The largest U.S. Lutheran church group is about to begin a detailed discussion at the grass roots level on a policy change that would enable people in same-sex relationships to become clergy. Between now and June the debate will spread over some 65 synods covering the 5-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

These meetings will produce comminiques which will be sent to the church’s convention in August where a final decision will be made on issues that have nagged the church and other denominations for years.

The ELCA’s current policies allow gays to serve in the ministry but not engage in sexual relations outside marriage — and the church defines marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

But possible changes advanced this week when the Church Council, a top governing body, approved with only minor revisions recommendations made by a task force  after a lengthy study.  Those recommendations will go before a membership convention in August, after input from the synods which are beginning their meetings this month.

The task force report asks whether the church wants to find ways to recognize life-long, monogamous same-sex relationships, and if so whether the church is committed to finding a way for people in such relationships to serve as clergy. There are other recommendations and proposals on how the process would work, but the first two steps have drawn the most attention.

ELCA officials said they foresaw “an extensive church-wide discussion” in the synods which elect delegates to the convention whose 1,000 members will be 60 percent laity and 40 percent clergy, and the debate reflects shifting societal attitudes towards gays in general and their role in the church in particular. 

Lutherans Concerned/North America, which speaks for gays in the church, said it was “pleased but cautious” with where the issue has advanced.

“For the first time in the history of our church, a recommendation for the elimination of the policy of discrimination against ministers in same-gender relationships will come to the floor of the church-wide assembly, brought by the church-wide organization itself,” said Emily Eastwood, executive director of Lutherans Concerned/North America.

(Photo: Same-sex issues have been big news in America in recent months. Two men walk hand in hand outside the California Supreme Court during a Proposition 8 demonstration in San Francisco, California March 5, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES)

Last month I visited Mount Athos, a self- governing monastic state in northern Greece where some 1,500 monks live according to rules which have changed little in the last millennium. Athos’ 20 monasteries are considered by the world’s 300 million Orthodox as perhaps the second most holy site of their faith, after Jerusalem. They are home to breathtaking religious art and thousands of manuscripts dating back to the Byzantine empire, as well as priceless relics, like fragments of the True Cross, believed by the Orthodox faithful to have performed countless miracles.

(Photo:Simomos Petras monastery at Mount Athos/Daniel Flynn)

For many Orthodox it is the fulfilment of a long-held dream to visit the rugged Holy Mountain — but not if you a woman. Women are completely banned from the 300 sq kilometre peninsula and any breach of this strict rule is a criminal offence in Greece punishable by up to two years in prison.

Ramadan television always throws up some controversy or talking point in the Arab world, but never of the nature of this year’s talking point. Hardline Saudi religious scholars are saying enough’s enough on the fun and frolics of Ramadan television and demanding trials for TV channel owners that could impose the death penalty.

What’s more, these owners are in fact Saudi royals and their friends. The main culprit is MBC1, owned by a brother-in-law of former King Fahd, but others include billionaire playboy prince Alwaleed bin Talal, dubbed by the religious right in Saudi Arabia “the shameless prince” (al-amir al-majin). The clerics in Saudi Arabia have enormous influence and they are worried that liberals in government and their royal allies are plotting to caste them aside and secularise the country.

It is unlikely that Alwaleed or the family of Fahd’s sister are worried about the attacks. They live in a world apart of palaces, servants, private planes and cruise ships in France and probably no one could get near them if they tried. The clerics were careful to talk about a legal process in any case. In fact, one of them, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, said specifically that he wasn’t calling for vigilantes to take the law into their own hands.

For Saudi clerics, the process is all, since they have the unique privilege in the Islamic world of sitting as judges in the Sharia court system. That is the very definition of the Islamic state in their eyes. It’s not the first time the religious establishment has condemned liberals in any case. Even Osama bin Laden singled out Labour Minister Ghazi Algosaibi — a poet, former ambassador to London and confidante of the king — in a taped message from his hideout on 2006 attacking a liberal “fifth column” at home. But Algosaibi and other punching bags of the Islamists survived.

