Less these Findings sound inconsequential or repetitious to you here, just remember that these were spoken to the Protestant churches of this country and Canada only a year ago and are still echoing in denominational offices, seminary classrooms, and individual parish offices. Many more ramifications are yet to be felt within organized religion because of this one conference and the subsequent Findings and book. The homosexual community can be grateful that it had so able a spokesman in Dr. Evelyn Hooker. Another friend of Mattachine, Wardell B. Pomeroy, also participated in this conference and subsequent book.

Having noted some positive efforts affecting the relationship between religion and homosexuality, let us now look at some of the negative acts in this same ten year period between 1951 and the present.

While we have just noted a few limited spots of dialogue we must recognize that the vast majority of the Church in America is not yet concerning itself in any but a negative way with homosexuality. The basic reason for this failure, I believe, is that for most of the Church-leaders and congregation-homosexuality is not yet a profoundly personal experience. This is not to say church leaders and members are not homosexuals, statistics belie that; but I am saying that the relationship between religion and homosexuality has not yet become acute enough for the Church to bestir itself. As it has in so many other areas, here too, the Church avoids the seriousness of existential participation. G. K. Chesterdon is credited with having said, "Nothing is real unless it is local." For most of the Church homosexuality remains in the realm of the un-real because the Church continues to say, "No one in our parish or community is so involved."

The negative, almost hostile, reaction of the President of Union Seminary to my address to a segment of his students and faculty on "The Church's Ministry to the Homosexual" was, indeed, a sad experience. Not because I was personally involved but because Union is recognized as one of the foremost liberal seminaries in the country and if its students cannot enter into a dialogue between religion and homosexuality without incurring such presidential ire then what can we expect from the more conservative seminaries?

To bring the negative attitude of the Church right down to the present there is the illustration of the Rev. Dr. Stuart Bergsma's article in the June 8, 1962, Christianity Today, a conservative Protestant journal. Writing on "The Pastor and the Psychopath" he says' that the homosexual who refuses to cease being a homosexual must be refused thei privilege of coming to the Sacrament of Communion. This displays both an ignorance of homosexuality and a failure to plumb the depth of Chris-

mattachine REVIEW

tian ethics. But such men and their writings are still the predominant voice in contemporary American Protestantism.

The Church should long ago have formulated a position on its relationship to homosexuality. Now it is suddenly being brought face-to-face with the matter (through modern communication media if in no other way) and it still doesn't know what to do. On an insecure mixture of Sodom, cult prostitutes, and St. Paul the Church has historically been antihomosexual. The penitentials offer some 'frightening reactions of the Church to confessions of homosexuality even to denying Communion at death and burying alive. Little wonder the spiritually lost homosexual passes the Church by, the one source where he could find redemption. More seminaries are giving psychiatric examinations to determine that candidates for admission are not homosexuals. This, I understand, is a denomination-wide policy of the United Lutheran Church. Che shudders when he reflects upon the alteration of Church history had all homosexuals been screened out before entering the roster of hymn writers, preachers, translators, colporteurs, missionaries, martyrs, and saints. In addition to screening out homosexuals before they enter the seminary there is the official position of expelling any student discovered to be one plus the examination by denominational boards of any candidate for the ministry who is suspect. Such behavior by Church leaders but broadcasts their ignorance of homosexuality and the shallowness of their own Christian ethics. I am not saying that any homosexual who applies for admission to a seminary or who seeks Ordination should be accepted. But I am saying that when an otherwise qualified and Called individual is denied admission to the clergy solely on the grounds of being a homosexual then the Church has reacted in a negative way in its confrontation with the matter.

The word "complacency" is the most dangerous word in anyone's lexicon. One of the negative acts of the Church in this area under examination is its complacency when homosexuals have come for help or where the civil liberties of homosexuals have been usurped by the State or some vigilante group. In this country the Church as a whole has kept shamefully quiet when, the spirit of Christ waited to be uttered. In this area the Church continues to be a somnolent Church.

One who keeps abreast of curent religious journals and books is aware of the repeated calls for "experimental ministries," "reaching out to the frontiers," "expanding opportunities of ministering," "need for pioneering clergy" and similar expressions. Yet, alas, denominational machinery, local congregations, and often the very authors themselves are really not ready nor even desirous for such confrontation. Many do