LGBT-Affirming Christian Denominations Report

Have you heard someone say that Lutherans are pro-LGBT, or that Baptists are not? Well those kind of statements aren’t accurate because most major Christian denomination traditions have subgroups on both sides of this issue.

Here’s GayChurch.org, and what they have is a directory of churches that are affirming. Now, not every church that is affirming is on here, and one reason is that they only put churches in the directory if those churches have “confirmed that their congregation is an affirming Christian church in some form or fashion.”[1]

So even if the raw numbers don’t reflect every last affirming church, we should be able to see what denominations are the ones with affirming churches.

As of the creation of this video, there are 9,058 US Churches in their directory.

The Episcopal Church

Topping the list with 1,780, or 19.6% of the total is The Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church has 6,707 congregations overall.[2] As an independent church, it dates to 1789, but before that its congregations were part of the Church of England though in America, and the first such church was founded back in 1607. I’m showing the rainbow-themed version of denomination logos in this video if they exist.

The Episcopal Church first consecrated a gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in 2003. In 2012 they allowed same-sex blessing ceremonies, and in 2015, just five days after same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in the US, the House of Bishops voted 129-26 to allow same-sex marriages. After a 2018[3] vote, none of the bishops in the church’s over 100 dioceses can disallow same-sex marriages in their diocese, should a church’s rector wish to allow it.[4]

With this high number of churches in the Affirming Church Directory, there may be more than one affirming congregation of the Episcopal Church in large cities. For example, there are eight in Richmond Virginia, four in Nashville, Tennessee, and six in Tuscon, Arizona.

The Episcopal Church belongs to the Anglican theological tradition. As a result of the denominations moves toward affirming homosexuality, in 2009, a new denomination was founded  – the Anglican Church in North America, which has 1,027 congregations. It prohibits churches from being affirming and many Episcopal congregations left to join it. However, the Episcopal Church is the largest church in the Anglican Tradition still today.

The United Church of Christ

Next up in the Affirming Church Directory at gaychurch.org is the United Church of Christ. There are 1,710 congregations in the directory, which is 18.8% of the total. The UCC has 4603 congregations altogether. The UCC comes from a merger of two denominations in 1957, which themselves were mergers of other denominations. The Congregationalist churches which are the largest of the groups that made up the UCC had their first national denomination founded in 1865, and congregational churches have existed in America since the 1620s.

1972 was the year of the first openly gay person ordained as minister, William R. Johnson.
The UCC has a very loose denominational polity, meaning that the General Synod of the church doesn’t interfere with local congregations, and is said to “speak to the churches” rather than speak for them. That said, in 1985 the UCC General Synod passed a resolution titled “Calling On UCC Congregations to Covenant As Open and Affirming.”[5]

In 2005, by a 80% vote of Synod the UCC came out in support of same-sex marriage, the first major denomination in the US to do so.

The Evangelical Association formed in 1998 from churches leaving the UCC mainly over sexuality and is not affirming.

United Methodist Church

Third is the United Methodist Church. The Affirming Churches directory lists 1,349 churches, or 14.9% of the total. The UMC formed in 1968 as a merger of two other denominations, and is a successor denomination of the Methodist Episcopal Church founded in 1784.

The UMC is a bit different from the other two denominations, in that the national body has been much slower in allowing same-sex marriage and partnered gay clergy. It wasn’t until 2024 that both of those things were officially allowed, but reality is that a great deal of churches weren’t following the official rules. And it was for this reason, the UMC not enforcing its official positions relating to homosexuality, that thousands of churches left the UMC in the last six years. In 2016, against official denominational rules, Karen Oliveto was elected as the first openly Gay Bishop in the denomination.

Most of the churches that left have joined a new denomination, the Global Methodist Church, founded in 2022, which is not affirming, leaving the UMC with 21,176 congregations.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The denomination with the fourth-most churches on Gaychurch.org’s directory is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The are 1,139 churches: 12.5% of the directory total. The ELCA was formed in 1988 as a merger of three other Lutheran Denominations, two of which had themselves been formed through mergers,  and containing congregations dating back to the mid-1700s. In 2009, the ELCA officially allowed partnered gay clergy, and at the same time left it to ministers to decide whether to officiate at same-sex marriages.

The North American Lutheran Church split from the ELCA over this, forming in 2010. The ELCA has 8,386 congregations.[6]

Presbyterian Church (USA)
 The number five denomination in the directory is the Presbyterian Church (USA) with 1,024 churches, or 11.3% of the churches in the directory. The Presbyterian Church USA has 8,432 congregations[7] and formed as a merger of two other denominations in 1983. It is a successor denomination to the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, which was founded in 1789. In 2011, the church voted to permit partnered gay clergy.[8] In a multi-year process over 2014 and 2015 they permitted same-sex wedding ceremonies as well.

