Once upon a time in a tiny little Presbyterian church in a tiny little town on the prairie, two elders (there were only two) determined that that very little congregation--at best, maybe forty people, fewer present for Sunday worship--should break ties altogether with the big denomination of which they'd been a part for more than a century because their mainline mother had curtsied up, far too close, to sin and evil by tolerating--yes, that's right tolerating, homosexuals, queers, LBGTQ or whatever as members and even office-bearers of the church.

The people in this tiny Presbyterian church were good folks, all of them, but they were convinced that such abominations had no place among the righteous; and those who admitted such sinners to their fellowship were somehow disobeying the scriptural mandates which set those people apart. 

Let's be clear here--no queer people were lined up for admission to either the table or fellowship at this little church on the prairie. In other words, none of those people the little church's membership sought to banish were anywhere near that little Presbyterian church. Nonetheless, the little church's elders wanted it known far and wide that their little church would not admit such sinners. 

Because they wanted nothing to do with the liberal churches, they brought the matter to a vote to determine how many of their little number wanted to come clean and join a more conservative Presbyterian denomination.

We'd never joined the little Presbyterian church, although we often attended and enjoyed the fellowship for more than a year. It wasn't much like the denomination we'd been a part of for all of our lives, but there was something about the members' devotion to each other that we found, frankly, lovely.

But when the little church voted to leave the mother church, we left too. There were other reasons for our leaving, but this abiding sense of self-righteousness manifest in their declaring their own purity made us wince. 

In truth, we found it hard to believe that if some gay couple had determined to visit and worship with this tiny little dying church, the vast number of its members would love to have them. It's just that making the big pitch to avoid the horrors of liberalism seemed so righteous. 

So they left, and so did we.

This week's Synod of the Christian Reformed Church finds itself amidst that same dilemma. A church in a city in Michigan had a deacon--a woman--who was in a gay relationship. She was not a kid, had been a deacon before, and came to the office by vote of the congregation.

But that deacon lit a fire in a denomination full of churches not at all unlike the little Presbyterian church we attended. As a result, the denomination I've been a part of for most of my life is facing a choice between keeping gay people out and allowing them in. 

Which is only half-truth. Literally hundreds of congregations within the denomination are not about to elect gay office-bearers because they have no gay people, or at least none that have come out. 

A majority of members of the CRC want nothing to do with gay people and consider the Bible's hatred of them to be the determining factor in their exclusion. What happened in that tiny Presbyterian church is almost sure to happen in the entire CRC denomination. Some will feel blessed by barring gay people. Some will be certain of their righteousness.

Others will not. Others will leave, as we did when we left that little Presbyterian church. Some will be excluded from what the CRC comes to determine as good and true and right. 

It seems clear a majority will vote for exclusion. 

Will the denomination survive?

Time will tell.