wfn.org | Clergy on both sides of holy union issue affirm hearing process

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Feb. 7, 2000  News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-28-71BP{051}

NOTE: A photograph is available with this report. For related coverage of
the Feb. 1-3 hearing, see UMNS story #048.

 
By Erica Jeffrey*

FAIRFIELD, Calif. (UMNS) -- Clergy members representing opposing viewpoints
in the issue of same-sex unions agreed that a Feb. 1-3 hearing into a
controversial 1999 ceremony was organized fairly to represent both sides.

The hearing was held to determine whether a complaint filed against a group
of clergy members in the California-Nevada Annual Conference should be
brought to a church trial. The clergy members are accused of violating
United Methodist law for co-officiating in a Jan. 16, 1999, union service
for two women. The day after its hearing ended, the California-Nevada Annual
Conference's Committee on Investigations for Clergy Members began
deliberations in closed session.

The denomination's Book of Discipline states that homosexual union
ceremonies shall not be performed by United Methodist ministers and shall
not be held in United Methodist sanctuaries.

The respondents, or defendants, in the case include the Rev. Don Fado of
Sacramento, who organized last year's holy union ceremony, and 66 other
clergy members.

Clergy members representing both sides of the issue spoke to reporters
outside the hearing, held at Community United Methodist Church in Fairfield.
 
Fado, pastor of St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Sacramento, organized
and co-officiated at last year's holy union ceremony for Jeanne Barnett and
Ellie Charlton. He said he felt good about the spirit and structure of the
hearing.

"I'm very pleased with the process. It's a good, warm feeling inside," he
said. "This is not an adversarial role; these are my colleagues, including
the people -- many of them -- who are on the opposite position that I am.
We've known each other for years. I feel they respect my ministry; I respect
theirs. We're in disagreement. Not all of those in the Evangelical Renewal
Fellowship want to see us 'punished.' Some of the ones who are very much
opposed theologically to where I stand say, 'What does it benefit our cause
if you suffer? We don't want that; we respect that you have a ministry to
the people.' I respect their ministry. 
 
"So, it's a feeling of family getting together and looking at this -- within
this church, this division -- and what are we going to do about it? And that
is so important. And these are people of integrity up there on the panel
(the investigative committee), and so I trust them. And they're going to
deliberate on this, and they will come out with what they feel to be the
most positive thing, too, and that's their decision, not mine -- and I'm
glad."
 
The effects on his congregation since the holy union have been mixed, Fado
said. "There were some people very upset by it; we lost a couple of
families. We lost some givers, financial support for the church, and we
gained others. Our church is not a Reconciling Congregation (a member of a
group that advocates full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of the
church) because we have not gone on record with the Reconciling movement. We
do have a mission statement that everybody is welcome, and we try to live
that out."
 
Fado said some members of his congregation are strongly opposed to his
leadership in the movement for gay and lesbian rights, but he continues to
be their pastor. "They feel very uncomfortable with that, but I can still be
their pastor. That is a message that I think is in Methodist tradition."
 
He reiterated his belief that an individual pastor's conscience can and
should stand against church law. "In our Social Principles, which is the
same place (in the Book of Discipline) where the prohibition against doing
holy unions is, there is a section on civil disobedience. It says that
Christians have the right of expressing civil disobedience if they do it
nonviolently and they are seeking to right the wrong they feel there is in
society. And it also says in there, which is interesting, the church shall
support them in such endeavors." 
 
Asked what he would consider a proper outcome of the hearing, Fado answered:
"Whatever they do will be right, in the sense of, if they say this is
serious enough to warrant a trial, then we'll have our day in court and let
the world know. If they say, 'In this annual conference it is not serious
enough, what they have done, to do a trial,' I'll say hallelujah. Many
months ago, I thought a trial would be the best route, but when I found out
what a trial costs -- it's over $100,000 -- it would be unconscionable to
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on 67 separate trials for these
pastors who are integral to the annual conference."