Interestingly, most Saudis would probably say Lohaidan and co. have a point. Everyone complains about cheap jokes and sexual innuendoes in some Saudi comedy shows on TV after sunset during Ramadan. Most would say that the “sorcery” channels on Arab satellites are wrong. But it’s a vague tut-tut of disapproval delivered in the knowledge that the clerics’ ability to stand up to the temporal power of the Al Sauds has always been limited despite their loud bark (the most notable modern example being the way they were forced to sanction the presence of US troops on Saudi soil to eject Iraqi troops from Kuwait). People will nod in agreement that “immodest” and “immoral” television must stop, but not fully compute the fact that for the clerical puritans “sorcery” includes horoscopes that so many follow and the romantic soap operas from Turkey that their wives are hooked on.

A popular Arabic saying has it that “the dogs bark but the desert caravan rolls on.” It is a notable shift in the socio- political landscape of Saudi Arabia that this is how a significant portion of the population now view the once all-powerful clerics.

Regarding those romantic Turkish soap operas — they’re a hit across the Arab world. Riyadh staffer Farah al-Sweel wrote about the hit series “Noor” a few months ago. The Algerian daily Le Quotidien d’Oran recently ran a story about its effect there, including warnings by imams not to watch such immoral fare.

Part of the attraction for female viewers seems to be the heartthrob leading man, Kivanc Tatlitug. Here he is in a scene, dubbed into Arabic, where he visits his wife Noor in hospital.

Sydney is not a city famous for protests. In fact, people usually only get angry at traffic congestion, if their football team loses on the weekend or if rain stops them hitting the city’s sandy beaches. But Sydneysiders have become angry and many are aiming to vent their spleen at Pope Benedict and pilgrims attending the Roman Catholic Church’s World Youth Day here this month.

Except for a handful of people promoting the safe sex message of using condoms, nobody was publicly planning to protest during the Pope’s first visit to Australia. Australians mostly come from a Christian background and Catholics make up the biggest congregation.

But now every man and his dog seems to be planning to take to the streets in protest. What changed?

Sydneysiders believe their civil liberties have been crushed with police introducing tough new anti-protest powers for the papal visit that allows them to arrest and fine people A$5,5000 (US$52,885) for annoying or disturbing Catholic pilgrims. Wearing a T-shirt with an anti-Catholic message or handing out condoms can break the law. Police have asked anyone planning to protest to send them photographs of their banners and what they will be wearing so they can be approved.

“I’ve had it up to my rosaries with my city…Thou shalt not annoy or trespass on World Youth Day,” Bianca Nogrady wrote in protest to the Sydney Morning Herald. “This is religious oppression. Despite being a contented heathen, I am driven by sheer outrage to take up the mantle and T-shirt of every other religion and march proudly through the streets of my secular city.”

The anti-protest laws cover hundreds of city precincts, like cinemas, schools, train and bus stops, and allow police to partially strip-search people.

Before news of the extra police powers, most Sydneysiders were merely annoyed at the traffic inconvenience of World Youth Day, which organisers say could attract 500,000 pilgrims. Now talkback radio is jammed with irate listeners and newspapers have been flooded with letters and emails from angry people, many who now say they will protest. “World Youth Day arrives and roads are closed, parks cordoned off and traffic tipped to be a nightmare, but if we wear a T-shirt that might annoy the visitors we cop a A$5,500 fine. Jesus Christ,” wrote Andrea Kerekes.

Sydney is Australia’s gay capital, annually hosting the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, one of the world’s biggest homosexual parades and festivals, and the new laws have been mocked by the city’s gay community. “So Catholics can protest a gay parade, but we can’t protest Catholics,” declared one angry radio listener.

Doctors are also angry that the new police powers could stymie the safe sex message of using condoms. “We intend to hand out condoms to young people on World Youth Day. These draconian laws are a public health risk. Governments of this country agree condoms save likes,” wrote two doctors in The Australian newspaper.

