deep
Blue Crack Addict
There seems to be a Protestant denomination that embraces Jeses' triue teachings of LOVE and compasion and exceptance.
Jury Says Lesbian Methodist Can Keep Ministry
Sun Mar 21, 2004 02:49 PM ET
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Methodist clergy jury unanimously ruled that a lesbian minister can continue to be a minister and remain in a homosexual relationship, church officials said on Sunday after a trial that deeply divided the third-largest U.S. Christian group.
Rev. Karen Dammann, who has been a pastor for the past 10 years with the United Methodist Church, was deemed not guilty by a jury of clergy that the openly homosexual minister should not be banned from being a leader of the church.
"We, the trial court, do not find the evidence presented by the church counsel to be clear and convincing that Karen Dammann has engaged in any 'practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings,"' the jury said in a statement after rendering its verdict on Saturday.
Dammann had sought a clergy appointment in 2001 that also acknowledged her sexual orientation, as she sought to return from a leave of absence. Her bishop, Elias Galvan, filed a complaint, which, after hearings in various church judicial councils, resulted in a church jury trial that began on Wednesday.
Several dozen supporters for Dammann were arrested by police on the first day as they blocked the doors of the church where the trial was being held in suburban Bothell north of Seattle.
Although the Methodist's Book of Discipline "states that homosexuals are people of sacred worth," the church had argued that it also "regards the practice of homosexuality as incompatible with Christian teachings."
But a senior clergy member, considered the church's foremost authority on church law, had testified that the Methodist Church had never explicitly banned homosexual clergy.
In 1987, a Methodist lesbian clergy member in New Hampshire lost her credentials for being openly gay.