human experience.” But both are “ripe for abuse if they are misused,” he said.

Also challenging traditional religious views of sexuality are the increasing numbers of older people who wish to establish “late-in-life” unions but not legal marriages. Many of these seniors want close companionship and sexual intimacy but hesitate to enter into a traditional marriage involving legal requirements, financial risks and caretaker responsibilities.

Moses Diehl of La Verne, a senior citizen, has proposed a “sacred union” that avoids “reducing one of the partners to a caretaker status at a period in life when they are least capable of giving such care.” He said he had seen late-in-life marriages “tragically end their purpose of union due to early mental or physical disabilities, primarily strokes or Alzheimer’s.”

Diehl’s ceremony is based on a written agreement about how finances would be shared. Vows are exchanged publicly before a member of the clergy. The couple does not promise union “till death do you part,” but rather, “so long as the mental and physical health of both of you permit a meaningful relationship.”

“I would be able to perform such a ceremony,” said Father Peter Dennis, pastor of Holy Name of Mary Roman Catholic Church in San Dimas. But he suggested “further legal study to prevent complications.”

The Diehl plan seems to be in conflict, however, with guidelines in the 121-page sexuality report published by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in February. The paper reasserts the church’s “clear teaching that sexual union is legitimate . . . only in the context of marriage. . . . We do not believe that cohabitation that simulates marriage is appropriate behavior.”

The report also considers homosexual activity immoral. Yet research by psychotherapist A. W. Richard Sipe of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine shows that 10% of all Catholic priests in the United States involve themselves in homosexual activity and about 20% have a homosexual orientation. It is estimated that 10% of the general population are homosexual in orientation.

The increasing numbers of homosexuals who are “out of the closet” and asserting their presence in the churches are forcing religious groups to wrestle with sexual issues.

“Seeing people who are both homosexual and Christian has caused the church to do some soul-searching,” says Frank Imhoff, an information officer for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is in the midst of its study on human sexuality.

Two Evangelical Lutheran congregations in San Francisco were suspended last year for ordaining and installing two lesbians and a gay man on their ministerial staff. The denomination presently bars practicing homosexuals from ordained ministry although that policy may be reviewed in 1993.

The current Lutheran study is focusing not only on same-sex relationships but also on abusive relationships that often occur within marriage, according to the Rev. Karen Bloomquist, who heads the task force.

The Episcopal Church in 1979 reaffirmed its traditional church teachings on marriage and declared that it was “not appropriate” to ordain practicing homosexuals. But at the church’s General Convention in Phoenix this July, a proposal will be presented that would leave the question of qualifications of all ministerial candidates--including homosexuals--in the hands of local bishops and diocesan committees. A counterproposal would effectively slam that door by encasing the church’s traditional language about sexual morality in a canon, or binding church law.

But the ordination of homosexual Episcopalians occurs quite regularly, although usually very quietly, church officials acknowledge. At the same time, All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena is going a step farther by implementing a proposal from the Rev. George Regas, the church’s rector, to bless same-sex unions, beginning as early as January.

If there’s any opposition among the members of this large and affluent church, they haven’t been speaking out.

“The issue was brought front and center over the years through a strong campaign of the gay and lesbian community,” said Louis Fleming, a member of the All Saints’ Task Force on God, Sex and Justice. “They gained open approval in the congregation a few years ago. . . . “

The United Church of Christ, which has ordained at least 10 acknowledged active homosexuals since 1980, leaves ordination up to its regional units. Only the small Unitarian Universalist Assn. and the Reconstructionist Jewish movement have removed all bars to homosexual clergy.

Gay and lesbian United Methodists, meanwhile, are criticizing the denomination’s Committee to Study Homosexuality for its timidity. The study, ordered in 1988, presently favors a statement that says the church “is unable to arrive at a common mind” about homosexuality being “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Affirmation, the Methodist homosexual group, maintains that Bible passages against same-sex loving relationships “have the same outdated credibility as those supporting white supremacy or condemning association with menstruating women.”

John B. Cobb, Jr., professor of theology at the School of Theology at Claremont, points out that if many Protestants are willing to accept divorce, they should be open to reconsidering, on similar grounds, other aspects of traditional church teaching as well.

But American religion expert Martin Marty of Chicago says that those who appeal to the authority of Scripture invariably acknowledge that divorce is “always tragic and represents sin and human brokenness,” even if it is the best alternative to an unsalvageable marriage.

On the other hand, the new texts proposed by the mainline denominations that would liberate sex from the setting of heterosexual marriage don’t start from the premise that this lifestyle represents “brokenness, sin or tragedy”; this is presented as an equally acceptable alternative, Marty said.

“People in the church look for anchors,” he concluded. They feel these statements have been assembled “in a remote process by . . . (political interest groups) that don’t represent them.

“Folks won’t vote for that.”