Church Clarity Wants to Rank Churches by their Stance on LGBT Policies

Organization Will Rate Churches Around The Country On Their Views

A new organization called Church Clarity, whose website was launched just recently on October 18, 2017, aims to encourage churches to be clear and transparent in their LGBTQ policies by scoring each church based on their websites.

Church Clarity Wants to Rank Churches by their Stance on LGBT Policies[/tweetthis]

While it may be easy to believe that this is an attempt to shame on a public platform, churches with anti-LGBTQ policies, it is not the case, and the founders of Church Clarity constantly make that known. Nor is it their goal to push churches to change their policies. Instead, they simply want churches and pastors to be transparent and clearly define just how welcome LGBTQ people are, so that problems can be avoided on both ends later on.

It has become increasingly common among churches, especially evangelical churches, to practise ambiguity when it comes to making their policies public. “Clarity is elusive,” Church Clarity says, and it is not right for people to constantly be in doubt of just how welcome they are in their own church.

Church Clarity, which is supported by many liberal Christians, surprisingly has a goal that can also be supported by conservative Christians. Both groups want to put pressure on churches and pastors to come clean about their views and policies on homosexuality, the limits to which LGBTQ people are welcome in churches and to eliminate ambiguity wherever it exists.

Now the organization has also started what they call “quote memes” – quotes from pastors and leaders who have spoken and even preached the need for clarity and transparency, but have not yet disclosed any policies regarding this matter. One such example is a quote by Craig Groeschel from Lifechurch.tv, which says, “You are only as strong as you are honest.” But his church has received a score of “Unclear: Non-affirming”.

So far, the website has scored 24 churches, and about a hundred more have been submitted for scoring through their crowdsourcing form. Churches are scored as Undisclosed, which means that their policies are not communicated on their website at all, Unclear, meaning that a church’s policies can only be found vaguely on their site, and Clear: Affirming if a church has clearly stated policies which are welcoming of LGBTQ people, or Clear: Non-affirming if a church has policies which restrict involvement of people of the LGBTQ community. A church can also be scored as Actively Discerning if it is still on the process of deciding its inclusivity.

Resources

• Patheos
• Christian Today
• RNS
• Church Clarity

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