Defrocked Methodist minister now ‘hoping for a re-frocking’
Frank Schaefer lost his job but not his voice.
Defrocked by the United Methodist Church six months ago for officiating at his son’s same-sex wedding, Schaefer has gained a following among reformers who want the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination to loosen its policies on homosexuality.
He’s told his story dozens of times to largely sympathetic audiences around the country: How his son came out to him as a teenager who had contemplated suicide. Howhe hid the 2007 wedding from his conservative Pennsylvania congregation, fearing it would sow division. How he finally decided — in the midst of his high-profile church trial last fall — to become an outspoken advocate for gay rights at a time when his denomination is bitterly divided over the issue.
After his trial and conviction, “I thought I had lost everything,” recalled Schaefer, 52. “There was a moment of pain and depression, and the next thing I knew, I was catapulted. I have more opportunities now than I ever did.”
Except the right to call himself a Methodist minister.
“I would like to get my credentials back,” said Schaefer, who is scheduled to appear before a church panel in Baltimore this week to argue that his punishment was illegal under church law. “I’m hoping for a ‘re-frocking.’ ”
In little more than six months, Schaefer has become a public face of the movement to change the church’s theologically conservative policy on homo- sexuals. The Methodist church accepts gay and lesbian members but rejects sex outside of heterosexual marriage as “incompatible with Christian teaching.” Openly gay people may not serve as clergy, and ministers are forbidden from performing same-sex marriages.
Hundreds of Methodist ministers have publicly rejected church doctrine on homosexuality, while traditionalists say they have no right to break church law.
Some conservative pastors are calling for a breakup of the denomination, which has 12 million members world wide, saying the split over gay marriage is irreconcilable.
Schaefer could have avoided the trial — and, after his conviction, retained his ordination — by promising he wouldn’t perform another same-gender wedding. But he declared he would officiate more gay marriages if asked.