Congregations make a difference. That's the word from academia, where we see an important "emerging field of congregational studies."¹ The well-rehearsed decline of denominational influence in recent decades has thrown the importance of congregations into high relief. In a significant sense, the mantle of communal religious authority is now vesting itself locally.

As congregants have always known, congregations provide an important venue for religious discourse about social matters. Dogmas and positions promulgated above the congregational level (through encyclicals, resolutions, and the like) provide one religious perspective on current issues, but the local view may differ as congregations struggle with applying religious convictions to everyday situations. To understand what "religion" says today about a topic such as sexuality, we must not ignore reports from the congregations. Local context makes a difference-so the Park Ridge Center included it in a major study of religious perspectives on sexuality.

RELIGION, SEXUALITY, AND PUBLIC POLICY PROJECT
The Religion, Sexuality, and Public Policy Project, funded by the Ford Foundation, is the Park Ridge Center's most systematic effort to study the intersection of religion and sexuality. The project grew out of initiatives devoted to preparation for the United Nations' International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. The overarching purpose of this multiphase project is to help policy makers understand a wide variety of issues in the interrelationship between religion and sexuality in various cultures and regions of the world, and attendant consequences for public policy.

Position statements on sexual issues from numerous religious traditions were gathered and collated during an early phase of the project. (A briefing packet summarizing these religious positions is forthcoming from at the Park Ridge Center). The project sought local perspectives on sexuality by conducting forty interviews of clergy and other religious leaders in a major northern U.S. city. Interviewees were chosen to reflect diversity of religious tradition, theological stance, ethnic/racial identity, and socioeconomic status. The congregations represented in the sample included Protestants (liberal to conservative), Catholics, Jews (of all three major American branches), Buddhists, Muslims, and Baha'is.

Our interviews often confirmed congruence between official positions and congregational practices. Still, we were struck by the incongruence at crucial points, and by the factors underlying disjunctions between precept and practice. Three factors stood out: socioeconomic variables, ethnic/racial identities, and pragmatic realities.

"ABORTION IS A QUICK AND EASY SOLUTION"
Sociologists have long noted the relationship between socioeconomic status and denominational identity. Data on employment, home ownership, education, and income were collected in the National Survey of Religious Identification in the early 1990s and gathered into a social status ranking of thirty national religious groups. The resulting hierarchy hardly surprised astute observers of American denominations: for example, Unitarian Universalists ranked first, Jehovah's Witnesses last, with Episcopalians, Jews, and Presbyterians in the upper echelon-evangelicals, Baptists, and Pentecostals in the lower. The correlation between socioeconomic status and theological stance was also obvious, as liberalism increased in moving up the denominational social ladder.²

Several interviewees in the Park Ridge Center study pointed out that socioeconomic variables affect a congregation's sexual views and practices. Social status matters, even as to which topics make it to the table of congregational conversation. Our data suggest that unwanted pregnancy of young women is a pressing problem in lower class contexts, whereas among the middle class infertility in older women poses more concern. "Do you ever deal with assisted reproduction?" we asked the woman pastor of an inner city Lutheran congregation. "Never," she replied. "I've only read about it in magazines. I've never met anyone who's used it." The rector of an Episcopal congregation in an affluent suburb explained that the appropriateness of specific sexual topics at the congregational level depends on local factors. At inner city parishes with large numbers of gay and lesbian members, for instance, he considered homosexuality appropriate for discussion, but not in the suburbs where (he assumed) few gays and lesbians live and where the topic would only spark congregational conflict. When asked whether the role of women was a contentious issue in his city parish, an Asian Roman Catholic priest also made an urban-versus-suburban distinction: "Not here," he responded, "these folks are very Catholic. Out in the suburbs, I met some White people who believe in women's ordination." We assume the priest had socioeconomic differences primarily in mind here, since his own parish includes many White members. Significantly, to his mind, only his city parish counted as "very Catholic."

