Churches are unique organizations. In America, they enjoy tremendous public subsidies, as they are recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt religious organizations. In exchange for these subsidies, churches are presumably expected to play a vital role in serving their communities. But there is very little accountability or proactive attempts to demonstrate that churches earn this subsidy. In fact, many churches fail to uphold the basic standards of transparency that we, as a society, expect from most other types of organizations.
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These conditions have enabled an environment where ambiguity and misleading practices have become normalized. Many churches have avoided fully or clearly disclosing their policies out of a desire to be “seeker sensitive,” that is, wanting to attract “seekers” and convert them into loyal “customers.” This capitalist mindset is particularly dangerous in a spiritual context. It means that pastors will preach about “welcoming” and “loving” all people, no matter who they are, while quietly refusing to officiate weddings for LGBTQ+ people or skirt around questions of “why there are no female pastors.”

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There are clear laws and regulations in the for-profit world that protect us from “false advertising” and “bait and switch” tactics. But while we, as a society, hold the “secular” marketplace accountable for such violations, we rarely insist that churches abide by similar expectations. Are the stakes not much higher when it comes to spiritual matters? Is a clearly communicated policy on a church’s website an unreasonable expectation? We don’t believe so.

No person should have to wonder the limits of their “welcome.” The vulnerability entailed in investing into a community is difficult enough -- LGBTQ+ people should not have to constantly worry about when the other shoe is going to drop. Women shouldn’t have to wonder about the height of every church’s glass ceiling. Even when directly asked, many church leaders do not give straightforward answers about the church’s policies towards the most marginalized. It often takes multiple conversations and years of relationship-building before clarity is delivered -- and by then, the damage is already done. It is unreasonable to expect people to jump through hoops to learn how policies that affect them will be enforced. See “News” section for stories of how ambiguity is harmful.

The prevailing reality of ambiguity, misleading rhetoric and absence of conviction is causing Christian institutions to wander aimlessly through a desert of confusion. We don’t even have a consistent definition of CHURCH. Who speaks for the Church? What does the Church stand for and what does it stand against? Why is ambiguity acceptable? Why is accountability is rare? Why are church leaders permitted to conceal the policies that they actively enforce? How do we even begin to address these questions?

The goal of Church Clarity, ever since we launched on October 18th, 2017, is as simple as our name: to delivery Church Clarity. To literally map out the Church, and clarify what it contains. This requires a different approach to conversations among those who are stakeholders of Christianity including those who  identify as Christians as well as former Christians. Before we can address our differences, we must first acknowledge them. Clarity is Reasonable, and the goal of delivering Church Clarity should appeal to all people, regardless of their particular beliefs, or even if they are not involved with a local congregation. Counterintuitively, Church Clarity is not exactly for ‘churches.’ It is for ‘THE Church’ -- it is for the people.

Our goal is to create a consistent standard of clarity for how church policy should be communicated. We believe that policies should be clearly communicated on a church website’s primary pages. Why?

1. Expecting people to “get coffee” with a pastor just to find out a church’s policy places the emotional burden and labor on the individual, and not the institution. Clear policies communicate standardized expectations so that people know what to expect, without having to rely on a 'whisper network.'
2. In the 21st century, an organization’s website is essentially its digital “front door.” Websites serve as a centralized location for the public to understand critical information about an organization so they know what to expect.
3. Publicly stated policies provide a way for congregants to hold church leadership accountable to its commitments. If policy decisions are made in secret without informing the full congregation, then there can be no accountability. Furthermore, stating policies clearly on a website ensures that the church’s leadership has done the due diligence to discern what its church policies should be, as it is taking some risk by making a public stand.
   

If a church has already made up its mind on its policy but is not clearly communicating it, then the question really should be: “Why doesn’t the church publicly declare what it actively enforces behind closed doors?” If a church is still discerning its position, we have a specific score for that.

NO. Some people assume that our database exists to point LGBT people to LGBT-affirming churches, for instance, or to warn them about non-affirming churches. Although this is a common byproduct of our public database, it is actually not our primary goal. If that was so, then we would certainly enable people to post “personal reviews” of their experiences in churches, much in the way that Yelp does. But we don’t.

Our goal is to score churches for how clearly they communicate their actively enforced policies. It is a “communication” score above anything else. We cannot score based on the “reality of what happens in their congregations,” but rather based on their online presence. That is why we confine our scope purely to any online evidence available on a church’s website, on its denomination’s or network’s website, and any pastor statements.

We sometimes get emails from pastors and congregants telling us that the score we’ve given to a church does not accurately reflect what happens in their church. We always respond by saying, “That’s good to know; please update your website so that this information is publicly available and also consider becoming Verified Clear; we’d love to update your score.” Or, “Please provide us with online evidence of what you’re talking about on the church or denomination website, and we’d love to update the score.”

