The Rev. Frank Schaefer has been given a 30-day suspension by the jury in his church trial and told that if he can’t uphold the Book of Discipline in its entirety he must surrender his credentials.
Schaefer was found guilty Nov. 18 of violating the church’s law against pastors performing same-sex unions and of disobedience to the order and discipline of The United Methodist Church. He acknowledged having performed the same-sex wedding of his son, Tim, in 2007.
The 30 day-suspension will cover both convictions, the jury said in a decision announced about 9 p.m. Eastern time. Schaefer also is to be monitored by his district superintendent in the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual (regional) Conference and must meet with the conference’s Board of Ordained Ministry during the suspension period.
This won’t change anything…in fact, it will probably encourage more of the same by other ministers.
I think the United Methodist Church is to be commended for following through with its Discipline. If I read the report correctly the pastor has 30 days to repent and conform, and if he does not he will be deposed (have his credentials revoked). He has said that he would not conform. If I read it correctly he was offered an opportunity to avoid ecclesiastical trial by promising to conform and declined to do so. I contrast that with the Episcopal Church’s treatment of Bishop Lawrence.
You may be right, Luke.
Obviously, the 30 day suspension is a slap on the wrist. The real discipline is the threat of revoking the minister’s credentials for continued rebellion. There are several other cases in the disciplinary pipeline, and we’ll have to wait and see how they play out. Not least, there is the high profile cases of the former dean of my seminary, Yale Div. School, Thomas Ogletree, who likewise presided at the same sex “wedding” of his son. If the same sentence were passed on Ogletree, I can easily imagine him very publicly flouting the penalty and boldly defying the system in the spirit of “civil disobedience” as a “prophetic” act.
Mark Tooley of IRD is hopeful that the UMC will be the one “mainline” Protestant denomination that will be able to go against the cultural flow and resist the pro-gay agenda, precisely because the UMC is a global church with a growing AFrican segment and with a much larger evangelical minority in the USA than the other oldline traditions. He may well be right. I hope so.
But this sort of church trial indicates to me that a growing number of “progressive” church leaders will refuse to submit to “injustice.” My prediction is that the UMC will eventually split up, like the other old historic denominations, only this time it’s the liberal faction that will be the ones choosing to leave.
The bottom line is that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Two mutually opposed gospels can’t co-exist under one institutional root permanently. One will eventually end up excluding the other. And “it is meet and right so to do.” ‘Twas ever so. The frist century church rightly excluded the Judaizers. The 2nd and 3rd century church rightly excluded the Gnostics. The 4th century church rightly excluded the Arians, and so on.
David Handy+