UCCtruths

Hoping to strike a balance between black and gay voters, presidential candidate Barack Obama enlisted Andy Sidden for his controversial Embrace The Change gospel tour. It would seem, however, that Sidden’s not entirely uncontroversial.

The North Carolina-born Reverend (pictured, looking creepy) once worked with the massive gay-founded Metropolitan Community Church. In July of 2002, while working as a pastor at South Carolina’s MCC-Columbia, Sidden campaigned to join the ranks of MCC’s elders. He didn’t get his wish. Less than one year later, the United Church of Christ - an equally inclusive church - asked Sidden to lead their pack. Sidden agreed.

In doing so, however, Sidden may have inadvertently destroyed MCC - Columbia.

I also very much regret the way our denomination learned of our Columbia congregation’s possible desire to disaffiliate. We received no direct word from the pastor or board of directors, but rather read of their plans in the press. A more direct and communicative approach might have offered more possibilities, or at least offered appropriate closure as a parish and its parent denomination parted company. That all parties were denied such closure is something that I regard as unfortunate.

My final concern and regret over the situation is that the United Church of Christ did not contact the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches regarding our church in Columbia. Had the UCC used us as an information resource in this process, we could have shared information that the UCC might have found useful.

As recently as July of 2002, Andy Sidden stood for election to MCC’s Board of Elders, our denomination’s spiritual leadership body. Mr. Sidden failed to achieve the required votes in both the Lay and Clergy houses to be elected and soon thereafter became the pastor of his present church. So it has only been three years since Mr. Sidden went from wanting to help lead the denomination to possibly leading a parish out of the denomination.

There has been a clear strategy by the UCC to pull MCC churches into their fold. The UCC has been dealing with their own loss of churches (the greatest of any Protestant church last year) and have been trying offset those losses by targeting MCC churches. This doesn’t mean that the former MCC churches didn’t come to this conclusion on their own, as Frank clearly states, rather they are probably unaware that they were targeted by the UCC.

When the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas decided to leave their denomination (the Metropolitan Community Churches) for the UCC, did we consider that a conspiracy? Some peripheral facts might lead you to think as much - after all, they began conversation with the UCC at least 18 months before joining, they were headed by a UCC minister and they were embroiled in their own internal, divisive politics. In the end, we respect Cathedral of Hope's decision because we respect a local church's ability to discern for itself what is best for it's members. It wasn't a conspiracy. Whether we like it or not, our polity gives local churches this freedom to make these decisions.