From: Interfaith Working Group Subject: IWG Inquirer Religious Liberty/Diversity letter Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 23:19:15 -0400 (EDT) July 5, 1998 The Philadelphia Inquirer PO Box 8263 Phila., PA 19101 Dear Editors: We are always happy to see accurate portrayals of religious diversity in the media, but Mary Rourk's July 5 article could not be called accurate in that she oversimplified the past and present and ignored the possibilities for the future. Rourk does not understand how religiously diverse this country is. She ig-nores Unitarian-Universalists, Quakers, Anabaptists, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches and Unity Fellowship Churches; and makes no distinction between the various movements in Judaism, or the various denominations from liberal to conservative calling themselves Presbyterian, Lutheran or Baptist. A Philadelphia Yellow Pages can show anyone how religiously diverse we are. Rourk concentrates on a membership decline in "liberal Protestant chur-ches," but the president of "the second-largest evangelical seminary in the country" is not going to be unbiased. Conservatives have claimed that this decline is due to an acceptance of equality for sexual minorities and women, but congregations that have wholeheartedly embraced equality rather than merely "addressing" these issues are doing well, as is the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, which has a primary outreach to sexual minorities. Most opinion polls have also indicated a steadily- rising acceptance for equality in society as a whole which runs counter to a the trend in conservative Christian churches. Rourk ignores the very real possibility that such controversies will arise in those churches, too. The web page of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (backed by many of the same Religious Right leaders as the Promise Keepers) has a story about Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois (called "one of the nation's largest and most influential churches") adopting an "egalitarian" gender policy. And recently there was an expulsion of a Southern Baptist congregation for its favorable policies toward sexual minorities. We were very surprised that Rourk did not mention the obvious tension between a steady increase in religious diversity and the rise in power of conservative Christian organizations that want to entangle church and state and refer to the United States as a "Christian nation." This is seen especially in the majority vote in the House of Representatives for an amendment to religious freedom and recent comments by legislators about homosexuality and the Bible. Our religious liberty will be preserved and our religious diversification will continue only if we preserve our constitutional protections of free exercise of religion, the ban on establishment of official religion, and equal protection under the law regardless of our own religious beliefs or others' religious beliefs about us. Sincerely, Barbara Purdom Christopher Purdom Interfaith Working Group Coordinators The above letter went out on IWG letterhead listing 15 congregations and organizations and 58 clergy from 15 religious traditions. If you are in the general Philadelphia area and represent a congregation or religious organization or are clergy, let us know if you want to be added - all faiths are welcome. We will also be happy to help start similar organizations in other areas. -- Interfaith Working Group Religious organizations, congregations iwg@libertynet.org and clergy supporting gay rights, http://www.libertynet.org/iwg/ reproductive freedom, and the 215-235-3050 separation of church and state.