No Closure Quite Yet on Acquitted Lesbian Pastor
by Jim Brown
May 17, 2004
(AgapePress) - A lesbian United Methodist minister in Washington state has decided not to return to the pulpit after she was acquitted in a church trial of practices "incompatible with Christian teaching."
An official with the United Methodist Church says Pastor Karen Dammann has chosen to stay on family leave. But the official says Dammann "is still a pastor in good standing." In 2001, Dammann declared her homosexuality as she was seeking a new church appointment. The Conference of Bishops filed a complaint against her and she stood church trial.
Mark Tooley is with the theologically conservative group United Methodist Action, a division of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He says he does not expect the semi-crisis to be resolved any time in the near future.
Mark Tooley | |
"If nothing else, it means there'll be a delayed confrontation or a delayed decision on what her ultimate disposition is," he says, adding that decisions coming out of the denomination's recent General Conference muddle the issue."The Judicial Council had, on the one hand, declined to vacate her acquittal from her trial last March," he notes, "but on the other hand had declared that any clergy person who a jury had found to be a practicing homosexual was not qualified to be appointed to a church pulpit."
And Tooley explains that, in his opinion, Dammann is clearly not "a pastor in good standing." Again, he cites the governing body of the denomination and a ruling made in early May.
"The General Conference ... once again, for the umpteenth time, resolved by significant majorities that clergy in our denomination are expected to be celibate if single and monogamous in heterosexual marriage," Tooley says. "And Karen Dammann has announced publicly that she is practicing lesbian and cohabitating with her female partner. In fact, she claims to be 'married' to her female partner."
Methodists have been waiting to see whether Dammann's bishop, Elias Galvan, would uphold church law or follow public opinion in his region by giving the lesbian pastor another church. Dammann has been on family leave for more than two years, taking care of her son, who has a respiratory illness.
