Editorials

The Irish Times view on the churches and gay rights: the road to irrelevance

The actions of the Presbyterian church are typical of a failure to keep up with changes in social attitudes

Christ Church Sandymount council have been ordered to recant following the appointment of Steven Smyrl, who is in a same-sex marriage, to the council. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

Sun Jan 9 2022 - 19:45

All main churches struggle with the issue of homosexuality. It is a reason why they are becoming more marginalised in societies where debate on gay rights now belong to history. That the Irish churches continue to obsess about it alienates them still further from the large share of the population.

Meanwhile, all churches on the island have gay members and gay clergy, something most churches readily acknowledge – if sotto voce.

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has, however, decided on a different approach. In June 2018 its General Assembly in Belfast decided that same-sex couples could not be full members nor could their children be baptised.

There was therefore a certain inevitability about what has happened at Dublin's Christ Church Sandymount, with its more liberal Presbyterian congregation. Gay man Steven Smyrl was an elder there from 2007 while in a relationship with another member. He and his partner entered a civil partnership in 2011 and married in 2018. In 2019 he was removed as an elder by a Church commission.

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Minister Katherine Meyer and the local church council then co-opted him as a member and refused to remove him despite directions by Church authorities to do so. Employing language reminiscent of witchcraft trials, she and the council were instructed to "recant" or be dismissed. They are standing their ground.

In an increasingly tolerant society this episode and how it has been handled casts the already damaged reputation of religion on this island in an even poorer light, particularly when both jurisdictions show more compassion and acceptance towards gay people than any of our churches.

Commenting on the Sandymount situation Prof Sam McConkey, himself a Presbyterian elder, said the churches in Ireland had “completely lost the audience, the dressing room, the under 40s. The survival of organised religion in any form on this island over the next 30 to 40 years is at issue”. He is correct – and the leaders of these churches have no one to blame but themselves.

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