By Jim Brown and Jody Brown
May 2, 2005

(AgapePress) - The United Methodist Church has once again put its stamp of approval on practicing homosexuals in the pulpit. An appeals committee within the UMC decided last week to reinstate a lesbian ministry from Philadelphia who earlier had been removed from her position after revealing her relationship with another woman.

In December, a clergy court ruled that Beth Stroud, 35, broke church law when she announced to her congregation that she was a practicing lesbian. On Friday (April 29), a nine-member appeals committee reversed that decision on an 8-1 vote. "The verdict and the penalty are reversed and set aside," the decision reads. "Although the Committee believes that the evidence in support of the charge was overwhelming and would be sustained in the absence of legal error, the Committee concludes that legal error vitiates the verdict on two independent grounds."

According to the decision handed down by the appeals committee, Stroud was deprived of due process because neither the UMC's General Conference nor the pertinent Annual [regional] Conference has defined the words "practicing homosexual" and "status." In addition -- as explained by conservative Methodist activists Mark Tooley -- the committee claimed that the prohibition of extra-marital sexual behavior "was somehow an illegal new 'doctrine' invented by the [UMC's] General Conference" in recent years.

Tooley, who heads the UM Action arm of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), calls the committee's arguments "simply silly."

"The committee pretends not to know about over 3,000 years of consistent Jewish and Christian teaching about homosexuality," he exclaims. "This ruling was an ill-reasoned, obtuse, and tortured attempt to avoid applying the plain, unequivocal meaning of the Scriptures and church law."

The committee, according to the IRD, is "dominated" by individuals who do not support United Methodist teaching on marriage and sexuality. Considering that liberal majority, Tooley says, the decision was predictable.

"Although the church's top court had ruled that jurors at church trials must recuse themselves if they could not uphold the church's law on sexuality, there is really no policy on appeals committee members," he explains. "And so a liberal majority was able to act as they did in terms of restoring Beth Stroud to the ordained ministry."

However, the conservative Methodist activist believes the decision will have little long-term effect on the denomination.

"In the short term it'll give some encouragement to the supporters of the acceptance of homosexual practice and Beth Stroud's supporters and discourage more orthodox believers," Tooley offers, "but I hope that those who are on the biblical side of the issue will not be discouraged because the end result here is that the Judicial Council will have its first opportunity since last year's General Conference to issue a ruling on this topic."

The Judicial Council, which is the denomination's top court, ruled last year that practicing homosexuals are not to be appointed to a United Methodist pastorate. Tooley says he expects that church body will almost certainly restore the verdict of the original church trial jury.

"[B]ased on demographic and political trends in the United Methodism around the world, there is almost no way that this denomination will reverse course on the issue of homosexuality and follow the path of the Episcopal Church," Tooley states. "The end result of the Stroud appeal will be, ironically, a stronger church stance on the prohibition of extra-marital sexual behavior by its clergy."

In fact, the UMC Council of Bishops announced on Sunday (May 1) that the Stroud reversal "does not in any way reverse the standards" in the UMC's Book of Discipline.

Stroud told United Methodist News Service that she has no plans to resume her ministerial duties until the entire appeals process is complete. To do so, she said, would "trivialize" the sacred trust of ordination. But speaking at an interfaith service in Philadelphia on Sunday, Stroud stated it is a shame that some churches still consider homosexuality a sin. Also speaking at that service was openly homosexual Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

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