Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August.

“There are many people within the ELCA who are very unhappy with what has happened,” said the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran CORE and a retired ELCA bishop from State College, Pa.

At its annual convention in Minneapolis in August, ELCA delegates voted to lift a ban that had prohibited sexually active gay and lesbian pastors from serving as clergy. The new policy, expected to take effect in April, will allow such individuals to lead ELCA churches as long as they can show that they are in committed, lifelong relationships.

Opponents, led by Lutheran CORE, said that decision is in direct contradiction to Scripture.

At a September convention, Lutheran CORE members voted to spend a year considering whether to form a new Lutheran denomination. However, its leaders said Wednesday that a heavy volume of requests for an alternative from disenfranchised congregations and churchgoers prompted them to hasten the process.

John Brooks, spokesman at the ELCA’s Chicago-based headquarters, said Lutheran CORE’s move was not unexpected. He expressed hope that church members would ultimately opt to stay in the denomination as it strives to be “a place for all people despite any differences we might have on any issues.”

Neither Brooks nor Lutheran CORE leaders would guess what kind of numbers a new denomination might attract. Lutheran CORE leaders believe there is deep opposition to the new policy among rank-and-file churchgoers, but said some may not be willing to actually depart the ELCA over it.

Brooks said the ELCA has not seen significant departures yet, but he cautioned it’s too soon after the August decision to read much into that.

So far, he said, five congregations nationwide have voted to leave the ELCA. More have started the process, with 87 taking a first vote to leave the denomination. Of those, 28 did not achieve the two-thirds vote necessary to leave the ELCA. In all, there are 10,300 ELCA churches in the country with about 4.7 million members.

If a congregation passes the two-thirds bar on its first vote, it must then wait 90 days before taking a second, final vote that also requires a two-thirds majority.

Other Christian denominations have seen factions split off over the gay clergy debate. In 2003, the 2 million-member Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, a move that alienated American Episcopalians from its worldwide parent, the Anglican Communion. The divide has led to the formation of the more conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims 100,000 members.

In addition to helping birth a new Lutheran church body, Lutheran CORE leaders said their organization would continue its recent move toward creating a free-floating synod within the ELCA for congregations opposed to the liberalized policy but who don’t want to leave the denomination.

Lutheran CORE has also urged supportive congregations to stop paying so-called mission support funds that help supplement the ELCA’s operating budget. Last weekend, ELCA leaders reduced their 2010 operating budget by $7.7 million, a move Brooks said was motivated mainly by the U.S. economy but also in part by an expected drop in the mission funds.

Ryan Schwarz, a Lutheran CORE member from Washington, D.C., is charged with leading the organizing effort for the new denomination. He said a committee would begin work immediately on drafting a constitution, building a budget and other steps needed to form the yet-unnamed denomination. They hope to have it ready to go by next August, he said.

“Many of us have spent years now struggling to call the ELCA to remain faithful to the Orthodox Christianity of the last 2,000 years,” Schwarz said. “While this is of course a wrenching decision, there is also a sense of hope in refocusing on our true mission, which is evangelizing the Lutheran faith.”

The Great Recession made things worse.

It’s further drained the financial resources of many congregations, seminaries and religious day schools. Some congregations have disappeared and schools have been closed. In areas hit hardest by the recession, worshippers have moved away to find jobs, leaving those who remain to minister to communities struggling with rising home foreclosures, unemployment and uncertainty.

Religion has a long history of drawing hope out of suffering, but there’s little good news emerging from the recession. Long after the economy improves, the changes made today will have a profound effect on how people practice their faith, where they turn for help in times of stress and how they pass their beliefs to their children.

“In 2010, I think we’re going to see 10 or 15 percent of congregations saying they’re in serious financial trouble,” says David Roozen, a lead researcher for the Faith Communities Today multi-faith survey, which measures congregational health annually. “With around 320,000 or 350,000 congregations, that’s a hell of a lot of them.”

