More pastors are open to LGBT people serving in their churches than being married there, LifeWay finds.
More than 120,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot since the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide last year. (The number of American weddings in 2014, by comparison, was more than 2.1 million.)
For preachers, requests to officiate a same-sex wedding remain rare. Just 11 percent of the 1,000 Protestant senior pastors surveyed by LifeWay Research have been asked to perform a same-sex wedding.
Baptist pastors (1%) are the least likely to say they were asked to perform a same-sex wedding. Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (26%) are most likely. Lutherans (19%), Methodists (9%), Christian/Church of Christ (7%), and Pentecostals (6%) fall in between.
Overall, pastors who identify as mainline were three times more likely to have been asked than evangelical pastors (18% vs. 6%). Pastors 55 and older (14%) are twice as likely to have been asked than those 54 and younger (7%).
And those who have a Master’s degree (13%) are twice as likely to be asked than those with a Bachelor’s degree (6%).
Pastors of majority-African American churches are less likely than those of other majority ethnicities to be asked (4%).
“Most couples, if they want a church wedding, will ask a pastor they know or who they think will support them,” said LifeWay executive director Scott McConnell. “For same-sex couples, this appears to be an older Presbyterian pastor.”
A previous LifeWay study found most Protestant pastors believe same-sex marriage is morally wrong. So it’s no surprise few are asked to perform such ceremonies, McConnell said.
There’s less consensus about the roles LGBT people can play in church. “More pastors are open to LGBT people serving in their church than being married there,” …
