The decision to allow a lesbian pastor to continue in her ministry is reverberating throughout the denomination, and battle lines are being drawn.
By SHARON TUBBS
Published March 30, 2004
[AP photos]
The Rev. Karen Dammann, 47, disclosed three years ago that she was in a lesbian relationship. On March 20, a jury of 13 pastors in Washington state ruled that she was not violating church law.
The Rev. Karen Dammann and her partner, Meredith Savage, listen to the not-guilty verdict March 20. The two women, together for nearly nine years, were married in Portland, Ore., this month.
The not-guilty verdict for lesbian pastor Karen Dammann could spell the beginning of the second fracture in a major Christian denomination within the past year.
A district of the United Methodist Church had charged Dammann with violating the church's religious law, which forbids "practicing" homosexuals to be ministers.
The unusual church trial played out two weeks ago in Bothell, Wash., near Seattle. The nation waited as retired clergy performed as lawyers, a bishop as judge, pastors as jurors and theologians and ministers as witnesses inside a church fellowship hall staged as a courtroom.
The jury deliberated about 10 hours over two days before acquitting Dammann.
Traditional Methodists are still fuming.
Some have threatened to leave the country's third-largest Christian denomination, with 8.3-million members. Others are determined to take the legislative route during the Methodists' General Conference, a two-week affair that begins April 27. That's where decisions are made. Every four years, delegates vote to change words, or to add or delete provisions in the Book of Discipline, which is akin to church canon.
"I shall support every effort to repair this breach of our covenant," Timothy W. Whitaker, bishop of the Florida Conference, wrote in a statement on the verdict. His conference includes 332,000 Methodists throughout most of the state.
"I shall offer moral support for attempts to propose new legislation to the 2004 General Conference that might create the conditions for greater accountability to the intentions of the General Conference."
Bishop Larry M. Goodpaster, Alabama-West Florida Conference, which includes the Panhandle, said: "I am absolutely astounded by the announcement of a verdict of not guilty in the case of Karen Dammann in Washington. I am deeply disturbed that a group of United Methodist clergy has placed themselves above the law of the church."
Displeasure among conservative Methodists resonated across the country.
Indiana state Sen. Patricia Miller called the trial "a schismatic action."
Miller is Methodist and executive director of the Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church, a group that fights to maintain traditional stances in doctrine.
In the past two weeks, the Confessing Movement has fielded calls from unhappy Methodists.
"I'm leaving," some have told Miller. "I'll never step foot in a United Methodist Church. I'm gone."
Concerned Women of America, a public policy women's organization that registers 600,000 members, is staunchly opposed. Janice Crouse, who heads up the organization's think tank, called the trial a farce.
"I don't know of an issue that has brought more controversy to the church since the reimagining movement in 1993," Crouse said, referring to the controversial movement that questions Jesus Christ's atonement for sin.
"This is an issue that people will leave the church on," Crouse said. "It's an issue that Methodists will go to the mats on."
The hostility mirrors what happened last year after V. Gene Robinson was consecrated bishop in the Episcopal Church, becoming mainstream Christianity's first openly gay bishop.
The Episcopal Church USA still wrestles with dissension. Some members stopped giving money to the national church.
Brethren overseas denounced American Episcopalians, said they were straying from the word of God. The Episcopal Church is a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Other members, including churches in Africa and Asia, decried Robinson's consecration, refused to recognize him as a bishop and declared their relationship with the American church to be in "impaired communion." Several American bishops, then, formed the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, a group that vows fidelity to traditional teachings.
In both the Episcopal and Methodist cases, gay rights groups and supporters cheered on a spiritual breakthrough between the homosexual and religious communities.
Eleanor Cecil, a board member for the Tampa chapter of the National Organization for Women, said the Methodist trial will affect women of all faiths.
"This is a right for a person to not only be within the religious structure that she chooses, but be able to carry it out no matter what her lifestyle is," Cecil said.
The case, like that of the consecrated Episcopal bishop, brings acceptance of gays and lesbians to the forefront of society, she said.
Retired Methodist minister and gay rights advocate Paul Beeman cried after the verdict. He hoped the case would have an impact on the national church. But he was prepared for those who chalked up the verdict to "those liberals in the West."
People on both sides of the debate say the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, the West Coast district that tried Dammann, and churchgoers on the West Coast in general have a reputation for liberalism.
"There's more openness about things in the West," said retired bishop Jack Tuell, who was a crucial defense witness in the trial.
Tuell argued that the Methodist Church had never formally taken a strong stand against homosexuality. Tuell's testimony proved pivotal. The jury's statement reiterated remarks he made from the witness stand.
When Tuell went to church the day after the verdict, he fielded questions from fellow members. "A few of them were obviously not pleased," he said from his home in Des Moines, Wash.
But the United Methodist Church won't split over this, he said. "I think the church is strong enough and increasingly knowledgeable about this issue."
Bill Carpenter of St. Petersburg flew to Washington to protest the trial with other members of Soulforce, an interfaith gay rights group.
"This reaches so far beyond just the Methodist Church," Carpenter said. "Those policies that get fomented out in the world affect all of us."
The Rev. Troy Plummer praised the verdict. As executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, a group that works for gay rights within the Methodist Church, he encourages closeted gays and lesbians in ministry to follow their hearts.
But Plummer agreed that had Dammann been tried in some other area, the Southeast perhaps, the verdict may have been guilty. The Book of Discipline does still say homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching."
"I think the denomination is still unsafe to come out in," he said.
