Word: cleveland
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...unfold," he said. "I bury my head in prayer. I cannot witness what is about to occur." As 5,000 delegates looked on, Solomon's head did drop to the lectern. Minutes later, a squad of uniformed police entered from the wings of the Convention Center stage in Cleveland, Ohio, and arrested 27 gay-rights protesters, including two bishops, charging them with disrupting a lawful meeting. As the protesters filed out, many delegates, even those who had just voted three times against gay-rights proposals, watched in tears. Everyone knew the police had been at the ready and that...
...this week as the Presbyterian Church (USA) convenes in Long Beach, Calif. Few expect the Southern Baptists to ordain gays or the Reform Jews to legislate against them, but the traditional liberal denominations are almost violently torn. The three proposals whose passage prompted the civil disobedience and arrests in Cleveland--bans on gay ministers and holy unions, as well as a clause stating that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching"--prevailed by votes of roughly 2 to 1. That kind of majority is satisfying in electoral politics, but alarming in groups that regard themselves as constituting the body of Christ...
...last week when she donned the stole and the chasuble of her new office, on the day when her Episcopal bishop installed her as the dean of Cleveland's grand Trinity Cathedral, the Very Rev. Tracey Lind took a moment to think back on Sunday School, which in her case took place in a Reform synagogue. As a child, she had been half-Jewish, half-Christian, and the rabbi, who was teaching about the Holocaust at the time, glanced up shrewdly and asked, "Tracey, you could have passed. Would you have died for your faith or denied...
Slender, California-breezy and prone to corny gay humor, the Rev. Mel White, co-head of the roving protest group Soulforce, seems a bit lightweight at first. But he has a powerful life saga, and was willing to get arrested not just in Cleveland in May and in Orlando, Fla., in June (Baptists), but plans to do likewise in Long Beach in July (Presbyterians) and possibly in Denver a week later (Episcopalians). The only transdenominational figure on the scene, he will establish the nightly-news rat-tat-tat for the entire season of contention. His attitude toward the various denominations...
...Soulforce. For six years, White steeped himself in the confrontational nonviolence taught by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He courted the heirs and icons of his newfound field--Gandhi's grandson Arun, King's daughter Yolanda and his strategist James Lawson--and they joined him in Cleveland, along with several hundred multidenominational gays, lesbians and transgendered persons wearing T shirts emblazoned with THIS DEBATE MUST END--WE ARE GOD'S CHILDREN TOO. Of these, 191 helped White block a Convention Center exit and went to jail, an act of "redemptive suffering" intended as a Christian witness...