wfn.org | Transgender clergy surrenders ministerial credentials

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 1, 2002       News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202)
546-87227Washington     10-21-71B{282}

WASHINGTON (UMNS)-- The Rev. Rebecca A. Steen, who underwent gender
reassignment while on voluntary leave from her duties as a clergy member of
the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church,
voluntarily surrendered her ministerial credentials and left the
denomination in the opening minutes of a hearing June 28.

Steen had expressed a desire to return to active ministry. Had that occurred
in the normal cycle of church appointments, she would have been assigned to
a church by Bishop Felton Edwin May, with the appointment taking effect July
1. However, a complaint, the contents of which remain confidential, was
filed against her. Separately, the district superintendents sought a change
in her status to involuntary leave.

At the June 28 hearing to determine her status, Steen submitted her
withdrawal in writing. Those conducting the hearing included Bishop May, the
conference district superintendents and the executive committee of the
conference board of ordained ministry.  The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, who
served as her advocate, accompanied Steen.

In a statement issued later the same day, the bishop noted that because of
the unresolved complaint against her, Steen's status falls under the
designation "withdrawal under complaint" from the 2000 Book of Discipline,
the denomination's rulebook.

May said that the complaint did not concern Steen's gender reassignment but
issues of pastoral effectiveness prior to a voluntary leave of absence, when
she was the Rev. Richard A. Zamostny.  

Because the Discipline does not mention transgender clergy, conference
officials who had assembled for the hearing decided to ask the churchwide
Board of Higher Education and Ministry, as well as the Board of Church and
Society, "to study, prepare appropriate legislation, and report to the 2004
General Conference on the issue of transgender clergy and their ability to
serve within the United Methodist Church."

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United Methodist News Service
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