United Methodist Church Rev. Irene ‘Beth’ Stroud (right) speaks to the media, as her partner Chris Paige looks on. Stroud was defrocked by the church’s highest court this week. (Photo by Carlos Antonio Rios/AP)
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ERIC ERVIN
Friday, November 04, 2005
HOUSTON — Two days after hearing cases involving gay issues in the Methodist Church, the group’s highest legal body handed down rulings that left a lesbian minister defrocked and a Virginia pastor, who denied church membership to a gay man, reinstated with back pay.
The Judicial Council reached its decision Saturday and released its verdict Monday on the church’s Web site. Eight members of the nine-member council heard the cases last week in Houston. All rulings made by the council are final.
The council’s 6-2 ruling ends Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud’s fight to remain an ordained minister. Stroud, who announced in April 2003 that she was a lesbian and in a committed relationship with partner Chris Paige, was charged with engaging in “practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings.”
“It was very difficult news to absorb,” a somber-sounding Stroud said in a telephone interview from Philadelphia. “The news came as a blow.”
She characterized her case as discrimination solely based on her sexual orientation. Stroud said she had hoped that the church would make changes in policy as it did in the past for welcoming women and minorities.
“No one has ever questioned my effectiveness as a minister,” Stroud said. “To me that makes it clear that the rules about homosexuality in the ministry are about something else, a perceived opinion.”
Homosexuals must be celibate if they want to be ordained ministers in the Methodist Church, and although the church’s Book of Discipline welcomes everyone, gays are sometimes asked to repent their lifestyles.
Thomas Hall, church counsel, told the Associate Press that Stroud “could be welcomed back with both arms. But she’d have to be celibate.”
Throughout the case, church officials had asked Stroud if her relationship with Paige was sexual.
The UMC is the nation’s third-largest denomination.
Stroud, 35, said she will remain at Philadelphia’s First United Methodist Church of Germantown as a lay staff member, but will take time off on maternity leave because she and Paige have been certified as foster parents.
Stroud began working at the Philadelphia church in 1999 as an associate pastor. She said she first revealed her sexual orientation while attending Bryn Mawr College, where she earned an undergraduate degree in 1991. In 1996, she earned a master’s of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York.
In a 5-3 vote, the council reinstated Rev. Edward Johnson of South Hill United Methodist Church in South Hill, Va., with back pay.
Johnson, 58, was suspended June 13 by his bishop after refusing to admit a gay man to his church. At last week’s hearing, representatives arguing for Johnson said the minister did not have a problem with the man’s sexual orientation, but had no choice but to reject his membership because the man did not participate in membership classes.
According to the ruling’s statement of facts, the man had been active in the church, including singing in the choir, and wanted to transfer his membership from another denomination. A series of meetings began, with the focus on the man’s sexual orientation.
Membership was barred when the man refused to change his lifestyle, the ruling stated.
The council’s ruling states that sections in the Book of Discipline are “permissive and do not mandate receipt into membership of all persons regardless of their willingness to affirm membership vows.” Johnson did not return a phone call seeking comment.
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