Why do we do this? Our goal is to motivate churches to become clear on their websites because that is presently the most visible advertisement to the public. Clarity is reasonable on your website. Sometimes this helps people find churches that are aligned with their values -- that’s great, but that is not our primary goal.

Why do we strongly believe that policies should be on websites? Great question. We have an answer for that in our FAQ.

“...with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” - Jesus

This is a Reasonable question. Church Clarity is unequivocally inclusive, affirming and celebrating of all people. We champion human flourishing. We value diversity throughout our community of advocates including our leadership team, advisory council, and our incredible volunteers. We make no apologies for this practical element of our governing policy and are eager to model explicit transparency. Regardless of your sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, regardless of your race, or socio-economic status, your abilities, your faith or theological views, you are eligible to participate at every level of Church Clarity’s mission.

As to what Church Clarity “believes,” here is how we break it down. As an organization, we are committed to the following:

1. Mission: A mission that promotes clarity of policy, not any particular policy or theology. To believe that LGBTQ people and/or women deserve clarity is not a ‘progressive’ or a ‘conservative’ opinion -- we believe that it is a ‘reasonable’ opinion that progressives and conservatives can (and do) agree to.
   

2. Policy: We enforce LGBTQ-affirming policies within our organization. There will be no discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Volunteers are free to believe whatever they want. As a reminder, at this point, anyone can sign up to be a volunteer for Church Clarity so long as they fill out our Verified Clear Individual profile. But once they join our team, they have to respect our community norms which prohibit transphobic or homophobic discourse.
   

3. Language: Church Clarity is led by two people - George Mekhail and Sarah Ngu - who have affirming beliefs. The leadership might change, but for now, given who is in charge, that means as an organization, we commit to using affirming language and operating from an affirming perspective. The words we choose inevitably indicate our politics and theological beliefs. For instance, we will use “she/her/hers” pronouns when referring to trans women. We choose “affirming” vs “non-affirming” as our language for distinguishing policies, not “liberal” vs “conservative,” or “revisionary” vs “historic.”

Please feel free to Contact Us with any questions about this or offer feedback on how we can articulate our answer to this question more explicitly.

This is an important and complicated question. First, it would be the height of hypocrisy for an organization with our mission to have an ambiguous policy (see previous question). But that does not mean that the goal of our organization is to convince others to conform with our policy. The nuance of our mission is that regardless of the policy, we believe disclosure is essential.

That is why we are eager to enlist those who simply agree that Clarity is Reasonable and who represent the full spectrum of theological positions. We also desire to be an organization where those who work for us, partner with us or are ambassadors at any level can freely and publicly voice their convictions at their individual discretion.

We acknowledge the inherent tension between the policies we enforce and our organizational goal for Clarity, but we also believe that remaining completely free of bias is impossible for any organization. We are comfortable with this tension and welcome feedback on how we can improve in this regard. Please feel free to Contact Us with any questions or comments.

We evaluate local church policies, NOT denominational policy. If a church belongs to an affirming denomination, but has a non-affirming policy, it would be scored as “non-affirming.” Same goes for a non-egalitarian church within an egalitarian denomination.

However if a church belongs to a non-affirming or non-egalitarian denomination, the burden of proof resides on the church to demonstrate on its website that it is going against its denomination's policy and is practicing a fully affirming or fully egalitarian policy. Otherwise, the denomination's policy will be assumed to be the local church's.

The unit of analysis is the locally enforced church policy, not the denomination’s policy or the opinion of the pastor(s) or church members.

Beliefs are what churches think. Policies are what churches do. Policies are what churches “actively enforce” in their actions. Does a church permits women to preach? A same-sex wedding to be officiated in its sanctuary? A trans woman to join the women’s retreat? These actions are either, “Yes or No.” There is no in-between. (Unless a church is “Actively Discerning.”)

What we are not evaluating is the “why” behind a church’s policy. Sometimes that has to do with a church’s beliefs, but not necessarily. For example, there are plenty of LGBTQ-affirming pastors who do not conduct same-sex weddings not due to theological belief, but due to other reasons (e.g. fear of denomination discipline, loss of donors).

We painstakingly emphasize our laser focus on evaluating the level of clarity in regards to a church’s actively enforced policy.

We acknowledge that there are churches who have not disclosed clear policies because they are genuinely and actively discerning what their policy should be. We believe that publicly acknowledging this process is in fact an example of delivering clarity. Because this option has a high potential for abuse, however, we only score churches as “active discerning” if the church has communicated a public commitment to deliver clarity within a reasonable, specific deadline (<12 months). We are excited about the potential this option could offer church leaders and hope to be a resource whenever possible. We believe by identifying ambiguity as a fundamental issue that creates harm, we can collectively encourage more churches to aspire for clarity, regardless of their convictions. If you want some guidance, contact us as we would love to help you. Many churches declare their discernment process through our Verified Clear policy survey.

