Read this Aug. 22, 2009, Washington Post article about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s vote to allow gays in committed relationships to serve as clergy in the church. With more than 4 million members, the ELCA became one of the largest Christian denominations in the country to significantly open the pulpit to gay clergy.

Shuly Rubin Schwartz is the Irving Lehrman Research Associate Professor of American Jewish History and dean of the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Schwartz is an expert on contemporary Jewish history with a particular emphasis on the role of women. Her book, The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish […]

Riv-Ellen Prell is a history professor and chair of the American studies program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She is an expert on women in Judaism and is the editor of Women Remaking American Judaism. She says Jews should be concerned with effectively understanding the meaning of change in Jewish life, including intermarriage, falling birth […]

May 20, 2013, article about the Church of Scotland moving towards allowing liberal congregations to ordain gay men or women if they wish.

Pamela S. Nadell is director of the Jewish studies program at American University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of several books on Jewish women and American Jewish history, including Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination 1889-1995. She teaches courses on American Jewish history, modern Jewish civilization, Jewish women’s history, the Holocaust […]

Hasia Diner is a professor of American Jewish history, Hebrew and Judaic studies and director of the Center for American Jewish History at New York University in New York City. She is co-author of Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America From Colonial Times to the Present. She says a major problem facing […]

Read this July 9, 2012, Christian Post article about the Presbyterian Church (USA) rejecting an attempt to reinstate the ban on gay clergy.

Read this May 11, 2011, Christian Post article about the Presbyterian Church (USA) lifting its ban on gay clergy. The decision led dozens of congregations to leave the PCUSA.

Gwynn Kessler is an associate professor of religion at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she teaches a course on Judaism and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer persons.