Other socioeconomic factors emerged from our interviews. The rabbi of a well-off Reform synagogue generalized from experience that Jews are more likely to consult their obstetrician-gynecologist or psychiatrist than their rabbi about sexual decisions. In his congregation many men have gotten vasectomies, many women tubal ligations-they see "no problem" in sterilization, in his words. This despite the weight of Jewish legal interpretation, both liberal and traditional, disfavoring the practice, especially for men.³

The two Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) congregations in our sample also find themselves out of step with their theological tradition. The pastor of one congregation ticked off a list of disagreements with SBC stances-on divorce, teen sexual abstinence, homosexuality, barring women from the pulpit-at one point criticizing the myth of southern gentility in the SBC, where "you espouse certain views in public, but in private you can be another type of creature." The other congregation's pastor lamented the "awful, sometimes outlandish" SBC resolutions: "We find it very easy to say that they don't speak for us." The recent controversial statement about the husband's leadership of the family ("The Baptist Faith and Message: The Family," 1998) especially angered his congregation, even the transplanted southern members. The northern, urban social context of these congregations certainly influences their sense of disjunction from their southern-based denomination. The liberality of the second congregation is enhanced by its many members affiliated with a nearby university, including those transplanted southerners.

The question of extramarital sexual activity elicited some interesting responses with regard to the elderly. A Roman Catholic priest gave the example of a widow living with her lover in order to avoid losing social security income. Rather than cite dogma about marriage in such cases, the priest instead investigates the circumstances, to ensure that the lover is not a fiscal predator. The priest questioned whether the Church wields much impact at all, suggesting that, for the most part, people make their individual decisions while avoiding the moral issues involved. On the topic of elderly cohabitation, a Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) pastor had this to say: "It's in their interest to stay unmarried. I wouldn't tell them that they have to stay chaste because they're unmarried." (This would be the PCUSA stance). "I'd tell them to have fun. The laws really don't treat you well. Christ made us free, and we can't go back to bondage-everything we do is to exercise the freedom that Christ gave us."

Thus socioeconomic variables influence congregational views about sexuality. Real struggle occurs within congregations as social factors frame religious and ethical dilemmas, at times placing both congregations and clergy at odds with their own denominational or traditional heritage. The pastor of a liberal United Church of Christ congregation in a wealthy suburb spoke of abortion: "I struggle with this. I support a woman's right over her own body. I've counseled against it [abortion]." None of this controverts UCC teaching, which provides for abortion as a faithful choice in certain circumstances. But then the pastor hit on the socioeconomics of it: "I think in an affluent area like this, abortion is a quick and easy solution to unwanted pregnancy, and perhaps is done without careful thinking through of the theology/ethics of it."

"THAT'S A CULTURAL DIFFERENCE"

PARK RIDGE CENTER INTERVIEWER: The role of women in the American Baptist Churches is fully equal. I assume that this congregation would agree with that?

LOCAL PASTOR: Yes, and I think this congregation openly supports that and is proud of the role women have played in the church in the past, how many were ordained, etc.

Congruence between denominational and congregational views on the role of women appears clear from this exchange. But a moment later the pastor noted a group within his congregation that views things differently: "In our Japanese worship group, we can't get any of the women to read scripture or take leadership roles-but that's a cultural difference, not a religious one." A similar report of cultural reticence toward gender equality in church leadership roles came from a Japanese congregation affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA, one of the most progressive Protestant denominations in this regard.

The culture or "way of life" of a congregation (or a group within a congregation) makes a difference in sexual and other social matters. It is especially important to consider cultural differences in America, where ethnic and racial identities often determine congregational makeup. The old truism of segregation during the weekly worship hour still holds to a great extent, despite the country's growing diversity. My previous research through the Religion in Urban America Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago indicates that among Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Buddhists-the most diverse of the major religious groups-probably no more than three in ten local congregations in the Chicago area have a substantially diverse membership, that is, where at least 20 percent of the total membership has a different ethnic/racial identity from the majority.

