U.S. Methodist Church defrocks lesbian minister

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The United Methodist Church’s top court
has ordered a lesbian minister defrocked and ruled another
clergy member was right to refuse church membership to a gay
man, the church announced on Monday.

The court said Elizabeth Stroud, 35, a minister at the
First United Methodist Church of Germantown, Pennsylvania, who
acknowledged her relationship with another woman, “was accorded
all fair and due process rights.” The ruling said an appeals
committee that reversed her removal from the ministry in April
erred in saying church officials had failed to define what a
“practicing homosexual” was in terms of church law.

The decision by the nine-member Judicial Council is final.
A church spokeswoman said Stroud could ask the panel to
reconsider but the request would be heard by the same panel and
only two members had dissented in the ruling against Stroud.

In December 2004 a lower Methodist church court stripped
Stroud of her credentials, saying she violated the church’s
Book of Discipline, which forbids the ordination and
appointment of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” She was
allowed to have a lesser role in the church but could not
perform ceremonies such as baptisms and weddings.

Stroud told the initial hearing she was in a committed
relationship with another woman and had decided to be open
about her sexuality in the interest of honesty.

The official position of the church is that homosexuals are
not as such banned from membership but practicing homosexuals
may not serve as clergy.

In the second ruling announced Monday, the tribunal held
that the Rev. Edward Johnson of the South Hill, Virginia,
United Methodist Church was within his rights for refusing to
admit a homosexual man to church membership and should not have
been suspended for doing so.

The ruling said Johnson followed church law that gives the
pastor-in-charge the right to decide who can be received into
membership. It said he should be reinstated and given back pay
to July 1, when he had been removed by his bishop.

The rulings are the latest developments in an issue that
has divided Christian denominations. The ordination of an
openly gay man as a bishop in the U.S. Episcopal church
continues to strain relations between liberals and
conservatives in that body and with the worldwide Anglican
community.

The Vatican has been conducting an investigation of U.S.
Roman Catholic seminaries to determine if there is a problem
with homosexuality.

The Methodist court decisions leave the church with a mixed
public front on homosexuality. A church trial in 2004 found the
Rev. Karen Dammann, a Seattle clergywoman, not guilty of
“practices incompatible with Christian teaching,” although the
court found she had admitted being a homosexual and was in fact
in such a relationship.

But under church law that trial court’s decision could not
be appealed by the church leadership since it went in the
defendant’s favor. Stroud lost her case, however, and it moved
up the appeals process.

The United Methodist Church, the third largest U.S.
denomination, has 8.25 million lay members and nearly 45,000
clergy in more than 35,000 local U.S. churches. It also has
another 1.86 million members in 12 other countries.