By Jerry Van Marter
Harare, 11 December (ENI)--Three leaders of Protestant churches in the Netherlands have told Christians at a "Padare" gathering at the World Council of Churches eighth assembly that 12 years after the Reformed churches in their country extended to homosexuals and lesbians full participation in the church, church members in their country no longer consider the issue of major significance.

"Many opponents [of homosexual rights in the church] have learned to live with the pluralism of the church," Leo Koffeman, leader of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (RCN) told ENI after the Padare gathering on 10 December. "As they [homosexuals] have come into our church, the actual meeting [with] people changes almost everyone's mind, and it becomes harder to continue opposition to 'the issue'," he added. The RCN has 720 000 members.

Karel Blei, a delegate to the assembly from the Netherlands Reformed Church - which, with 2 million members, is the biggest Reformed church in the country - agreed with Koffeman. "Homosexuality is not so dominant an issue now as it once was," he said. "It is not a theological issue any longer, but it rises to the surface as a human rights issue or a discrimination issue, so then it must, of course, be addressed."

Noting that The Netherlands has a long history of tolerance, RCN leader Lodiwijk Palm told the 40 people at the Padare gathering: "The courage to come out is easier in a society where there is openness. It is easier for us than for those in other societies perhaps." Nevertheless, he added, "it is important that values and norms of the church, seen in the light of Scripture and God's grace, are their own, and independent of the norms of the secular context."

Acceptance of gays and lesbians, approved by the Reformed family of churches in The Netherlands in 1986, had taken place "not without pain and trouble," Liedeke in 't Veld, of the 50 000-member Arminian Church told the gathering. "It was a big step forward for many, and meant withdrawal for others," she said, "but 12 years later all parishes are very happy, and there is no discrimination."

But the process was not complete, Koffeman told ENI. "We are still in the process of reconciliation," he said, "and this has been increasingly possible as individual stories have been shared."

 In Harare on 10 December, the WCC's general secretary, Dr Konrad Raiser, told a journalist from Le Temps, a Swiss newspaper, that although the WCC was not in a position to take up a position on the issue of sexual orientation, during preparations for its assembly the WCC had applied "certain pressure" on Zimbabwean churches to open discussion about the subject.

But it became clear, he said, that "the great majority of church leaders [in Zimbabwe] refused to discuss it. They are not yet ready to take up this challenge."

He added that if the WCC tried to shock churches in Zimbabwe into discussing homosexuality, there was a risk that relations over the issue could be even more troubled locally after the WCC assembly ended than they had been before.

"We [the WCC] are leaving Harare [the assembly ends on 14 December], but the [local] churches and homosexual groups will stay," the WCC general secretary told Le Temps.

Dr Raiser said he would have liked a WCC declaration on human rights, released on 10 December to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to mention sexual minorities, but the Orthodox churches which are members of the WCC had refused. He said that personally he was convinced that the treatment of sexual minorities was a matter of human rights. He added that most Orthodox churches would be prepared to concede that homosexuals must have the same political and civic rights as other people. But, he continued, the Orthodox churches could not go beyond that into the area of personal morality because of the views of some people within their churches.

Asked by Le Temps if he would like to see the "taboo" on discussing homosexuality removed by the WCC, Dr Raiser made a comparison with the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, which has just ended. The decade, he said, had allowed women to discuss their treatment and place within churches, and to deal with issues they had never been able to discuss, even within their own families. But it had been a slow process.

The WCC hoped to enable - slowly - churches to discuss the issue of sexual orientation. He spoke positively of proposals for the WCC to set up an in-depth study of sexuality, and added that the issue had been raised at the assembly, "without confrontation". [795 words]

Photographs of the assembly are available from Photo Oikoumene

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WCC Assembly Web Site

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