Barbelith Underground > Switchboard > CBS, NBC, UPN ban gay-tolerant church ad.

Developing story: UCC attendance overall may be up, but revenues are down—by almost half-a-million dollars—and 20 or so UCC churches have voted to sever ties with the congregation over its stance on homsexuality and gay marriage.

Also, rather ominously, the UCC has been targeted by well-funded right-wing groups bent on extinguishing all sparks of liberalism in mainstream Christianity:

“Groups like the Evangelical Association of Reformed, Christian and Congregational Churches and the Biblical Witness Fellowship are increasingly being exposed even as they are increasingly aggressive,” Thomas said. “Their relationship to the right-wing Institute for Religion and Democracy and its long-term agenda of silencing a progressive religious voice while enlisting the church in an unholy alliance with right-wing politics is now longer deniable. … United Church of Christ folk like to be ‘nice,’ to be hospitable. But, to play with a verse of scripture just a bit, we doves innocently entertain these serpents in our midst at our own peril.”

Bishop Thomas also brilliantly invokes the image of "the Good Son" in characterizing the response of disgruntled congregants:

We know there are those in our church who struggle out of their own sense of biblical integrity over the church’s welcome and affirmation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. But when I receive emails and letters from UCC members railing against such a welcome, angry that God’s gracious love is lavished on the unworthy, bitter that the church’s attention is being directed to the lost rather than to those who have faithfully tended the farm, then I sense the voice of the older brother in our midst. When I hear from UCC members and congregations who have assumed the role of arbiter over who has earned the embrace of the waiting parent, divine or otherwise, then I sense the voice of the older brother in our midst. When I receive emails and letters from UCC members and pastors furious because we have dared to speak on the way our political and economic institutions affect the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable among us, who demand to know why we mingle our faith with politics or economics, who wonder why we should sully ourselves in the pig styes of the far country, who admonish me and us to return to our proper work of managing the family farm, then I sense the voice of the older brother.

Press release and a link to the full text of Thomas's speech hither. This guy knows how to pick his fights, I'll tell you; If you can judge a man's worth by the quality of his enemies, then he's top of the pops.