In 2012, ECO A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians was founded for churches leaving the PCUSA over these issues, and it has 420 congregations.[9]

Summary

These five denominations combined make up over three-quarters[10] of all the churches in the affirming directory. If a city has an affirming congregation, it’s likely that it has one from one of these five denominations. After these five, it’s increasingly rare to find an affirming church from one of these other denominations in your city. And we’re immediately going to encounter something surprising and controversial next.

Roman Catholic Church

The denomination in the #6 spot is the Roman Catholic Church. There are 471 churches in the directory, less than half of the #5 denomination, and that makes 5.2% of the total. This is of course controversial, because the Catholic Church officially is not affirming.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, for example,

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’  They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”[11]

No Roman Catholic churches will perform same-sex marriages. However, these churches have in some way indicated that they are affirming, and so they are by far the largest group of churches in the gaychurch.org directory from a denomination that officially opposes homosexual sexual activity.

There are between 16,279 Catholic parishes in the US. [12] [13] The Catholic Church itself claims to originate at the time of Christ himself, though this claim is disputed by many other Christians.

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Next up is the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ.) There are 298 churches from this denomination in the directory, 3.3% of the total. The denomination as a whole has 2,887 congregations.[14] This church is one of three major groups with a history in the Stone-Campbell restoration movement in the 1830s. Churches of Christ became their own distinct group in 1906, and the other half of the movement divided in the late 1960s and early 1970s into Independent Christian Churches and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) This latter group is the most liberal of the three, and as a relatively loose denomination, it has never enforced a policy on LGBT acceptance on its member congregations. In 2013, the General Assembly stated that sexual orientation and gender identity are not grounds for exclusion from fellowship or service within the church.[15]

Non-denominational

The next-largest group is non-denominational. There are 229 such churches listed in the directory, or 2 and a half percent of churches in the directory. This is an interesting one, because this isn’t really a group, any church can call itself nondenominational, and according to the 2020 US religion census there are 44,319 such churches in the US. If that number is accurate, just about half of one percent of nondenominational churches are on the Gaychurch directory, showing that nondenominational churches really are far less likely to be LGBT-affirming than many other denomination traditions.

Quakers

Number nine in the Gaychurch.org directory is Quaker. There are 133 churches, or about 1 and a half percent of the total. The directory doesn’t specify which Quaker denomination, but it’s a safe bet that most of these are part of Friends General Conference, the most liberal US Quaker national body, which has about 375 congregations as of 2020.[16] There was no national policy to overturn, but the first LGBT-affirming statement from FGC was in 2004, which said in part, “our experience has been that our Gatherings and Central Committee work have been immeasurably enriched over the years by the full participation and Spirit-guided leadership of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer Friends. We will never go back to silencing those voices or suppressing those gifts.”[17] However, due to the way the church Government works in these national Quaker bodies, which is too much to discuss in this video, certain parts of another national group that it itself not affirming, Friends United Meeting, also are LGBT-affirming, and so there may be a small number of their 186 churches[18] in the directory too.

Alliance of Baptists

The next group listed is the Alliance of Baptists. There are 127 churches or 1.4% of the total. The Alliance of Baptists is a small denomination, having 134 US churches listed on their website at the time of this video, so they are definitely the denomination up to this point with the highest percentage of their churches in the directory. They came into existence in 1987 as a liberal split from the Southern Baptist Convention, and officially stated opposition to laws federally restricting same-sex marriage in 2004.[19]

Metropolitan Community Church

Next up is Metropolitan Community Churches with 95 congregations in the directory, or 1.1% of the total. The 2020 US Religion Census counted 114 congregations, and it’s completely safe to say that in fact all 114 of them are LGBT-affirming, as this denomination was the first one to be founded as a LGBT-affirming and LGBT focused denomination, all the way back in 1968.

Segue

That’s the top eleven denominations, and what I find interesting is that all eleven of these come from different denominational families. That is, there’s one Presbyterian, one Anglican, one Lutheran, and so forth. And adding up all the ones mentioned so far gives us 92% of all the churches in the gaychurch.org directory. So let’s summarize what’s left even more quickly.

Others

All independent Catholic Churches in the directory add up to 91 congregations. If you don’t know what this means, it’ is churches that identify as Catholic, but are not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Watch my video on this for more details, I actually made that video just because I knew I needed it before I made this one to explain this often unknown group.

#13 is the Mennonite Church USA, with 87 churches in the directory. There are about 500 churches in the denomination, which repealed their restrictions on same-sex marriage in 2022. Many congregations however are still not affirming.

American Baptist Churches USA is #14 with 85 churches on the list, out of 5,000 congregations overall. This denomination has, as of this video an official statement saying “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” but has no policy that expels churches that are LGBT-affirming anyway, so there is a growing amount of affirming churches.

#15 is the Reformed Church in America, with 61 churches in the directory, out of about 600 total. It recently suffered a split over this issue, with the Alliance of Reformed Churches forming in 2021, because the RCA had no denomination-wide policy on same-sex marriage or gay clergy.

#16 is the Church of the Brethren, an anabaptist denomination with 48 churches in the directory out of about 850 total. It too had a split with the Covenant Brethren Church forming in 2020 because although there is standing policy opposing same-sex marriage and sexual activity, there are still churches that are affirming.

#17 is independent Baptist congregations that are not denominationally affiliated, 46 of them, many of which dropped affiliation in non-affirming Baptist denominations and never joined any new denomination.

#18 is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, with 45 of their 1800 churches. The CBF has no policy surrounding their churches’ positions on same-sex marriage or sexuality, but did lift a ban on (quote) “the purposeful hiring of a staff person or the sending of a missionary who is a practicing homosexual” in 2018.

#19 is Community of Christ, a branch of Mormonism. 30 churches are on the list out of around 600. They first allowed ordination of non-celibate gay and lesbian people in 2013, also affirming same-sex marriage at that time.

#20 is Interdenominational, which often is a lot like non-denominational, but promoting that people with different denominational ideas and identities are welcomed. There are 27 churches in the directory.

With the top 20, we now have 97.82% of all churches in the directory, even though there are 42 more groups listed.

Now here’s a really important comparison. Let’s take the denominations that are affirming or partly affirming and briefly compare their size to other denominations in their tradition so you can see how likely a church in a particular tradition is to be in one of these denominations.

For example, #1 was the Episcopal Church, Anglican Tradition. It has 6,707 congregations. The Second-largest Anglican denomination in the US, Anglican Church in North America, opposes same-sex marriage and sexually active LGBT clergy, and has 1,012 churches, including Mexico and Canada, and the other Anglican denominations are much smaller than it. So if you encounter an Anglican church in the United States, it’s extremely likely it is part of the Episcopal Church. So most Anglican Churches in the US belong to a denomination that allows same-sex marriage. We’ll keep this color scheme, showing denominations that contain affirming congregations in white, and those that do not in black.

#2, the United Church of Christ is even more stark. The UCC is part of the Congregational tradition, and the great, great majority of such churches in the US are part of that denomination. The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference and the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches each have about 300 churches, the Evangelical Association has 123. The NACC has no enforced position on sexuality, and 10 of its churches are in the directory, and the other two do not allow affirming churches. So a Congregational Church in the US is very likely part of a denomination which allows same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy.

You’ve got the idea now, so let’s move faster. For Methodists, this is the landscape.[20] The number of congregations in the black Methodist denominations are mostly unknown, but those are very unlikely to be affirming.

Here are the Lutherans.[21] You must remember with all of these examples that just because a denomination is affirming, does not mean that all of the churches within it are.

Presbyterians look like this.[22] A common theme in many of these traditions is one large denomination which allows churches to be open and affirming, and perform seme-sex marriage, and the next several denominations in size after it disallowing the same. The next few examples will change that though.

For the Catholic Church, there’s no comparison with it to other catholic groups really. There are smaller groups but you can’t put them on a chart other than showing them to be one-tenth of a percent or less.

For the Restoration Movement tradition[23], the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, the affirming denomination we mentioned, is actually in third place. First and second place though aren’t organized denominations as much as loose movements, so a church in those movements can be affirming and have same-sex marriage. In reality however, both movements are still overall conservative so there are few examples of that, and such churches would be removed from fellowship with the majority of their movements.

For Quakers,[24] this is the landscape, overall it’s quite a small tradition in the US.

Baptists are an interesting one. We had three Baptist groups in the top 20, but the largest one, by far, the Southern Baptists, don’t allow affirming churches.[25] So while there are Baptists who are affirming, this data shows why Baptists as a whole have a reputation of not being so. Even the denominations which we mentioned had a quite small percentage in the directory. Again there are some Black Church denominations which the numbers are unknown.

There’s one notable denomination family that is not on here which is quite interesting, and that is the Pentecostals. Pentecostals are theologically conservative across the board, and are really the only major US denomination tradition with not only no denominations which tolerate LGBT-affirming congregations, but also no churches that are in the directory from among the major denominations. There are 36 churches from this tradition in the directory, but they are all either independent or part of micro-denominations, a shockingly small number for a tradition that is so large. And there are some groups with smaller numbers in the US with similar stories, like the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and some denominational families that are mostly not affirming, but still have a few affirming churches mixed in, like the Seventh-day Adventists.

This video is not a complete story of all the data on this topic. There are certainly some denominations right now that are officially opposed to ‘open and affirming’ theology which have churches in them that are open and affirming but just not public about it or willing to have it in a directory. That may change in the years ahead. Additionally, there are some small microdenominations that are affirming, but since most people will never see them, we’ll save talking about them for another video. Many denominations in the US that are not open and affirming do hold a position on the “Gay Christian Question” called “Side B.” If that’s something you’re not familiar with, watch this video where I discuss it.