THE SERVICE FOR GAY EPISCOPALIANS and their supporters held at the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in downtown Philadelphia last week could have been a reenactment of a civil-rights rally from 35 years ago, and in some sense it was. Sweating parishioners fanned themselves with programs as the preacher, Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, gazed heavenward and broke into a stirring a capella spiritual about the struggle for freedom of an oppressed people. ” Stand together in solidarity one with the other,” commanded Kaeton, and a forest of clasped hands rose in response above the pews. For a moment it seemed like Montgomery, 1961.

It was meant to, of course. At the Episcopal church’s triennial General Convention in the City of Brotherly Love, the church’s leading gay theologians and most visible gay clergy gathered to argue that gay liberation — eliminating any remaining religious taboos against homosexuality — is the spiritual heir to the civil-rights movement. The task, they claim, is as morally significant as defeating segregation, as Godinspired as the Exodus.