One observer at the hearing, the Rev. Loran Berck, is chairman of the Board
of Ordained Ministry in the California-Nevada Conference. When asked about
his response, as an evangelical, to the way the annual conference is dealing
with the current holy union issue, Berck answered, "First of all, as an
evangelical, I am delighted that the district superintendents were the ones
to bring the complaint. There were a variety and a great number of other
people who did offer complaints forward, but I think they acted responsibly
and wisely in being the point persons for bringing the complaint forward.
 
"As for the process that's taking place today, I think this is very
unprecedented. I've never heard of this being done before. I think it's
responsible; I think it's dynamic. (From) everything that I have heard --
and I've been here all three days -- all perspectives have been represented,
and I think that's very, very important for the evangelical conservatives in
our annual conference to know that their voice is being heard and it has
been heard."
 
Berck responded to a comment that evangelical representation among the
witnesses seemed to be smaller than that of those holding opposing views.
"Part of that has to do with the Committee on Investigation and their choice
and who they would invite to be present," he said. "They did make a
concerted effort to have evangelical expertise from across the nation to be
present. Unfortunately, there were conflicts. Some of the people that we
would have liked to have been here were not able to come. And it was purely
a matter of conflict of scheduling that they were not able to be here."
Berck said he was satisfied that every effort was made to give fair
representation to the evangelical viewpoint. 
  
Another observer at the hearing, Jimmy Creech, is a former United Methodist
pastor of the Nebraska Conference, who lost his ministerial credentials
after officiating at a holy union ceremony last spring. In 1998, Creech was
acquitted for performing a holy union ceremony for two women at First United
Methodist Church in Omaha, Neb., but a year later he performed a second
ceremony for two men in North Carolina. During the interim, the Judicial
Council had clarified church policy regarding same-sex unions, so Creech's
trial for the second ceremony ended in a guilty verdict.
 
"This is very different from my experience," Creech said, comparing the
Fairfield hearings to his own experiences in Nebraska. "The (Nebraska)
Committee on Investigation's proceedings were very brief; there was very
little examination of the issues. It was, 'Did Jimmy do or not do what was
said?' and then it was passed to a trial."
 
Creech said he bears great respect for the way the Fairfield hearing was set
up, calling the investigative committee "faithful to the task." Rather than
looking back at his own experience, he said, he preferred to focus on the
current issue. He is writing a book on his experience with the holy union
issue and said First United Methodist Church in Omaha is set to vote on
becoming a Reconciling Congregation later this month.
 
The Rev. Robert Kuyper, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in
Bakersfield and president of Evangelical Renewal Fellowship, an association
of pastors within the annual conference, was called on Feb. 1 as a witness.
Kuyper and other witnesses waited in a separate room while each witness gave
testimony, but he said he heard part of the testimony of the Rev. Phyllis
Bird, a called witness on Scripture, over a speaker in the room. Bird is
professor of Old Testament interpretation at United Methodist-related
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill.
 
Kuyper addressed Bird's statement that passages in the Book of Leviticus
prohibiting sex between men didn't refer to consensual sex. "Also in
Leviticus 18 (there) is a prohibition of incest, and there seems to be no
indication there that consensual has anything to do with that, either --
that you're not to sleep with your sister even if she's an adult, period,"
Kuyper said. "And I would assume that the prohibition against homosexuality
would be in the same category, that there's no 'consensual' mentioned in any
of it."
 
Kuyper said he didn't have a complaint about questions being asked of
witnesses and reiterated that the hearing was, in his experience,
unprecedented. When asked what he thought an appropriate outcome of the
hearing would be, Kuyper said one clergy member - Fado -- ought to be
brought to trial, instead of all 67 respondents being tried separately. "I
have this image in my mind of 67 people standing up there, conducting an
orchestra, you know, and that's not possible. Only one person is the
conductor." 
 
# # #

*Jeffrey is a free-lance writer based in Marysville, Calif.

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United Methodist News Service
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