RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Gays and lesbians moved a step closer toward ordination in the Presbyterian Church after a legislative committee approved a measure that would partially lift the church’s ban on gay and lesbian ministers.

The proposal will soon go before the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national legislative assembly for a full vote. If passed, it would allow individual churches to dismiss a 1978 interpretation of church law that prohibits gays and lesbians from being ordained as ministers, elders or deacons.

Gays and lesbians in relationships could still be barred from ordination under a separate church law passed in 1997, but liberals said removal of the “Authoritative Interpretation” would be a major step toward full inclusion for gays and lesbians in the church.

“It provides opportunities for gays and lesbians they did not have before,” said Doug Nave, who serves on the board of the Covenant Network, a group of Presbyterians lobbying for gay and lesbian ordination. “We think it will show that Christians can disagree on something and still be part of a single community of faith.”

As rifts over gays and lesbians have deepened among Episcopalians and United Methodists, Presbyterians have debated the issue with relative civility in recent years, though division remains. The recent debate lacked the vitriol present in other denominations, and committee members stopped to pray together before each vote was cast.

About 8,000 Presbyterians took part in the weeklong assembly at Richmond’s Convention Center.

Although conservatives acknowledge that some individual Presbyterian churches have been ordaining gay and lesbian ministers for years, they argued that further loosening of the restrictions would undermine the teachings of the Scriptures.

“We have a choice here today whether we can follow … a signal that comes to us from an ever-moving society that never knows from one generation to the next what its mores are going to be,” said Bill Lewis, an elder from Sharonville, Ohio. “Or do we want to follow a beacon that is based in the solid rock of Holy Scripture?”

Liberals, however, said church law needed to change with the times.

“I really do believe the 1978 [Authoritative Interpretation] is out of date and destructive and should not have to be a part of this continued conversation in the year 2004,” said the Rev. Janet Lowery of Akron, Ohio.

At an open hearing before the committee, Martha Juillerat pleaded with members to open the church to gays and lesbians like herself, who she said are being forced to leave the Presbyterian Church in droves. She said she stepped down as a minister in 1995 after serving in rural Midwestern churches for 15 years because she came out as a lesbian.

“Sometimes it is more than I can bear that this church has decided to discriminate against an entire class of people,” Juillerat said. “I know that this church can do better.”

The assembly passed measures seeking to allow gay and lesbian pastors in 1997 and 2000, but the proposals were rebuffed by a majority of the country’s 173 presbyteries in a referendum.

Active membership in the church has declined from 4.2 million in 1983 to 2.4 million today. The church’s net loss of 46,658 members from 2002 to 2003 was its worst since the denomination was formed in a 1983 merger between Northern and Southern churches that split during the Civil War.