One T-shirt seller has started a World Youth Day design competition which has produced several protest T-shirts, such as “$5,500 A small price to pay to annoy Catholics” and “WYDO8. We close 300 roads so 300,000 can close their minds.”

What do you think of this? Has Syndey gone too far in protecting the Pope?

The “virginity lie” case gripping France for the past two days has given French politicians the opportunity to indulge in one of their favourite pastimes — expressing indignation. There’s been much more heat than light in this story since it broke last Friday.

If you haven’t been following it, the story is about a French Muslim couple who got their marriage annulled after the husband complained the wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be. Since he could not have cited either religion or the traditional Muslim preference for virgin brides as valid reasons for annulment, the husband’s lawyer argued the wife had lied about an “essential quality” necessary for the marriage. Under French law, a marriage can be annulled if, for example, one partner found out only after the wedding that the other had lied about a previous marriage or a criminal record.

Politicians, feminists and human rights activists immediately demanded the ruling be overturned. The critics vied to issue the most ringing denunciation. “A real fatwa for women’s liberation … (like) a ruling handed down in Kandahar” was a memorable one from Fadela Amara, the state secretary for urban affairs who comes from an Algerian Muslim family. Here are many more in French. By Monday, Justice Minister Rachida Dati — another cabinet member with a North African Muslim background — was flip-flopping. After originally defending the ruling as a means of helping a woman get out of an unwanted marriage, she decided on Monday to ask a public prosecutor to launch an appeal.

The news today was that the erstwhile husband and wife both accept the ruling and do not want an appeal that would make them a legally married couple all over again and force them to replay their separation through a longer and more costly divorce process. The woman’s lawyer said she was furious. “I have to get on with my life,” he quoted her as saying. “I don’t know who decided that they would think for me. I haven’t asked for anything. It feels like I’m hallucinating.”

Almost nobody but the couple and their lawyers want the ruling to stand. But almost nobody is actually thinking through the implications of what they’re demanding.

Most critics want the ruling overturned for one or several of the following reasons:

• it violates a woman’s privacy by making virginity a possible criterion for marriage.
• it violates sexual equality because no proof is asked of a groom’s virginity.
• it introduces a religious concept of the virgin bride into the secular marriage contract.
• it treats the bride like merchandise in a commercial transaction.

These are all valid arguments. Unfortunately, the result of a successful appeal would be to restore the marriage of a couple who do not want to be married, especially not after the drama they went through. As was widely reported, the hoodwinked husband discovered his wife’s lie on their first night together and went right back to the wedding reception, which was still in progress, to announce the news…

Simply overturning the ruling would also leave on the books the paragraph in the civil code that allowed it in the first place. Several hundred marriages are annulled in France every year because of the “essential quality” clause, and nobody’s saying this should be scrapped. Some critics have said the other criteria — such as hiding a previous marriage – were OK but a woman’s sex life must remain completely private. There is probably a way to amend the code to accommodate that, but the legislators will have to get around another problem. Male impotence is currently accepted as a criterion for annulment. Should that be private too?

One of the few politicians who seemed to look beyond a knee-jerk reaction was the straight-talking health minister, Roselyne Bachelot. While explaining her position, she made some statements that might surprise people outside of France. But her comments still made a lot more sense than most others:

“This is a topic that cannot be resolved in court,” she said. “What one ruling has done, another can’t simply undo. Now, it’s an issue for national legislators. Parliament is where all this should be decided.

“It’s true that the notion of a ‘fundamental quality’ is something that, in the case of virginity, may have been widely accepted … in the 19th century or in the early 20th. Morals have changed and that’s fine. So I want parliament to pass a law to define these characteristics.”

She rejected the argument that the wife’s lie was the central issue. “The right to lie is a fundamental right of human beings. The issue at the heart of this is the notion of a fundamental, substantial and essential quality.”

