Almost a year ago Rev. Frank Schaefer was convicted of performing a same-sex marriage ceremony for his gay son, which defies the rules of the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church. Schaefer was defrocked and lost his job in Pennsylvania. A few months later the bishop of California offered him a job. There is more of Schaefer's story here.
That defrocking was appealed and in June a regional appeals committee reinstated Schaefer and restored his credentials. That decision was appealed to the denomination's Judicial Council.
The Judicial Council held their fall meeting last week in Memphis and issued their ruling today. The decision of the appeals committee is upheld. Schaefer will keep his credentials.
If I understand correctly the article put out by the denomination, the trial issued two penalties. The first was a 30 day suspension. The second was power granted to the Board of Ordained Ministry to change the suspension to termination if Schaefer didn't follow all the conditions of the suspension. Since Schaefer refused to say he would never perform more same-sex ceremonies the BOM declared a violation of the terms of the suspension and terminated Schaefer.
The Judicial Council said that the penalty had to be fixed at the trial and a harsher one could not be imposed later. I take that to mean Schaefer was reinstated on a technical interpretation of procedure, not on a ruling of the underlying issue of pastors performing same-sex ceremonies.
No comments:
Post a Comment