A shout rings out

Herndon L. DAVIS grew up Baptist. The son of a minister, he did not stray like so many who abandoned their Sunday morning churchgoing ritual as young adults. When he moved to Atlanta for graduate school and work as a financial analyst, he joined another Baptist congregation; he felt right at home.

Until that fire-and-brimstone sermon -- the one titled “When God Gives Up on You.” The one about homosexuals as an abomination. The one that had everyone shouting their approval, everyone rising to their feet. Everyone standing except Davis.

“It was almost like a battle cry,” he said during a recent interview in Los Angeles, his new hometown. He remembers wondering, “Am I about to get lynched?” as the congregation of his church roared and cheered “as if they were at a football game.”

On a recent Sunday, Davis prayed at Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in southwest Los Angeles, a spiritual oasis for black, openly gay Christians who are rejected on strict scriptural grounds by most African American churches. The packed service culminated the denomination’s national convocation, which met here the first week of October and attracted more than 200 elders, ministers, deacons, lay leaders and members of congregations in 13 cities, including New York; Detroit; Charlotte, N.C.; San Diego; Seattle; Phoenix; Baltimore; Atlanta; and Washington.

The 11th annual meeting came at a time when the relationship between black clergy and homosexuals is getting national attention as the presidential election draws near. In a break with the traditional African American Democratic alliance, a small but growing number of black ministers publicly backs President Bush because he champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and favors funding for faith-based initiatives.

Bush’s Los Angeles supporters include two prominent televangelists: Fred K.C. Price, pastor and founder of the Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles, and Bishop Clarence McClendon of the Full Harvest International Church, which holds services on the USC campus. African American Christians who belong to conservative Protestant denominations generally believe homosexuality is a sin because the Bible tells them so.

“They say the Bible is inerrant. There are absolutely no errors in the Bible. That comes out of Pentecostalism and the 19th century Baptist church,” said Gayraud Wilmore, an author and professor emeritus of church history at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.

He attributed the evolution of a fairly radical black church that fought against slavery to today’s more conservative institutions to several factors, including a growing class consciousness as more African Americans join the middle class or become affluent; emulation of Southern white Protestant evangelism, with its emphasis on saving souls; and a large number of black ministers who lack seminary training in biblical studies and exposure to contemporary interpretations.

A new book, “Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in the Black Church,” due out from the Pilgrim Press next year, will challenge the anti-gay tenets held by many black denominations. The author, the Rev. Horace Griffin, a former Baptist minister, left the church, he said, in part because of “the black homophobia in the black Baptist church.”

Fiery sermons condemning homosexuals -- the rule rather than the exception at many black churches -- can make being black, Christian and gay untenable, said attendees of the national convocation. Growing up in a church is often not enough to protect a worshiper who comes out from being cast out. In the very pews where African Americans find sanctuary and acceptance, homophobic religious tenets can subject gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians to ostracism, overt hostility, deep hurt and intense suffering, according to those who attended the conference.

Of course, there are black clergy who either openly welcome gay members, don’t make a big deal about those who attend or subscribe to a philosophy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Griffin said in a telephone interview from Evanston, Ill., where he teaches pastoral theology at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary on the campus of Northwestern University and where he will be ordained an Episcopal priest.

“Since most African Americans are in the more conservative traditions -- Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Holiness -- they will maintain that traditional view that homosexuality is immoral,” Griffin added.

He said he finds “few arenas where the dread and condemnation of homosexuality is more noticeable than in black church settings”; however, he pointed out, “There are churches like the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church that speak on the record that gays and lesbians are equal in the eyes of God.”

‘A child of God’

Archbishop CARL BEAN founded Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in L.A. in 1985. Steeped in black liberation theology, which calls for justice and equality for all, the Rt. Rev. Bean bases his sermons on a progressive interpretation of Christianity, preaching that God is love and love is for everyone. The church on Jefferson Boulevard, with a congregation of about 500, is a hybrid, at least stylistically, of the Baptist church in which Bean grew up and the Church of God in Christ.

In the early days of the church, Bean says, the Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray “was the only preacher who invited me to his church,” the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South L.A. “He invited me because he saw a child of God, not a gay child of God. He dared to do it in his church before his people. He invited me to come over and tell them about [AIDS] because he knew ‘some of my babies are having sex.’ ... I was so lonely. I wasn’t invited to any ministerial alliance, but Chip changed all that.”

As part of his ministry, the year Bean founded the church he also formed the secular Minority AIDS Project to provide services for the increasing number of black men, women and children who are HIV-positive. Back then, civil rights leaders and public health officials pleaded with black ministers to address AIDS and its heavy toll on African Americans. But many preached that the disease was God’s curse on homosexuals.

