It would have taken a two-thirds majority to pass, but the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's proposal to allow members in same-sex relationships to serve as ordained or lay ministers shows just how divided the 4.9 million-member denomination is on the issue. A 490 to 503 vote opposing the measure underscores the differences in the thinking on this issue during a churchwide assembly.

Ironically the only clear majority on a sexuality issue involved a consensus that the denomination should remain unified. It passed 851-127.

Episcopalians are learning the hard way how unity looks after denominational heads voted in a gay bishop in 2003. A group of six orthodox leaders in Connecticut dissented from their bishop, Andrew Smith, after he supported the ordination of Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. They stopped supporting the diocese financially and have asked for alternative oversight.

Things came to a head mid-July, according to Christianity Today. Smith removed on of the leaders from his church, July 14. He changed the locks, shut down the church Web site and appointed a pro-gay woman as priest.

Similar happenings in California have turned out in favor of local parishes, however. According to an Associated Press story in The Mercury News, a judge ruled in favor of the local church keeping its property even though it can't keep its mouth shut in opposition to the diocese there.

Don Helmandollar of Trinity Church in Bristol and one of the "Connecticut Six" told Christianity Today that the basis for the conflict is theological.

"Our biggest heartache with this whole thing is the misuse of Scripture," he said.

But the problem is that both sides also agree with that. As I related in the Aug. 12 Weblog, Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, called for a global, ecumenical council on the Christian interpretation of Scripture. In his report Aug. 9 at the 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA Hanson called for the Pope, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, and the Anglican and Lutheran Communions to come together to address a church identity crisis due to the dominance of a "fundamentalist-millenialist-apocalypticist reading of Scripture."