According to 1995 census data, the main ethnic/racial groups in the US are Whites (74%), Blacks (12%), Hispanics (10%), and Asians and others (4%). By the middle of the twenty-first century, these figures are projected to be Whites 53%, Hispanics 23%, Blacks 14%, and Asians and others 10%.⁴ Whether multicultural distinctions in American society will increase in coming decades remains to be seen, but clear ethnic/racial differences can be found in America's congregations today. For instance, a recent study of US Catholics ranked respondents on an index of traditional beliefs and practices by group identity, with Asian-American Catholics most traditional, African-American Catholics least traditional, and White and Hispanic Catholics in between. The study also distinguished levels among various White ethnic categories, with French-American Catholics most traditional, Irish-American Catholics least. Such distinctions among congregations make a difference in sexual matters.

Muslim interviewees in the Park Ridge Center study noted national variations that sometimes conflict with Islam's scriptural and historical sources of authority. "As far as the Qur'anic guidance is concerned, there is no stigma attached to divorce," explained one Muslim, "but whether there is stigma in certain communities depends on cultural factors, so that it may be very different in the Middle East than in Pakistan or India." Such differences are imported to America by Muslim immigrants, who find upon arrival that their American Muslim "cousins"-converts mostly within the Black community, though also a notable number of Whites-bring their own cultural perspectives to the practice of Islam.⁶

The White pastor of a Lutheran congregation in the city told us that her Black members are more reluctant than White members to talk about homosexuality. This conforms to other impressionistic reports suggesting that minorities typically perceive homosexuality as a "White" issue.⁷ Another White pastor (American Baptist) noted cultural differences in attitudes toward marriage and divorce. "In [Black] culture," he surmised from experience in pastoring a mixed Black-White congregation, "I think most people don't grow up thinking they'll get married and stay married to the same person their whole life." In this case, however, he discovered attitudes and actualities happily out of sync: "At one point we realized that a large group of people … had been married almost twenty years, and we were all kind of amazed by that."

Some of the clearest testimonies to the influence of culture on congregational sexuality came from Hispanic and Asian contexts. The White priest of an Hispanic parish in the city generalized that ethnic-minority cultures typically have more respect for life than the majority of Americans. "The Spanish community would never dream of aborting a child," he explained. "There's always room to care for the child in the Spanish community." An Hispanic Lutheran pastor told us she had never met an Hispanic woman who had gotten an abortion, and the Asian priest who considers his city parish "very Catholic" told us that Hispanics and Filipinos are "horrified" by abortion. When asked whether infertility is an issue in his congregation, he replied, "No, it seems that people here are more fertile. It's hard to tell Filipinos to limit the number of children because they are the parents' insurance [against old age or disability]." Asked about his congregation's views on homosexuality, the White Catholic priest made an interesting prediction: it is not an issue now but will become one as his congregation shifts from Hispanic to White membership through neighborhood gentrification. To date, due to the influence of Hispanic cultural norms against homosexuality, "We agree with church doctrine on the matter," he summarized. The rector of two Episcopal churches, one Hispanic, one White, perceived ethnic differences in the way homosexuals are treated. Although Hispanics are doctrinally more conservative than Whites, the strong family bonds of Hispanic culture make them more tolerant in practice. He characterized the response of his Hispanic members as, "Okay, you're gay, we don't like it, but you're family."