“Undertakers used to call me because ministers wouldn’t bury them. They wouldn’t go to the hospital to visit them, God’s children. They didn’t think how this would hurt the parents, the sisters, the brothers,” Bean says.

He held those funerals at his church.

As his denomination began spreading to other cities, Bean began holding a national convocation, a spiritual homecoming, with daily services at the mother church, religious-themed activities and workshops.

A liberating interpretation

At a session on “Coming Out: Christian and Same-Gender Loving,” held during the recent gathering in Los Angeles, many participants recalled how when they revealed their sexual orientation, Bible-quoting parents prayed for their deliverance from homosexuality, told them they could no longer attend church and led them to believe that God no longer loved them.

“My grandfather was a Baptist minister. I got a sermon: ‘You know you’re going to hell,’ ” said B.J. Williams, a member of the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Los Angeles. “They knew I was saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit, but my grandfather told me I couldn’t speak to my cousins. And if I wanted to come to his house to see my grandmother, I had to call in advance, get his permission and I could only stay 30 minutes.”

She no longer maintains contact. “I can’t keep getting hurt and browbeat with the Bible,” she said.

.”One of the most popular workshops at the convocation, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” started with a prayer, then challenged the conservative interpretation of certain texts, such as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, comparing them to scriptures once used by whites to justify slavery and verses cited to support second-class status for women. Rejecting a literal reading of the laws of Leviticus, which reference homosexuality, the Rev. Jacquelyn Holland, from the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Newark, N.J., put the scripture in the context of when and where it was written. “The Bible was written at a particular time, by a particular group of people,” she said. “It speaks to their culture and to some of their history.”

Calling for a liberating interpretation of the Bible, the panelists also addressed texts in the New Testament.

“Jesus never said one word about homosexuality. The only thing Jesus said was to love everybody,” said the Rev. Benita Ramsey, the minister of the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Riverside. “When Jesus died on the cross, the old laws went away. If you are in a loving relationship, God loves you.”

Griffin, the theology professor, said that only six books in the Bible address homosexuality. “What I raise in my work is, generally African American Christians have chosen those passages selectively.... The Bible is addressing homosexual activity without an understanding of how we view homosexuality in the 21st century.

“We would certainly not say they had slavery in the Bible, and it was not condemned so we should follow the mode of Abraham and Job,” he said.

Addressing how women are treated in some scriptures, Griffin said, “We have moved beyond the text of women [being] inferior to men.”

The conservative interpretation of the Bible favored by most African American congregations presents obstacles for black, gay Christians. “There are a lot of black same-gender-loving people who are oppressed by the Bible,” said Jasmyne Cannick during a break between workshops at the convocation. As a result, she said, they don’t go to church, although “black people as a whole are spiritual people. When things go wrong, we pray. We pray on a daily basis. I know black gay people who don’t feel that they can pray to God, that they can call on God for help. I know black gay people who actually do believe they are going to hell.”

The communications director of the Black AIDS Institute, she also belongs to the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Los Angeles. Armed with her church’s biblical interpretations, she stands up for her beliefs.

“When you have a discussion, people ask, “ ‘What Bible are you reading from? You must be reading from the gay Bible,’ ” she said. “So it’s important when you have these discussions that you invite people to come and bring the Bible that they use on a daily basis, and dissect that Bible, dissect that scripture with them.”

A black gay rights activist who travels three weekends a month to speaking engagements, Cannick keeps her opinions to herself in only one place, the home she shares with her grandparents in Gardena. “My grandfather believes it’s an abomination,” she said, quoting him: “ ‘God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.’ ”

At church recently, she stood and said, “Pray for me to give me the strength to have this conversation with my grandparents. If I’m out to the rest of the world, I believe I have the responsibility to be out at home.”

Her friend Herndon Davis doesn’t have that problem. “My father is a pastor, a Baptist minister. He has preached for 50 years,” he said. “He accepts me unconditionally. He may not agree with it. He may not condone it. But he accepts me unconditionally. He has traditional views, but at the same time, he has unconditional love for his son. So does my mother.”

Davis moved to Los Angeles seven weeks ago to promote his self-published book, “Black, Gay and Christian,” available locally at Matais Books, Cards and Art in Long Beach, and has been visiting different churches.

“My intention is to eventually start challenging people about what they say. If it means going to a homophobic church and sitting through another [homophobic] sermon, I’ll do that. If you don’t challenge a mainstream organization, change will never happen.”