The sense of community that holds together religious groups is broken when large numbers of people move to find work or if a ministry is forced to close.

“I’m really still in the mourning process,” says Eve Fein, former head of the now-shuttered Morasha Jewish Day School in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.

The school, a center of religious life for students and their parents, had been relying on a sale of some of its property to stay afloat but land values dropped, forcing Morasha to shut down in June.

“I don’t think any of us who were in it have really recovered,” Fein says. “The school was 23 years old. I raised my kids there.”

The news isn’t uniformly bad. Communities in some areas are still moving ahead with plans for new congregations, schools and ministries, religious leaders say.

And many congregations say they found a renewed sense of purpose helping their suffering neighbors. Houses of worship became centers of support for the unemployed. Some congregants increased donations. At RockHarbor church in Costa Mesa, Calif., members responded so generously to word of a budget deficit that the church ended the fiscal year with a surplus.

“We’re all a little dumbfounded,” says Bryan Wilkins, the church business director. “We were hearing lots of stories about people being laid off, struggling financially and losing homes. It’s truly amazing.”

In the Great Depression, one of the bigger impacts was the loss of Jewish religious schools, which are key to continuing the faith from one generation to the next. Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University historian and author of “American Judaism,” says enrollment in Jewish schools plummeted in some cities and many young Jews of that period didn’t have a chance to study their religion.

Today, some parents, regardless of faith, can no longer afford the thousands of dollars in tuition it costs to send a child to a religious day school. Church officials fear these parents won’t re-endroll their kids if family finances improve because it might be disruptive once they’ve settled into a new school.

Enrollment in one group of 120 Jewish community day schools is down by about 7 percent this academic year, according to Marc Kramer, executive director of RAVSAK, a network of the schools. A few schools lost as many as 30 percent of their students. Many of the hundreds of other Jewish day schools, which are affiliated with Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements, are also in a financial crunch.

Kramer says 2009-10 will be a “make or break” year for Jewish education, partly because of the additional damage to endowments and donors from Bernard Madoff’s colossal fraud.

Overall, U.S. Jewish groups are estimated to have lost about one-quarter of their wealth.

“It’s going to be painful,” Kramer says. “There will be some losses.”

The Association for Christian Schools International, which represents about 3,800 private schools, says enrollment is down nationally by nearly 5 percent. About 200 Christian schools closed or merged in the last academic year, 50 more than the year before.

At least 80 members of the Association of Theological Schools, which represents graduate schools in North America, have seen their endowments drop by 20 percent or more.

The National Catholic Education Association is still measuring the toll on its schools, but expects grim news from the hardest hit states, after years of declining enrollment.

“Some schools that were on the brink – this whole recession has just intensified that,” says Karen Ristau, president of the association.

Clergy in different communities say worship attendance has increased with people seeking comfort through difficult times, although no one is predicting a nationwide religious revival.

Americans for years have been moving away from belonging to a denomination and toward a general spirituality that may or may not involve regular churchgoing.

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found more people who call themselves “nondenominational Christians” and rising numbers who say they have no religion at all.

Before the stock market tanked last fall, only 19 percent of U.S. congregations described their finances as excellent, down from 31 percent in 2000, according to the 2008 Faith Communities Today poll.

Because of these trends, mainline Protestants were among the most vulnerable to the downturn. Their denominations had been losing members for decades and had been dividing over how they should interpret what the Bible says on gay relationships and other issues. National churches had been relying on endowments to help with operating costs, along with the generosity of an aging membership that had been giving in amounts large enough to mostly make up for departed brethren.

The meltdown destroyed that financial buffer.

The Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and other mainline denominations were forced to cut jobs and their national budgets.

The damage was felt across Methodist life. As of the summer, more than half of the church’s 62 U.S. regional districts, or annual conferences, reported they had budget deficits. Some sold property and buildings to continue their ministries. Two national Methodist boards cut more than 90 jobs. Fifty bishops took a voluntary pay cut. Annual conferences in hard-hit regions, such as Florida and Ohio, lost thousands of members as people moved to find work elsewhere.