The pastor of a suburban Chinese Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) congregation pointed out that culture often determines sermon content in ethnic churches. "We are a Chinese church and Chinese people are more on the conservative side…. So, rarely do I hear [Chinese] pastors preaching on sexuality in the pulpit. It's not because it's Lutheran or not, it's because of the culture and tradition." Clarifying the relationship between Chinese Lutheran views and the denomination's stance on sexuality, he admitted that "basically, we are all Lutherans. We buy the [denomination's] statement, but we have our own cultural interpretation." This may mean speaking out against things usually treated differently in White ELCA congregations, such as cohabitation or homosexuality. Regarding the latter, the pastor was adamant that, although his congregation would show Christian love to homosexuals, "we will rail against the sin … we will preach against this and admonish because it is not right, so you better change, because it's not the right thing to do." Contrast this with the White ELCA church in a predominantly gay city neighborhood that has declared itself a welcoming congregation and performs same-sex blessing ceremonies, and whose pastor considers the denomination's resolve on homosexual issues "wishy-washy," its conservative views "off-base."

Certainly, a congregation's racial/ethnic identity can make a difference in sexual matters. But the larger culture surrounding a congregation also exerts influence. The forces of assimilation to mainstream American culture have always impinged on the integrity of minority and immigrant cultures. So we were not surprised when two of our interviewees noted that Hispanic immigrants in their congregations have adopted more liberal, Americanized attitudes toward contraception since coming here, nor when the Chinese Lutheran pastor labeled American notions about divorce a "threat" to the traditional strength of the Chinese family. As immigrant groups become acculturated, they risk losing certain positive aspects of their unique heritage.

"I MEET PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE"
One observer describes denominations as "clusters of language and meaning, practices and habits, that exist so long as there are people willing to claim that the cluster is somehow distinctive."⁸ As associations of people, denominational clusters are more nebulous and impersonal than congregations, which may help to explain their decline in a likewise increasingly impersonal society. If we ask where people are most meaningfully "met" in their corporate religious lives, the congregation supersedes the denomination. "I meet people where they are" was a common response when we questioned clergy about sexual behavior in their flock. People meet most intimately in congregations, not denominations, where they face pragmatic realities that often challenge the relevance of denominational or traditional teachings.

Several interviewees reported tactical avoidance of certain issues altogether, usually to keep peace in the congregation or to maintain focus on more important tasks (recall the Episcopal rector's advice on homosexuality earlier). We were often told that a congregation has a "don't ask, don't tell" approach, and not just concerning homosexuality or gay clergy. The abortion debate is "not worth risking life or limb," commented a United Methodist pastor who has never preached on the topic. For one open and affirming Lutheran congregation, to become embroiled in the abortion debate would hamper efforts to bring unity on issues surrounding homosexuality. An American Baptist congregation has adopted an attitude of "quiet tolerance" of homosexuality following a period of great divisiveness over the denomination's stance. "We don't want to fight about it," says the pastor today, adding that at no point during the trying times did people in the congregation study scripture or reflect deeply on the matter.

We did find deep, and pragmatic, reflection on homosexuality in several congregations. Perhaps the most remarkable tales came from two congregations within denominations that had clear prohibitions in this regard. A Catholic priest, whose parish sponsors a gay and lesbian network, finds the matter of homosexual relationships most complicating, and it is here that he "departs a bit" from Church teaching. "If gay people suffer silently in the closet," he reasoned, "or the only other alternative is a pretty unhealthy gay subculture, then I think it's important for the Church to try to encourage people into healthy relationships," which might include committed, monogamous gay relationships. "I don't think these are the same thing as marriage," he pointed out, "but I don't think most homosexuals do either." When asked once to perform a gay blessing ceremony in the church, he declined. "I couldn't do that. The person got furious, called me a hypocrite, but apologized about six months later."

At a Southern Baptist Convention church, a pillar of the congregation confided in the pastor that she was a lesbian. After a thorough interrogation, satisfying himself that this was truly her orientation and not merely a passing infatuation, the pastor asked her, "Now, will you stay and help us deal with the SBC?" She declined. Since then, the pastor has faced several difficult situations with homosexual people, both members and nonmembers, including requests for blessing ceremonies and the breakup of a married couple after the husband determined that he was gay. Turning to the deacons of the congregation, the pastor pleaded, "I need some direction from you guys." Their response: "We don't want to deal with it." The pastor explained to them, "Look, you don't see this because they're not going to stand up and say, 'I'm homosexual.' But they're there. They're there in the congregation." When asked about a recent resolution from the SBC regarding homosexuality ("Resolution on Homosexual Marriage," 1996), the pastor quickly got to the point: "I don't agree with this statement. I think the Bible is at least neutral about the subject."

