The United Methodist Church has formally charged another clergyman for presiding at the same-sex wedding of his son.
The Rev. Thomas Ogletree will be tried March 10 for violating church law against officiating at gay unions, his spokeswoman, Dorothee Benz, announced Friday. It’s the second high-profile United Methodist trial in recent months over same-sex relationships. In December, pastor Frank Schaefer of central Pennsylvania was defrocked after he officiated at his son’s gay wedding. The church considers homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
Ogletree is a theologian, a former Yale Divinity School dean and a retired elder in the church’s New York district, or Annual Conference. Some clergy had filed a complaint after his son’s 2012 wedding announcement appeared in The New York Times.
God is testing the Methodists, just as He did with us. Hopefully, they will do better than TEC.
Yes, Ralph, God is testing and sifting them, or allowing Satan to sift them, if you prefer to see it that way. There is no doubt that this case is far more important than the earlier case of the obscure small town pastor, Frank Shaeffer. Ogletree is a far more prominent figure, a major UMC leader. His higher profile will make this case even more significant. In many ways, the verdict in the trial itself is not in doubt, Ogletree is clearly guilty as charged of violating the Book of Discipline, nor does he dispute the facts. The real issue, of course, is the indirect fallout from the case, i.e., how the wider church responds to his almost certain conviction.
There is little doubt that a substantial number of UMC leaders, ordained and lay, will be fed up with the whole disciplinary process, which they (falsely) perceive as unjust because the church rules themselves are perceived to be discriminatory and wrong. They will see Ogletree as a hero, a victim or martyr, whose courageous and prophetic action should be celebrated as a case of the ecclesial equivalent of civil disobedience. It’s all hogwash, of course, but it’s entirely predictable that many liberal UMC folks will perceive it that way.
The bottom line is that the Master’s proverbial saying applies here: “[i]A house divided against itself cannot stand.[/i]” The bitter reality is that the UMC is in fact hopelessly divided against itself, just as TEC, the ELCA, and the PCUSA are. All of them are in various stages of breaking up and the opposing factions realigning themselves with allies on their chosen side of the Culture War.
The difference is, that due to the international character of the UMC, with its large, growing AFrican wing, its the liberals who are going to have to leave, not the conservatives. Or else, what we may well see is a strong move to break up the UMC along national lines, so that the American and African portions can go their separate ways. Maybe Methodist readers can weigh in here.
In any case, there is several examples of these kind of church trials backfiring and producing ironic final results. For those with an Episcopal background or memory, there is the famous or infamous case of when Newark Assist. Bishop Walter Righter was brought up on charges of betraying the doctrine and discipline of TEC when in 1989 he ordained Robert Williams to the priesthood in the Dioc. of Newark. In the end, he was exonerated when 7 of the 8 bishops trying his case decided that he had not violated any “core doctrine” of the Church.
Or consider the most famous trial of a seminary professor in US history, when the liberal Presbyterian OT scholar Charles Briggs of Union Seminary in NY was tried for heresy back in the 1890s because of his enthusiastic advocacy of the radical views of Julius Wellhausen about the nonMosaic origin of the Pentateuch and the early history of Israel, etc. Although Briggs was convicted, the strategy backfired on conservatives when Briggs simply switched to being an Episcopalian, and Union Seminary severed its ties to the Presbyterian Church and became independent.
We’ll see what happens here.
David Handy+
I read many calls from UMC “reasserters” for schism – just let the people and parishes insistent on a “new thing” go. The details of such a split would be the difficulty.
David, I don’t think the averages pew-sitter has a clue to the bureaucracy that is the UMC, or even that this is going on. I’ve asked about things I’ve heard and they don’t even know what their own conference is advocating.
It’s going to hit them hard. Pastors and lay leaders are not doing anyone any favors by not discussing what’s certainly coming down the tracks.
#4,
You remind me: I spent the summer of 1971 working I’m a Methodist Church. One evening I attended the initial meeting of a committee required by the Book of Discipline. The members had no idea of why they were there our what they were supposed to do. It was just a bit of bureaucracy that sounded like a good idea to someone in some denominational office somewhere.
Back in the 18th century when the penalties for crime were severe – branding, cutting off part of an ear, etc. – first offenders could claim “benefit of clergy” and receive probation. As I read the UMC materials the clergy who are being tried for disobedience to the UMC Discipline have been offered a similar deal – no trial and no punishment if they promise not to perform any more same sex marriages. Those who choose trial have declined to make that promise. They appear to see the matter as a case of conscience. I hope the UMC will continue to uphold its discipline. I regret the Episcopal Church has not done so.