“Many of these groups have such large endowments that they’re not going away,” Roozen says. “But I think there’s no question that they’re going to be smaller both as organizations and in membership.”

Roman Catholic dioceses for years had been struggling with maintaining their aging churches, paying salaries and health insurance and funding settlements over clergy sex abuse. With the hit to investment income and a drop in donations, they are now freezing salaries, cutting ministries and staff. The Archdiocese of Detroit, at the heart of the meltdown, had a $14 million shortfall in a $42 million budget in the fiscal year that ended in June 2008.

Conservative Protestant groups, known for their entrepreneurial spirit and evangelizing, were not immune. The 16.2 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the country, has had budget cuts in its North American Mission Board, at least three of its six seminaries and in its publishing and research arm.

Religious leaders say the next year or so will be key in determining which organizations survive the downturn intact. Even if the recession ends soon, religious fundraisers say the angst donors feel will not lift immediately, prolonging the difficulties for congregations, schools and ministries.

About 1,200 people meeting in suburban Indianapolis approved a constitution for the conservative umbrella group Lutheran CORE and a resolution directing its steering committee to report back in a year on whether to stay within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, form their own denomination or join another.

Some members urged the assembly to more quickly sever ties with the 4.7-million member ELCA after the vote last month to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, dropping a requirement that gay clergy remain celibate.

“Some congregations already have voted to leave ELCA,” CORE’s chairman, the Rev. Paull Spring of State College, Pa., said at a news conference afterward. “Others have not voted or do not intend to leave ELCA.”

Spring and other CORE leaders said their decision a year from now could lead to a reconfiguration of Lutheranism in the United States and Canada.

CORE’s meeting this year drew much more interest than the one in 2008, when about 300 people attended. For this year’s meeting. CORE had to move to a Roman Catholic church that could hold about 1,000 people, and the group cut off registrations at 1,200.

Participants said they believe the ELCA has reinterpreted Scripture to portray homosexuality more favorably.

“It’s totally against what’s in the Bible,” said Jo Pruett, who said attendance at her ELCA congregation in Rockdale, Texas, has fallen off in recent years because of “waffling” by the denomination. “We’re interpreting the Bible to suit society today.”

The 71-year-old Spring, a pastor for 44 years, received a standing ovation Friday night when he said the ELCA “has fallen into heresy.” On Saturday, he said the ovation was bittersweet.

“That’s a very sad thing, to be a church that you belong to your entire life, that now really has fallen in heresy. This has been a great personal struggle,” Spring said.

Rob Myallis, 30, of Jonestown, Pa., who was ordained a year ago, said ELCA members must square a gospel of acceptance, giving a warm welcome to everyone no matter what their flaws, with a gospel of repentance, where believers confess their sins.

“God loves you enough to want you to change,” Myallis said. “Is our own personal experience more important than Scripture?”

ELCA representatives at the meeting said the charged rhetoric reflected deep pain in the denomination.

“We are in solidarity with everyone in that room on the central doctrines of the Christian church,” said Stephen Bouman, the ELCA’s director for outreach and mission. “We want to listen to them. We want to tend to their pain.”

ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson on Wednesday warned that withholding financial support to protest the gay clergy vote, as CORE leaders have called for, would be devastating to the church.

The loss of financial support weighed on the Rev. Teka Fogi, a native Ethiopian who leads Oromo Christian Fellowship in Kensington, Md. He fears a decrease in giving to ELCA will result in less support for African congregations such as his own. However, he said the denomination had rejected biblical authority when it came to homosexuality.

“The church has gone astray. We cannot condone this kind of apostasy,” Fogi said.

Bishop Mark Hanson lays out his concerns in a letter Wednesday to leaders of the 4.7 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ELCA voted last month to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, dropping a requirement that gay clergy remain celibate.

