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United Methodist Church trial of lesbian pastor begins
Efforts by the homosexual activist group Soulforce to physically block the trial of Ellensburg, Washington, United Methodist pastor Karen Dammann were predictably unsuccessful as 33 demonstrators were simply arrested and carried off, feeling very proud of themselves for accomplishing nothing of consequence.

"It's a great day for going to jail,'' retired Methodist minister Phil Lawson told The King County Journal. "I've resisted injustice and that makes me feel great."

Similarly, said Baptist pastor Brooke Rolston, "I've great pride in the people being taken into that [police] bus. I sense there is a very deep truth being witnessed here. The love of God is deeper than church law."

The most outrageous comments didn't come from protesters outside, but from witnesses inside. One of the first witnesses called in Dammann's defense was Mary Ann Tolbert, executive director of its Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Dammann graduated from the school in 1992 and says she didn't consider herself homosexual until 1996.

"It seems to me if you're going to say one verse in Romans is enough to remove a person, and their calling and all this other stuff is overlooked, then with all due respect, it seems to me you're acting hypocritically," Tolbert told the church court. She compared Dammann, who is charged with "practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible to Christian teachings" for her lesbian relationship, with Jesus Christ, who also, "disagreed with the religious norms of his time." "You have to be very careful, that you don't replicate the crucifixion of Jesus in what you do," Tolbert said.

Dammann has quite the uphill task. On Valentine's Day, 2001, Damman wrote to her bishop that she was "living in a partnered, covenanted, homosexual relationship"—a direct challenge to the Methodist Book of Discipline. Her lawyer, Robert Ward, admits that the Book of Discipline bans gay ministers, but it also "reflects Jesus' ministry to the marginalized and includes statements confirming the sacredness of all humans including gays, and the importance of preserving civil rights for all people." That's a Seattle Times paraphrase of Ward's argument. Here's a direct quote: "We are people of the book. One book is the Bible. The other book is the Book of Discipline; let the whole book be your guide."

In other words, don't follow what your church teaches, but what you wish that it teaches.

"It is not the law of the church on trial today," responds James C. Finkbeiner, who is the prosecutor in the case. He told the 13-member jury, "Your job is to find her guilty or innocent (under present law). It is as simple as that."

It should be that simple, anyway. We'll see, as the trial continues today. (The UMC site has official trial coverage.)

Crime:

• 2 church officials resign | Foursquare Gospel lost $14 million invested in what authorities allege were Ponzi schemes (Los Angeles Times)
  
  
• Brazilian missionary exposed as a fraud | The Brazilian lay missionary Maria Elilda dos Santos, the main source for the terrifying rumours of trafficking in children and in body parts in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula, has been exposed as a fraud in Friday's issue of the independent weekly "Savana" (Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique)
  
  
• Cops hunt missing teenager | Jessica Chen never returned home from Sunday school (New York Daily News)
  
  
• Conn., Texas charge man with bilking church-goers | John Eseppi is accused of swindling out-of-state investors and local churchgoers of more than $5 million while reportedly living in the lap of luxury on their savings (Register Citizen, Torrington, Ct.)
  
  

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48