Nadine Morano, the state secretary for family affairs, warned against seeing this as a Muslim issue. “People say it’s a Muslim family, but I also know many families of practising Catholics for whom this element remains an essential quality for both the man and the woman.”

“No matter what anyone says, the decision handed down by the court in Lille conformed to the civil code. Should we make a law and say we cannot include virginity as one of the essential qualities of a person simply because we see that it creates inequality between men and women?”

Any suggestions about what French lawmakers should do once the soundbite phase of this story is over?

The June issue of “Harper’s Magazine” has a provocative essay by Garret Keizer called “Turning Away From Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church.”

The split in the global Anglican Communion over the consecration of the openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson and the broader issue of the church’s take on sexual orientation and other social issues in general has been extensively reported on.

These fault lines are partly but far from exclusively geographical, dividing more traditional churches in the developing world — especially Africa — from those in the developed world. It threatens to undermine Anglican provinces like the Episcopal Church in the United States by creating competing authorities within them, one for a more liberal majority and another for a conservative minority.

Dissecting the jargon of the conflict, Keizer sees parallels between the corporate world and the shifting currents of globalization. “What is ‘provincial realignment,’ at bottom, if not the ecclesiastical version of a corporate merger? What is ‘alternative oversight,’ if not church talk for a hostile takeover?,” he writes, seeing these comparisons in the methods rather than the motives of those involved.

He also chimes in on a theme that has been raised in different ways elsewhere by others in dicussions of America’s Religious Right: “How does a Christian population implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night? Apparently, by making a very big deal out of not sleeping with Gene Robinson.”

Keizer is an Episcopalian, former priest and contributing editor to Harper’s.

The Anglican split will be back in the headlines in coming weeks as Gene Robinson marries his partner, conservative Anglicans meet in Amman and Jerusalem and the Anglican Communion — minus some conservatives led by Akinola — convenes for its once-every-ten-years Lambeth Conference. What do you think the Anglican Communion will look like after this rocky patch passes?

It has been spoken of as a setting for schism. But could the Lambeth Conference — the worldwide Anglican Communion’s once-a-decade global meeting beginning July 16 in England — be a bust when it comes to headline-making news?

That’s the way leaders of the U.S. Episcopal Church see it. There will be no grand pronouncements made or resolutions voted on, they say. The traditional Western parliamentary idea that produces winners and losers on debated issues has been scrapped for face-to-face meetings. Some of them have been baptized ”Indaba groups,” which Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has described as a Zulu term denoting “a meeting for purposeful discussion among equals.”

The Rev. Ian Douglas, a professor of World Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts who helped plan the meeting, recently told reporters at a briefing:

“I appreciate that it’s going to be a hard job for the media because there isn’t a focal point of up-down decison making, and that (much) of what’s really happening … is going to be happening in very small, very close one-on-one relationships and deep conversation.

“I  don’t envy your job. It’s going to be difficult to get ‘the story’ out of Lambeth unless you want to tell the story that as leaders come together to be better equipped in their service to God’s mission in the wider world,  not only is the Anglican Communion strengthened but God’s purposes are better fulfilled in the wider world. It’s a tough story to tell but I think it’s a story.”

The 1998 Lambeth Conference did produce news — a resolution known as Lambeth 1:10 that said homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture. That pronouncement became a major part of the splintering now going on in the worldwide church after the American branch in 2003 installed the first the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of Anglican history — Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Robinson was not invited to this summer’s meeting at Canterbury though he plans a fringe presence — after he weds his long-time partner in June.

The news at Lambeth ‘08 then may be more about who doesn’t come. Already 280 conservative bishops from Africa, Latin America and Asia have said they will attend a break-away summit in Jerusalem in June to “prepare for an Anglican future in which the Gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centered mission a top priority.” They expect about 1,000 conservative Anglican leaders to attend.

Bishops from Uganda, Kenya and Australia have said they plan to boycott Lambeth, to which more than 800 bishops have been invited. Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, a leader among the traditionalists, has said he may also skip Lambeth.