We take into account: public information available on church’s website, denomination’s website, and pastor’s statements (including social media).

We do not take into account: stories submitted by people, news articles, offline PDFs, etc.

That said, we do regularly link to the latter category of information (e.g. stories, news, PDF’s) in church entries, even if it doesn’t affect the church’s score. Feel free to email us with a story that you want to publish on our blog; we do not publish anonymous submissions.

Clear scores are given to churches whose policies can be easily found on their websites’ primary pages (e.g. About, Beliefs). The language in the policies is clear and contains all necessary information.

Unclear scores are given to churches whose policies are difficult to find on their websites (e.g. located in sermon archives, blogs). The language in the policies may also be unclear.

Undisclosed scores are given to churches whose websites provide inconclusive evidence as to the churches’ policies.

For more detail, see our Score Definitions page. Please note that we score Women in Leadership policy a bit differently than LGBTQ policy as we factor into account gender representation on leadership teams. Why? Because personnel is policy (H/T @BroderickGreer). Representation is essential.

All scores, except for “Verified Clear,” are assigned to churches by our volunteers based on our scoring definitions and publicly available information online. The “Verified Clear” score is the highest and best score a church can receive. It is also the only score that a church obtains by proactively self-disclosing its policies through our Verified Clear survey, which is sent to all churches that have been scored in our database. If you're a pastor at a church, email us to receive the survey.

See our Score Definitions page. 

See our Score Definitions (Women in Leadership) page. Note: Women and/or non-binary folks must be adequately represented in a church’s leadership for a church to receive a “Clear: Egalitarian” score.  

That’s great news! Take a look at our Scoring Definitions, to begin with, to understand the difference between Clear and Unclear websites. Then, read our Church Clarity resource PDF, “How to be clear: For Church leaders.” You can also email us to receive our Verified Clear survey so you can obtain the highest score available on our database.

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Each church submission undergoes three levels of review and verification by our volunteer team so it takes up to 2 weeks for each submission to be processed. If you want to confirm your submission is in our database, email us. If you’re interested in joining our volunteer team, first register to be Verified Clear as an individual.

You can also inquire about purchasing Clarity Credits in order to accelerate the processing speed of your submissions through our pipeline. Simply go to our contribute page or email us for more information.

This means that the church is being processed but it is not published yet.. Typically it takes a few weeks to be scored. If you’re interested in joining our volunteer team, go here to first register as a Verified Clear individual.

Please review the Score Links & Notes section for the rationale for this church's score.

There are typically two reasons. The first is that the church has a statement affirming "sexual orientation" but not "gender identity." Similarly, the church may mention they affirm people, "gay or straight," but not mention "transgender" folks.

The second reason is that the church does affirm the full LGBTQ+ spectrum, but it is hard to locate the church's affirmation statement on the church's website.

Please see our score definitions for more.

If you still have questions, email us.

If a church has an egalitarian policy, we provide a Clear or Unclear score based on whether the leadership team consists of at least 50% women and/or non-binary people. If so, then the church will get a Clear: Egalitarian score. If the senior minister is a woman, then that counts too. If not, then the church will get an Unclear: Egalitarian score. We factor representation into our scoring for Women in Leadership. Why? See this. Additionally, if it's hard to locate the leadership team on the website, then we will also score the church as Unclear. For additional questions email us.

For more see our Scoring Definitions.

If your church has already been submitted to our database (churchclarity.com/crowdsource), then have an authorized representative from your church email us and we will send them our Verified Clear policy survey.

These benefits and more are reserved for Church Clarity Member Churches. If your church is Verified Clear, it is eligible to apply for CC Membership. See this for more: https://www.churchclarity.org/ccmembership

If you have questions, please email us.

Anyone can become Verified Clear! Just go to https://www.churchclarity.org/vc-individual and complete the form. Everyone is eligible to register at no cost—the process is also completely voluntary. See this blog post for more details.

Your profiles will be reviewed by our system, and they published or updated on our website as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience as we invest in more robust technological systems. To help accelerate our ability to improve our turn times, consider supporting our mission with a financial contribution: churchclarity.org/contribute.

Make sure the email address on your VC Individual Profile is the same email address as the one that was used to complete the VC Church survey. You can email us if you can’t remember the email address that was used, and you can update the email address on your VC profile anytime. To change your email address, login to churchclarity.com/vc-profile. Select My VC Profile, and then select Login Settings.

If your church has already been submitted to our database (churchclarity.com/crowdsource), then have an authorized representative from your church email us and we will send them our Verified Clear policy survey.