Other interviewees pointed out tensions between denominational stances and congregational realities, and the awkwardness of certain situations. One pastor-denomination doesn't matter here since all fit the circumstance-finds it difficult to preach or teach about the sanctity of marriage while looking out on a congregation well sprinkled with unfaithful spouses and divorcees. A Catholic priest has decided not to turn his divorced parishioners away from Communion-here denomination matters since Catholic teaching forbids their taking of the sacrament. He does not make this policy known publicly because that would cause confusion, but privately he encourages individuals to make a decision in "good conscience," invoking another Catholic tradition. Two other priests commented wryly on the disjunction between Catholic doctrine and people's actual contraceptive practices. One assumes couples make their own decisions since they don't come to him asking, "Father, can we use this method or that method? What does the Church say about it?" Decision-making shifted to the sphere of the couple with Vatican II, he believes, so that the Church now provides resources to help them decide. He assumes they are guided by an underlying value of life and a desire for children. The other priest takes a cynical position on the Church's notion of natural family planning: "I sometimes catch myself thinking it's not natural and it's not planning." He told of two couples whose marriages were almost ruined by it. "It isn't perfect," he concluded, complaining about some of its proponents "waxing philosophically without thinking about what we can realistically expect from this method."

The topic garnering the most consistent response in the interviews was nonmarital cohabitation, with its presumed sexual behavior. "I'm not dumb enough to think that it never happens," remarked one Catholic priest, summing up the view of most. Several interviewees mentioned premarital counseling questionnaires-when both people put down the same address, it's clear what's going on. Most estimated the extent of cohabitation at 75% to 95% of unmarried couples, notably higher than the 65% of the general population (born 1963-74) estimated in the National Health and Social Life Survey.⁹ Most interviewees also shy away from outright condemnation of the practice, preferring to consider the circumstances of cases and the social context of the times.

"People are getting married later," observed a Conservative rabbi, "so I've learned to take [them] where they're at…. To hide your head in the sand does not make sense." He does not condone cohabitation, but he does counsel couples about applying spirituality to their relationship. For example, he suggests that a previously cohabiting bride take the traditional ritual bath (mikva) in order to bring a "context of sanctity" to the wedding night. Noting the "odd problems" faced by elderly cohabiters, the rabbi condemned society for mitigating against their ability to enter into a "hallowed relationship."

A Reform rabbi approaches cohabiters differently depending on their age and attitudes about the sexuality in their relationship. Fifteen-year-olds should not be having sex, for instance, nor is recreational sex proper, but he worries about painting himself into "a corner of irrelevancy" in other circumstances. "If I tell an unmarried couple in their mid-twenties that they shouldn't be having sex until they're married, they're going to say, 'Where is this guy coming from?'" The rabbi admitted that he may be soft-pedaling the issue, but, he argued, "I'm evaluating where I can have the greatest impact."

Pastors who refuse to condemn nonmarital sex out of hand gave differing reasons, some citing the risk of losing members, others a distaste for making people feel guilty. Several placed more importance on the nature of a couple's relationship than on their sexual behavior per se. In a few cases pastors rejected well-known models of abstinence. Two Catholic priests, for instance, found a proposal to require abstinence during premarital counseling counterproductive: "You're setting people up to lie to you when you impose that kind of structure," one priest judged. Instead, he conducts a premarital inventory to uncover a couple's motivations for cohabiting. The SBC congregation that finds it easy to say the denomination does not speak for it decided to pass on the True Love Waits program, which asks youth to make a covenant of abstinence until marriage. "We wondered," related the pastor, "if we would make such a covenant with the young people, what are the chances they're going to keep it? If they make a covenant that they're not able to hold onto, will we be adding to their guilt?" He prefers to show them their options: "I don't personally think that it is a good thing for people to live together before marriage, but I want them to make that decision."