Hanson’s letter comes on the eve of a meeting in suburban Indianapolis of conservative ELCA group Lutheran CORE, which has urged supporters to “direct funding away from the national church” because of the vote.

Hanson says withholding funding would hurt the church’s mission.

By voting Friday to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, the 4.7-million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will either show how a church can stand together amid differences, or become another casualty of division over sexual morality and the Bible, observers say.

“We’re going to be living in tension and ambiguity for a longer time, partly because the culture has shifted,” said David Steinmetz, a Duke Divinity School professor of Christian history.

The question is whether the mainline church will shift alongside, or if it will decide that the more welcoming attitude toward homosexuality is wrong, he said.

The ELCA – the nation’s seventh largest Christian church – reached its conclusion after eight years of study and deliberation. That culminated Friday when the church’s national assembly in Minneapolis struck down a policy that required any gay and lesbian clergy to remain celibate.

The assembly also signed off on finding ways for willing congregations to “recognize, support and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous, same gender relationships.” The church fell short of calling that gay marriage, but conservatives see that as the next step.

While congregations will not be forced to hire gay clergy, conservative ELCA members decried the decisions as straying from clear Scriptural direction and warned that defections are likely.

Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson pleaded for unity, appealing to both those who long felt marginalized and thought the changes were overdue and those “who feel they were once more central but now feel more peripheral.”

“It would be tragic if we walked away from one another,” Hanson said minutes after the vote.

The ELCA hopes to avoid the kind of fissures that have strained the Episcopal Church and the broader Anglican Communion, of which the 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch.

Just weeks ago, Episcopalians approved a resolution saying that “God has called and may call” gays in committed relationships to ordained ministry in the church, defying Anglicans who urged restraint.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has inched closer to joining the Episcopalians and Lutherans, but the latest effort to undo a policy requiring chastity of gay clergy was defeated this year.

The nation’s largest mainline denomination, the United Methodist Church, has moved in the opposite direction, hardening its opposition to non-celibate gay clergy.

That’s likely to continue because of declining Methodist membership in the Northeast and on the West Coast and growth in the South and Sunbelt, said Steinmetz, of Duke. The church also has a burgeoning presence in Africa, a source of conservatism in the Anglican battles, also.

The ELCA’s move is especially jarring and significant because “it is viewed by all of us as one of the more Reformation-rooted, broadly orthodox denominations” and takes its theology seriously, said Richard Mouw, president of the multi-denominational and evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

“It’s a huge, huge departure for a church like that,” said Mouw, who has urged fellow conservatives in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to stay in the fold despite concerns about a leftward shifts on sexuality.

He said one possible outcome is a “new ecumenical dialogue on the right” uniting beleaguered conservatives from various denominations – though not under the banner of a new one.

Barbara Wheeler, a former president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York who is now director of the school’s Center for the Study of Theological Education, praised the ELCA for laying a theological foundation for Friday’s vote by first approving a broad social statement on sexuality.

“It’s a completely theological argument toward openness to the possibility of faithful, committed same-sex relationships,” said Wheeler, who has played a central role in gay clergy deliberations inside the Presbyterian Church (USA). “What you’re seeing is two things: The society is in the process of changing its collective mind about the moral status of same-sex relationships, and there’s a parallel theological movement.”

If gays and lesbians can stick it out in mainline churches whose official teachings “were dismissive of their faithfulness and even their personhood,” so can disappointed conservatives, she said. One of the mainline’s strengths, she said, is to be a big tent.

“When you ask what religion has to contribute to the wider society, one hopes at least some religious groups will give examples of how to hold things together,” she said.

Mainline churches are trying to hold together at a time when Americans’ loyalty to denominational affiliation and organized religion is fraying. More Americans are joining non-denominational churches, which tend to be more conservative, or are discarding institutions altogether to craft their own spirituality.

From 2001 to 2008, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population, according to the American Religious Identification Survey, released this year. The study also found that nearly 39 percent of mainline Protestants consider themselves born-again or evangelical Christians – a group likely to push back on liberal stances on sexuality.

