United Methodist Church’s California-Pacific Conference invites defrocked clergy Frank Schaeffer to serve with them.
Defrocked United Methodist Church minister, Rev. Frank Schaeffer, could soon find himself in the pulpit again. Bishop Minerva Carca?o invited Schaeffer to continue his ministry in the California-Pacific Conference, according to the conference’s Web site.
The Eastern Pennsylvania conference suspended Schaeffer for 30 days for officiating his gay son’s wedding. But, after refusing not to perform gay weddings or surrender his credentials, the body defrocked Schaeffer. Schaeffer was pastor of Zion United Methodist Church of Iona and he reportedly planned to appeal the decision, the Washington Post reported.
Carca?o compared Schaeffer’s fighting bigotry toward LGBT Americans to eight conference minsters (originally from Mississippi), after being driven from their churches for battling racism in the 1960s. She also called the denomination’s ?Book of Discipline? an imperfect work that deals with Jesus’ teaching.
I believe that the time has come for we United Methodists to stand on the side of Jesus and declare in every good way that the United Methodist Church is wrong in its position on homosexuality, wrong in its exclusion of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.
She didn’t make the decision unilaterally. Conference clergy and lay members voted, at the conference’s 2013 annual meeting, not to exclude anyone from the life of the church. Carca?o acknowledged the decision got some push back. She noted her unequivocal response.
I ruled that the conference had the right to express the hope of many in The United Methodist Church that the day will come when inclusion and justice will be extended to all God’s people. I further ruled that the conference had the right to give witness to the belief that The United Methodist Church is in error when it states that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.
The United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council, according to Carca?o, gave the green light to her conference’s invitation. However, the invitation doesn’t come with credentials. An ordained ministry committee must make that determination.
Schaeffer hasn’t decided whether he’ll accept the invitation. Carca?o said he and his family are praying about it.
edited by KD
