FIC Blog

What? I’d blog about these items even if my last UCC post wasn’t named “today’s hottest comment section” yesterday by Blognetnews.com or even if Sitemeter wasn’t registering FIC Blog at 1,031 average per day visits. Honest. 🙂

Anyway, the Courant piece linked to on Monday mentioned only four state churches that left the UCC in the two years since its last General Synod adopted an official pro same-sex “marriage” position.  Nick at Pray CT noticed another one that same day: the church in Franklin. And I had been meaning to mention this June 11th story in the Rep-Am:

PROSPECT–A “hemorrhaging” congregation decided Sunday to step back from its April decision to perform civil unions and give itself a year to evaluate the issue more fully…

At a church meeting on April 22, a group of 32 voting church members decided 17-15 to allow civil unions in the sanctuary, reversing a decision from June 2005 where the congregation opted to ban the unions.

“The church hemorrhaged in response,” said the Rev. Phyllis Norman, with three members withdrawing from the church following the vote. “And I don’t use that word lightly.”

Many donations were also pulled as result and the congregation was split apart over the issue of civil unions, which have been legal in Connecticut since October 2005.

Norman said she was pleased that so many people came to Sunday’s meeting, especially considering the low turnout to the vote in April. About 100 people showed up, and agreed for the most part to postpone the civil union policy. Only two people objected to the idea.

The article goes on to quote one pro same-sex union church member implying that his fellow congregants are not as “enlightened” as he is (how “opening and affirming” of him!) and to note that there are 119 UCC clergy in the state willing to perform civil unions but only 34 parishes that have adopted the denomination’s pro same-sex “marriage” slogan. As noted in the previous thread, there are many orthodox Christians in the UCC who are saddened by the liberal drift of their denominational leadership and are praying for better days ahead.

In the June/July 2006 issue of First Things Fr. Richard John Neuhaus made this onservation:

You may have seen the United Church of Christ television ads that show racial minorities, homosexuals, and handicapped people being rocketed out of church pews in conservative churches by the use of “ejector seats.” This is in contrast, of course, to the very inclusive United Church of Christ which welcomes everybody. In the last four decades, United Church of Christ membership has declined from 2.2 million to 1.2 million. And that’s without the use of ejector seats.