Though unity is the goal of many mainline leaders, the future is more likely to hold not a half-dozen large and divided mainline churches but 25 smaller and stronger churches, said Mark Jordan, a Harvard Divinity School professor.

“I think we’re coming up on an epic reorganization of religion in the United States,” Jordan said. “What we’re going to see going forward is more and smaller churches, loosely organized and federated around a progressive pole or a conservative pole.”

Conservative ELCA members have warned of damaged relationships with Lutherans in other countries. While Lutherans in Europe and Scandinavia are to the left of the ELCA on homosexuality, African and Asian Lutherans have been taught a more conservative line by missionaries and theologians, said the Rev. Conrad Braaten, senior pastor of Church of the Reformation, an ELCA congregation in Washington, D.C.

Braaten is optimistic the ELCA can hold together through the sexuality tensions.

“This particular discussion has been going on with a lot of deep feelings in the Lutheran church, but not a lot of acrimony and not a lot of bridges being burnt,” he said. “I think that’s going to make a difference.”

- UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: 7.9 million U.S. members. The most conservative of the largest mainline denominations on gay clergy. An effort to repeal a ban on non-celibate gay clergy failed at the church’s last General Conference, in 2008.

- EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA: 4.7 million U.S. members. The church voted Friday to strike down a policy that required celibacy of gay clergy, becoming the largest U.S. denomination to take that stance. The change allows those in committed same-gender relationships to be on official ELCA church rosters and serve as pastors at congregations that want them.

- PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA): 2.9 million U.S. members. Ministers must live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between and a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.” The church’s General Assembly voted last year to drop that requirement, but the move did not receive required approval from presbyteries.

- EPISCOPAL CHURCH: 2.1 million U.S. members. The splintering global Anglican fellowship has moved to the brink of a full schism since the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop. Last month, the Episcopal General Convention approved a resolution saying “God has called and may call” gays in committed relationships to any ordained ministry in the church.

- AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES IN THE USA: 1.3 million U.S. members. Holds that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The Baptist tradition emphasizes local autonomy, and some churches have appointed openly gay ministers, creating tensions.

- UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST: 1.1 million U.S. members. Boasts a long track record of welcoming gay clergy. Allowed ordination of an openly gay man and openly lesbian woman in the 1970s. Ordination of practicing homosexuals was officially accepted in 1980.

From HRC (with slight editing):

(Washington) The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, issued the following statement on today’s historic decision by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s (ELCA) to lift its ban on noncelibate lesbian and gay pastors and to allow for those in committed same-sex relationships to serve as ministers.  This vote passed 559-541 following an earlier precedent declaring that congregations “that choose to do so [may] recognize, support and hold publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”  In addition, on Wednesday, a 2/3 majority voted to approve a social statement on human sexuality to acknowledge without judgment the wide variety of views within the ELCA regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inclusion.

“By allowing for same-sex couples in committed relationships to serve their call to ministry and by creating policies that respects LGBT people in their congregations, ELCA is modeling for other religious communities what it means to be a faith community that honors all of God’s children,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.  “This is a joyous day for the LGBT Lutheran’s who no longer have to choose between their spirituality and their sexuality.”

“The Holy Spirit has moved powerfully in the community called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, working through the courageous advocacy of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and our allies,” said Harry Knox, Director for HRC’s Religion and Faith Program. “Thanks be to God for our colleagues at Lutherans Concerned and all of the Goodsoil coalition!  The ELCA has studied, prayed and listened to the witness of its LGBT sisters and brothers, and has come to consensus in community. This decision reflects the best of Lutheran tradition.”

Gays and lesbians are currently allowed to serve as Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ministers only if they remain celibate.

At 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA would be one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.

“We are today part of a church denomination that is changing, and it will make possible sexual moral standards that are contrary to the Bible – which is what brings Jesus closer to us,” said convention delegate Al Quie, a former Republican governor of Minnesota.

