ReligionDispatches.org

After I posted about the Senate health care bill yesterday, the Democratic leadership held a press conference in which he declared that he wouldn't use the process of reconciliation to get the health care reform bill passed. But at the same time, it is unclear whether Majority Leader Harry Reid has the 60 votes he would need to bring the bill to the floor of the Senate for debate. As Greg Sargent reported at his Washington Post blog this morning, conservative Democrats are trying to use leverage their crucial vote to pressure Reid in order to get changes they want made to the bill.

Ben Nelson of Nebraska, one of the anti-choice Democrats in the Senate, said plainly that "he is not happy with the current abortion language in the Senate bill. But then he turned around and said that if his opposition to the public option is satisfied, it could help mollify him on the abortion question." (Here is a helpful comparison of the House (Stupak) and Senate versions of the abortion provisions.)

Imagine the scene: It’s the November 14 meeting of the PCUSA Presbytery of Newark (New Jersey). Business, we can imagine, is being conducted in a relatively unexciting and mundane way, the same as with most Presbyteries. Then comes announcement time.

A female pastor, The Rev. Ms. Laurie A. McNeill of Central Presbyterian Church, an average PCUSA congregation in Montclair, stands up to make an announcement. She wants to share some exciting news with her fellow ministers and elders in attendance.

We can imagine most Presbyters aren’t really paying that much attention, thinking maybe she is going to announce some upcoming event in the life of the Central congregation.

McNeill has been at the Central congregation as Pastor for several years. According to her bio on the church’s website, McNeill is a North Carolina native, a 1982 graduate of Wake Forest University and received her Master of Divinity from Princeton Seminary. She was ordained in 1989, served once as moderator of the body before which she stands and was once a commissioner to the denomination’s General Assembly.

Her announcement, as reported by The Presbyterian Outlook on Wednesday, November 18: she got married.

PCUSA pastors get married all the time. What made this announcement so significant was that McNeill, a female, married another woman. The ceremony, conducted by a UCC minister who grew up in the same North Carolina Presbyterian church as did McNeill, was held at Cape Cod on October 17.

If you haven't already read Kathryn Joyce's interview with the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, author of the new report, "Globalizing the Culture Wars," you should. It's vitally important stuff on how American evangelical leaders have succeeded in exporting -- and validating -- homophobia in Africa.

About Rick Warren, Kaoma notes: "In America Warren says 'I love gays.' In Africa, he says it's not a natural way of life. He's said, "I can't say this in America, but I can say it in Africa." In America, people will hold him responsible, and in Africa, nobody will.

In the late 1990s while working at CNN Radio, I was moved to enter the seminary to train for a possible career change. Upon learning of my new endeavor, my boss shook his head and remarked, “From one low paying career to the next.”

His words were prophetic. Since leaving the media and entering the ministry, I have yet to again reach the pay level that I was receiving at CNN, despite actually working a second, secular, job to make ends meet. However, ministry is not a low paying career for some pastors. Some, like Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, and Joel Osteen are living fairly high on the hog for men of the cloth.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released the Senate's version of a health care reform bill last night, and it appears to essentially adopt a Capps rather than a Stupak approach to the abortion funding issue. That is, according to Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post, the bill "would require at least one plan within the health insurance exchange that the bill sets up to offer a plan that covers abortion and one that doesn't. It would also authorize the Health and Human Services Secretary to audit plans to make certain that abortion isn't being paid for with federal dollars."

Grim reports that Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), who authored the abortion compromise in the House reviled by the religious right and its ally Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), is satisfied with the language, as is Barbara Boxer (D-CA), a leading pro-choice senator.