Different Outcome Predicted in Trial of Lesbian UMC Pastor in Penn.
by Jim Brown
August 5, 2004
(AgapePress) - The leader of a United Methodist renewal ministry is confident the upcoming church trial of a lesbian Methodist minister from Pennsylvania will have a far different outcome than that of the denomination's highly publicized Dammann case.
In March, Washington pastor Karen Dammann was acquitted in a church trial over her relationship with a female partner. Now associate pastor Irene Stroud from Germantown, Pennsylvania, faces a similar trial after declaring from the pulpit she is in a homosexual relationship. She made the pronouncement in April 2003, saying she realized she was a lesbian while in college and has lived with a woman for two-and-a-half years in a so-called "covenant" relationship. (See Related Story)
Jim Heidinger, president of the conservative Methodist group Good News, is optimistic the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference will uphold the church's ban on self-avowed, practicing homosexual clergy.
"I have a sense that following the strong votes at General Conference, the peers of this female clergywoman are going to look at the evidence and feel the strong responsibility of being faithful to the Book of Discipline."
The Methodist activist bases his optimism on what transpired at the denomination's recent gathering in Pittsburgh. "I think United Methodists have reason to take heart that at the recent General Conference in Pittsburgh," he says. "We voted overwhelmingly against that gay agenda, against efforts to change our Book of Discipline, and that the biblical standards were upheld probably as strongly as they have ever been held in the last 20 or 30 years."
Heidinger says Stroud may have wanted her trial to be a test case following the denomination's recent General Conference. A trial date will be set after Bishop Peter Weaver chooses a retired bishop to preside over the trial.
According to United Methodist News Service, the church where Stroud serves as been a "reconciling" congregation for more than a decade and has set up a legal defense for its associate minister.