The debate over the so-called “ministry recommendations” got under way first thing Friday, and Quie proposed an alternative proposal: “Practicing homosexual persons are excluded from rostered leadership in this church.”

The proposal, which would have left the church’s policy more or less unchanged, failed. In addition, conservatives lost an important vote Wednesday night when the convention’s 1,045 delegates approved by a two-thirds supermajority a “social statement on human sexuality” that said the ELCA could accommodate diverging views on homosexuality.

The Rev. Katrina Foster, a pastor in the Metropolitan New York Synod, pointed out that the church has ordained woman and divorced people in violation of a literal interpretation of scripture.

“We can learn not to define ourselves by negation,” Foster said. “By not only saying what we are against, which always seems to be the same – against gay people. We should be against poverty. I wish we were as zealous about that.”

Some critics of the proposal have predicted its passage could cause individual congregations to split off from the ELCA, as has been the case with other Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Tim Housholder of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Cottage Grove, Minn., who spoke in favor of Quie’s alternative, described himself as a rostered ELCA pastor “at least for a few more hours.”

“This assembly is not the ELCA,” Housholder said. “This is an agenda-driven group.”

The 1,045 delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s convention in Minneapolis are scheduled to vote Friday on the gay clergy proposal.

Gays and lesbians are currently allowed to serve as ELCA ministers only if they remain celibate. If delegates approve the proposal, the church will join a growing list of mainline Christian denominations to liberalize attitudes toward homosexuality.

Critics say the proposed policy goes against clear Scriptural guidance that homosexuality is sinful, and have predicted some congregations could split with the ELCA over the issue.

Delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s nationwide assembly in Minneapolis on Wednesday approved a “social statement on human sexuality.” The vote was a prelude to a bigger debate Friday, when delegates will tackle a proposal that would allow individual ELCA congregations to hire people in committed same-sex relationships as clergy.

The social statement lays a theological foundation for a liberalized policy on gay clergy, and supporters of the proposal praised Wednesday’s vote. “We are encouraged and hopeful that … this will result in the church’s elimination of the current ban on ministers in same gender relationships,” said Emily Eastwood, executive director of Lutherans Concerned/North America, a group of pro-gay Lutherans.

Opponents of the social statement said it ignores clear scriptural direction that homosexuality is a sin. “We are asked to affirm a description of sexuality based on a reality that’s shaped not by Scripture but by today’s culture,” said Curtis Sorbo of Adams, N.D., a convention delegate from the ELCA’s Eastern North Dakota Synod.

ELCA officials said it shouldn’t be assumed that passage of the social statement automatically means the proposal on gay clergy will be approved. “We haven’t yet had that debate, and I would not want to conjecture that,” said the Rev. Rebecca Larson, an official in the ELCA’s headquarters in Chicago.

Still, the social statement passed a higher bar than what will be required to approve the new clergy policy. The social statement, as a foundational document for the church, needed to be approved by a two-thirds supermajority of the 1,045 convention delegates. It got exactly that, passing with 66.67 percent of the vote.

The new clergy policy needs only a simple majority to pass.

The 34-page social statement actually touches on homosexuality only briefly, and is intended as a sweeping definition of the ELCA’s approach to matters of human sexuality. It also sketches out the church’s approach to gender, friendship, marriage and children, cohabitation outside marriage, the commercialization of sexuality, and the global sex trade.

But it acknowledges what Larson described as an utter lack of consensus toward homosexuality and same-sex relationships across the ELCA’s membership. She said the statement’s drafters agreed that such differing views could be accomodated because the homosexuality issue is “not central to our faith,” Larson said.

Wednesday’s debate was interrupted briefly in the afternoon when severe storms and a possible tornado passed through downtown Minneapolis, damaging the steeple of an ELCA church across the street from the convention center. Delegates were allowed to remain in the convention hall, but a few jokes about God’s wrath proved inevitable.

“We trust that the weather is not a commentary on our work,” said the Rev. Steven Loy, who was helping oversee the convention.