Douglas, in the briefing mentioned earlier, said the hope is that the bishops who attend the meeting in Jerusalem will also go to Lambeth. There is, he said, “no fear or concern” that the Jerusalem summit is an exclusionary Lambeth alternative.

Much of this reflects Anglicanism’s structure where federation trumps hierarchy. The Episcopal News Service noted at one point that there is no complete agreement on when any resolution passed by a Lambeth Conference becomes official church teaching. The Lambeth meetings, which date to the 19th century, do not have specific authority to require compliance with their resolutions, it said.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who joined Douglas at the briefing, also has a long-term view. One of the first Lambeth Conferences well over a century ago, she said, was called “to deal with issues like bishops teaching things that other bishops found uncomfortable, and bishops wandering into other bishops’ territories and how do to we transfer clergy from one part of the communion to another.

“And we still haven’t sorted that out. The gathering will continue to wrestle with some of the challenges of living together in a compex, diverse and sometimes challenging family. That is God’s gift to use and we celebrate it,” she said at the briefing (view webcast here).

It also reflects Anglicanism’s diversity, with half of its 77 million members now in Africa, Asia and Latin America, many with conservative views on issues that go deeper than just those involving gays. In terms of numbers, the bishops organizing the Jerusalem meeting claim to represent 17 countries and 35 million followers.

The road from Jerusalem to Canterbury will be closely watched.

UPDATE: The trial ended in stalemate on Feb. 29 and a retrial is due in a few months. Murphy-O’Connor was not called to testify.

The British papers are all over the story of the libel suit brought by former spokesman for London’s Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor against the Daily Mail. The tabloid wrote in 2006 that Austen Ivereigh, 41, had pressured one former girlfriend into having an abortion and wanted another to abort twins she was carrying (she later miscarried). He flatly denies the charges and accuses the Daily Mail of making him lose his job and his reputation. The story broke at a time when Ivereigh was an active Church campaigner against abortion.

The case opened in court on Monday and Ivereigh has been on the stand giving his side of the story. He admitted he did not always live up to Church teaching (on sex before marriage, for example) but strongly denied that he proposed abortion and insisted that he, as a practising Catholic, opposed it.

The story has all the elements for lurid headlines and snap judgments — sex, abortion, the Catholic Church, charges of hypocrisy, “he said/she said” accusations, libel and the link to a “prince of the Church.” The second woman in the case is referred to only as “Madame X.” The cardinal is due to take the stand next week and the press section is sure to be packed. It’s not often that such a senior Catholic prelate gives testimony in court.

The lawyers for both sides came out swinging. Ivereigh’s lawyer told the court that his client was “threatened and baited like an animal” by “journalism at its most personally destructive and vicious.” The lawyer for the Daily Mail told Ivereigh: “You were behaving hypocritically, contrary to the beliefs of your church and in a callous and cruel way to both these women.”

Full disclosure: like many other journalists covering religion in Europe, I dealt with Ivereigh when he worked for the cardinal and found him to be an intelligent and informative spokesman. I have no special insight into this case and have no idea how the court will finally call it.

That said, this trial comes against a background of years of highly publicised cases regarding Catholic priests abusing young boys. This one is different because it’s about adult heterosexual lay people. Still, the Catholic connection is strong. Do you think this case will be just as damaging for the Church?

It’s been less than a month since an underground movement of gay Orthodox Jews in Israel went online and already tens of thousands of people have visited their Web site.

The site is called HOD (for Homo’eem Dateem or Religious Homosexuals), a play on the Hebrew word hod for glory. It’s the first to cater to gay men living in Israel’s ultra-orthodox Jewish minority, where homosexuality is viewed as a sin and people are often scared to admit publicly they are gay, fearing harassment or banishment.

Of course, not all of the online visitors fit into that category, said Rabbi Ron, one of the site’s creators. The site was flooded after local media reported on its inception and Ron, a gay Orthodox rabbi who asked that his last name not be mentioned, was interviewed on Israeli radio.

