The Rev. Raymond G. Helmick is an adjunct faculty member in the theology department of Boston College and co-editor of Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation. He specializes in studying and mediating international conflicts, including those in the Middle East and Northern Ireland.

A June 26, 2011 Chicago Tribune article on clergy in Illinois who defied church on same-sex unions.

A May 31, 2011, story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about splits in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America after its 2009 decision to allow some openly gay clergy. According to the story, the ELCA says that 444 parishes voted to leave after the decision but that the ELCA has also started more than 300 new churches.

The Human Right’s Campaign has a run-down of LGBT issues in the Episcopal Church.

Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has a column on the Presbyterian Church USA decision.

The Rev. Janet Edwards, a Presbyterian minister who underwent a church trial for conducting a marriage ceremony for two women, has a Huffington Post column on the gay ordination policy.

An essay in Christianity Today by S. Donald Fortson III, professor of church history and practical theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., looking at the long history of this issue in Christianity.

Read the May 11, 2011, Presbyterian News Service story on the vote and its implications.

A story in the July 2011 issue of Christianity Today.