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U.S. Methodist Church defrocks lesbian minister

Posted on: Monday, 31 October 2005, 15:48 CST

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.

Source: REUTERS

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