At a black Pentecostal church in Raleigh, N.C., the Rev. Patrick Wooden entered the sanctuary Sunday to a standing ovation, exulting that God’s “high hand” had led voters last week to pass a statewide amendment banning same-sex marriage. He took to the pulpit and denounced President Barack Obama for taking a stand “in support of sin,” and “in opposition to the biblical model of marriage.”

A thousand miles away, at a predominantly white, Lutheran church in Madison, Wis., where a rainbow banner greets churchgoers arriving for services, the Rev. Susan Schneider preached that gay men and women were included when Jesus commanded his followers to love one another: “Knocking down the walls is what Jesus was after.”

Obama’s declaration last week that he supports same-sex marriage prompted ministers around the country to take to their pulpits Sunday and preach on the issue. But in the clash over homosexuality, the battle lines do not simply pit ministers against secular advocates for gay rights. Religion is on both sides in this conflict. The battle is actually church versus church, minister versus minister, and Scripture versus Scripture.

The dividing lines are often unpredictable. There are black churches that welcome openly gay couples, and white churches that don’t. Some Presbyterian churches hire openly gay clergy members, while others will not. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin, but there are Catholic priests who secretly bless gay unions.

And leaders in the United Methodist Church have been debating whether to ordain openly gay ministers for four decades, and voted again just this month to uphold their prohibition. But there are Methodist ministers who perform same-sex marriages in defiance of church rules who share the denomination with ministers who preach that America is going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality.

The faith divide resembles what the nation experienced in the debates over slavery, said Michael Coogan, a lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School.

“The proslavery contingent quoted the Bible repeatedly, saying that God has all these commandments about slavery and nowhere in the Bible, including the New Testament, is it stated that there’s anything wrong with slavery,” Coogan said. “The abolitionists also quoted the Bible, but used the same sort of more general texts that supporters of same-sex relationships are using: Love your neighbor, treat others as you would have them treat you, the golden rule.”

Obama invoked his own faith when he revealed Wednesday — a day after North Carolina voters approved an amendment to ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions — that he supports same-sex marriage. He said that he and the first lady “are both practicing Christians,” and that “obviously” his position “may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others.”

“But, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the golden rule — you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.”

On Sunday, after Wooden quieted the standing ovation in his sanctuary in Raleigh, he went into a sermon that portrayed the fight for the same-sex marriage amendment as a divinely ordained cause.

Quoting from Exodus, he said God had led people to the polls with a “high hand,” just as God led the Israelites out of Egypt. Obama went “against God,” the pastor said.

Wooden was in the forefront of the political fight over the marriage amendment in North Carolina, serving on the executive committee for the campaign and voicing radio advertisements heard around the state.

In his sermon Sunday, he talked far more politics than Scripture. He compared his role to that of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also showed the congregation a front-page newspaper photograph of himself, which was magnified on the Jumbotron screens mounted around the sanctuary.

At the Lutheran church in Madison, Schneider directly tackled the issue of the biblical prohibitions on homosexuality in her sermon. Her church is a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a mainline Protestant denomination that voted three years ago to allow openly gay clergy members to serve.

“Yes, it’s true that the Bible says some nasty things about homosexuality,” she said to about 100 congregants. “It’s also true that the Bible has passages that prohibit men from cutting their hair, and that forbid anyone from wearing mixed-fiber clothing, or planting two different kinds of seed in their fields, or eating shellfish. The Bible also commands slaves to obey their masters, parents to stone unruly children, and upholds as heroes of the faith men with multiple wives and concubines.”

On gay marriage declaration, Obama tried to limit risk

About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Barack Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself. He had struggled with the decision, he said, but had come to believe it was the right one.

The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the president’s stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his re-election.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, another religious adviser to Obama and executive director of Sojourners, a left-leaning evangelical magazine and organization, said that he had fielded calls ever since the announcement from pastors across the country, including African-American and Hispanic ministers. Religious leaders, he said, are deeply divided.

“We hope the president will reach out to people who disagree with him on this,” Wallis said. “The more conservative churches need to know, need to be reassured that their religious liberty is going to be respected here.”

Indeed, even some of Obama’s friends in the religious community warned that he risked alienating followers, particularly African-Americans who have been more skeptical of the idea than other traditional Democratic constituencies.

“They were wresting with their ability to get over his theological position,” said the Rev. Delman Coates, the pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md., who was on the call.

— New York Times News Service