Aberdeen, Scotland - Scotland's largest protestant church has voted to allow gay men and lesbians to become ministers.
The Church of Scotland imposed a temporary ban after the appointment of Scott Rennie, a gay minister, to a church in Aberdeen in 2009.
The general assembly, the church's law-making body, voted on Monday morning to lift that moratorium, officially allowing gay ministers to take on parishes for the first time since it was founded in 1560-1 by John Knox, a leading figure in the Scottish reformation.
The vote follows warnings that allowing gay and lesbian clergy could split the church. A special commission set up in 2009 to investigate the implications of Rennie's appointment predicted that up to a fifth of the church's ministers, deacons and elders, as well as 100,000 worshippers, could leave in protest.
The commission warned that the issue was extremely divisive, with another 1,800 church leaders and 40,000 parishioners saying they would leave if gay ministers were not admitted. The church has 445,000 communicants, or active members.
The Very Rev Jim Simpson – a former moderator (elected head) of the general assembly – urged respect. He hinted at the last great schism in the Church of Scotland: the "great disruption" in 1843 when 474 ministers left to form the Free Church of Scotland.
"I hope the church will go on talking and listening to each other rather than doing what too often has happened in our presbyterian past: stomping out to form a new sect or a new church," he said. "Whatever the outcome, stay with us."
The general assembly, which meets every year in Edinburgh, is to go on to decide whether to allow gay and lesbian ministers who are sexually active, but only those in stable, long-term relationships, or whether to demand celibacy of gay ministers.
Conservative groups and ministers deeply oppose further reforms. In what could be an indication of the general assembly's mood, the decision to allow gay ministers in principle went through unopposed and without a vote.
Church officials said this was the first time a policy had been so explicitly agreed by the church. In the past, many believed its formal policy was that homosexuality was a sin that could be cured.
One ministers who spoke against the measure, the Rev Graham Nash from Paisley, said he knew of gay members of the church who did not want gay ministers.
"It is not the case that everyone homosexual by orientation is asking the church to move away from its traditional position," Nash said. "I know personally a number of homosexual Christians who find it difficult or impossible to reconcile their orientation with their understanding of God's purpose."