Pastors, Preaching and Parking Lot Conversations: Clergy’s Tactics of LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Mainline Protestant Churches

Abstract

ABSTRACTMainline Protestant pastors in the United States play pivotal roles in envisioning and planning changes to local congregational practices. They are highly visible and authoritative figures who must work to avoid conflicts that could splinter their churches. Often serving politically mixed laity, pastors must balance a tension between pastoral care and their own convictions. They work to avoid what one pastor called ‘parking lot conversations’, a particularly hostile form of public confrontation with congregants, which they might encounter because of their leadership or preaching. I examine two items in pastors’ tactical toolkit that allow them to advocate for institutional transformation while maintaining congregational cohesion: weekly sermons and personal conversations with congregants. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in three congregations in Michigan – Episcopalian, Presbyterian and United Church of Christ – I focus on pastoral approaches to LGBTQ+ inclusion, an issue which can cause fraught debate in certain mainline Protestant contexts. Navigating when to voice their views and when to be less confrontational, pastors often preach obliquely about LGBTQ+ issues by mentioning the already-inclusive environments their congregations provide, arguing that this is a sure sign of the church’s commitment to Christian ideals of welcoming. This approach curbs conflict and lessens the chance disgruntled parishioners will confront them. Conversely, pastors use private conversations with congregants to leverage conflict into teachable moments that can deepen the whole community’s commitments to their church. In these conversations, pastors are much more direct about their planning around the role of the church as an inclusive space.