One liberal Episcopal rector told us that he would not feel comfortable making a pronouncement in favor of teen sexual abstinence, although that is official Episcopal teaching. "The Church's teaching on sexuality is not relevant to teens." Besides, he added, "God is probably not too concerned about sexual behavior, so why should we be?"

CONGREGATIONS MAKE A DIFFERENCE
The interviews conducted by the Park Ridge Center in its Religion, Sexuality, and Public Policy Project open an informative window onto the topic of religion and sexuality. Socioeconomic variables, ethnic/racial identities, and pragmatic realities all make a difference in sexual matters at the congregational level, at times placing congregations at odds with their own religious traditions or denominational affiliations. As an Episcopal rector put it, there can be a "disconnect" between General Convention resolutions and what goes on in the local parish.

Such "disconnections" portend further erosion of the denomination/congregation relationship. Sociologists and other observers of recent trends in American religion largely agree with the sentiments of a Southern Baptist Convention pastor who told us, "There is no denominational loyalty in this generation. They belong to [the local church] first … they don't really care much about being Southern Baptists." In his book, A Generation of Seekers, Wade Clark Roof of the University of California at Santa Barbara identifies what the baby boomer generation (born between the end of World War II and the early 1960s) really cares about: "Many boomers are simply 'shopping around' for a congregation and are not yet firmly committed. To them, denomination is far less important than a congregation in which people feel comfortable." Those boomers who return to congregational participation after dropping out earlier in life do so to meet personal and family needs, especially for their young children.¹⁰ Many congregations, attuned to our increasingly consumer-oriented society, now market themselves accordingly, often downplaying denominational affiliation in their public persona or swelling the ranks of "community" or "nondenominational" churches.

Other studies confirm a shift from a denominational to a congregational locus of religious authority in recent decades, including Penny Becker's Congregations in Conflict. Becker poses a serious challenge to the conventional wisdom in some circles that post-World War II social trends have created a more individualistic, less public type of American religion. Becker concluded from her observations in the Chicago suburbs of Oak Park, River Forest, and Forest Park that serious ethical and religious discourse occurs communally in local congregations, and that "we need to tell this story of local believing communities, not just the stories of individuals who are their members, because communities are more than just the sum of their individual parts."

These insights beg crucial questions: what resources now inform the ethical and religious discourse in congregations? What is filling the breach created by the retreat of denominational and traditional sources of authority? The Park Ridge Center study uncovered socioeconomic, ethnic/racial, and pragmatic dynamics at work in congregational approaches to sexual matters that should give pause to religious people since they are basically nonreligious factors. Even more disconcerting may be the number of times congregations simply avoid serious issues, as in the "don't ask, don't tell" approach or the notion that maintaining group harmony outweighs the value of group discussion of some hot-button topic. If the congregation is now the venue for ethical and religious discourse, the place where individuals look for larger resources in lieu of strong denominational or traditional ties, we must wonder where individual members will turn when their congregation leaves them in the lurch? Might this not encourage a de facto individualism?¹²

Congregations matter more than they may know. They are inheriting the mantle of communal religious authority from the denominations and represent a check on purely individualistic expressions of religion. This is not the time to shirk the mantle.

NOTES
1. Penny Edgell Becker, Congregations in Conflict: Cultural Models of Local Religious Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 10. Also, R. Stephen Warner, "The Place of the Congregation in the Contemporary American Religious Configuration," in American Congregations, vol. 2, James P. Wind and James W. Lewis, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994): 54-99; Nancy Tatum Ammerman, Congregation and Community (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Lowell W. Livezey, ed., Public Religion and Urban Transformation (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming).