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United Methodist Church court okays homosexual minister
Here's what the United Methodist Church, America's third-largest Christian body (after Roman Catholicism and the Southern Baptist Convention) says about homosexuality and the clergy, according to its Book of Discipline:

While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.

Ah, but the United Methodist Church has crafty ministers. And at the church trial of self-avowed practicing homosexual minister Karen Dammann, her defenders said unto the jury, Yea, hath the United Methodist Church said, homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching?

Oh, it's all so confusing! Or so said Dammann's defenders and The Washington Post:

On one hand, the church's Book of Discipline says that because "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve" as pastors. On the other hand, it also says that sexuality is "God's good gift to all persons," that homosexuals "are individuals of sacred worth," that "God's grace is available to all," and that "certain basic human rights and civil liberties are due all persons."

For the last 2,000 years, Christians have taught that those concepts are not contradictory, though there has been disagreement over what human rights and civil liberties are due all persons. Orthodox believers say that because "homosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth," the church has an obligation to teach what Scripture says is ultimately the most healthy, fulfilling, and reconciling expression of sexuality.

The Book of Discipline is right on target when it says, immediately following that sentence on sacred worth, that "all persons need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self." That is to say, the church offers something that the individual cannot attain on one's own, and that only by submitting oneself to the ministry and guidance of the church can one grow into the person God wants them to be; to become, as The Book of Discipline's human sexuality section puts it, "fully human."

God's grace is truly available to all, and it's crucial to understand the church's teaching on sexuality as part of God's grace. Yesterday, Methodists around the world (as well as Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and others) read the parable of the prodigal son—one of the best biblical examples of grace. In that story, the father's grace is apparent when the son returns from his prodigality, saying, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Grace is also apparent in the father's allowing the son to "squander his property in reckless living," but only because it brought the son to an understanding of his father's love and grace. As the father tells the older brother, "It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found." The father's displeasure with the son's spending his inheritance on prostitutes is plainly evident, but is outweighed by his delight in the son's repentance. Grace requires both God's displeasure and his pleasure.

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48