The Web site, written mostly in Hebrew but with pages in English as well, was the first of its kind and broke the taboo of discussing homosexuality from within the ultra-orthodox sector.

“Our main goal is to bring the religious gay community, as well as rabbis and leaders of the religious communities, relevant information and articles concerning our issue,” HOD says in its English-language section. “This way, we hope to reduce the hate towards homosexuals in the religious society. Moreover, HOD is your place to publish your opinions, stories and anything else you wrote related to this issue.”

Rabbi Ron told the Jerusalem Post the site aimed to break down stereotypes and foster dialogue: “We want religious people to know that we want to adhere to Halacha. But we also want them to understand that a homosexual is born the way he is and has no choice … Judaism’s main emphasis is on actions. We understand that, and we are not asking rabbis to permit anal sex or to make any changes in Halacha. We just want basic understanding.”

HOD is not the first website aimed at religious gays, Itay, one of the founders of the site, explained to Ynet : “Up to now the only website catering to the religious gay community was Atzat-Nefesh (here in Hebrew and English ), which was basically run by straight people that publicly stated that a religious person cannot be gay. They tried to ‘turn’ gay religious people straight, which is something that we know cannot be done. We try to help people reconcile their religious beliefs and their sexual orientation.”

This month, Israel’s attorney general ruled that same-sex couples are allowed to adopt children that are not biologically connected to either parent. The decision expanded the legal rights of gays and lesbian couples in Israel, where the Rabbinic Court has jurisdiction over marriage. Haaretz quoted a religious cabinet minister as calling the ruling “shocking and disgusting”.

The creators of HOD take a pragmatic approach in their attempt to gain acceptance from ultra-conservative religious leaders. By breaking taboo, they hope to gain awareness, which is the first step towards acceptance, Rabbi Ron said. Once that is done, maybe they can tackle the issue of making orthodox Jewish law less stringent, he said. The Web site declares: “You cannot ignore us any longer.”

When Pope Benedict expressed his closeness to victims of AIDS in advance of World AIDS Day on December 1, one thing was conspicuously absent from his comments — either a specific mention or a reference to the use of condoms.

The Pope, speaking at his weekly general audience on Wednesday, called for increased efforts to stop the spread of AIDS and said victims of the disease should not be treated with disdain. He criticised international agencies he said were spreading abortion. The C-word was not present in either in letter or spirit in his two-paragraph comments in Italian.

When his predecessor John Paul spoke of AIDS, whether he was speaking in the Vatican or during his trips abroad, he often mentioned, either directly or indirectly, that condoms were not the answer.

The Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms in general because they block the possible transmission of life and teaches that fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence are the best way to stop the spread of AIDS. It says promoting condoms fosters immoral and hedonistic behaviour that will only contribute to its spread. It teaches that homosexual acts are immoral in the first place.

In fact, the Catholic Church’s position on the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS has never been made totally clear or definitively pronounced.

Perhaps by not mentioning condoms, Pope Benedict has decided to take a more subtle approach to the problem.

In recent years, several top Church officials have called for a change in Vatican policy on condoms to allow their use by married couples where one partner is affected by HIV or AIDS. But the Vatican has so far been loath to issue any document that could be interpreted as a green light for the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS, fearing it would endorse promiscuity.

Little has been heard about a possible Vatican document recently. In November, 2006, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Vatican’s Council for Health Pastoral Care, told reporters a study commissioned by the Pope had effectively passed its first hurdle.

“This is something that worries the Pope a lot,” Barragan said of AIDS at the time. The study, which Barragan at the time said was carried out from both a scientific and moral point of view, had been passed on to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and would eventually be passed up the Pope for his use as he saw fit in a document of his own or a pronouncement. It is not clear at what stage the document is now but perhaps, judging by the Benedict’s words, he has decided not to confront the issue the way his predecessor did — at least for now.