Gay bishop in church spotlight
Court for United Methodists may overturn election of Karen Oliveto.
Methodists in Colorado and four other mountain states are in the midst of a round-the-clock prayer vigil, sustained for an entire week through one-hour time slots, to protect the church’s first openly gay bishop and to guide a decision at the heart of the church’s fractured views on homosexuality.
The United Methodist Church’s highest court will hear arguments Tuesday in New Jersey before deciding whether to overturn the July election of the Rev. Karen Oliveto as bishop of more than 400 churches in Colorado and four other states.
Oliveto, who is openly lesbian and now married to her partner of 17 years, was elected unanimously by the church’s Western Jurisdiction last summer. Within hours, her election was contested by the South Central Jurisdiction, which includes Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and five other states. Oliveto’s election is not legal, south central representatives argue, because church law bars leaders who are “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.”
Arguments in the case are scheduled for Tuesday morning, though a vote by the church’s judicial council might not come until the end of the week.
The decision is expected to help shape the course of action for the Methodist church, deeply divided on whether gays — unless they are celibate — should serve as clergy.
Whatever the court decides, “there will be people who are hurt and angry,” Oliveto said in an interview. “I don’t know how you prepare. What I do know is that I will remain faithful to God’s claim on my life. I know I will need to be an agent of healing.”
Methodist leaders have struggled with how to treat LGBTQ people in the church since at least 1972, when delegates adopted language saying homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching” and “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” are barred from ordination.
Later, delegates further clarified that churches could not hold same-sex weddings and that Methodist pastors could not conduct them, not even in a public park or a person’s backyard.
Oliveto, a minister in San Francisco before her election as bishop, has married numerous same-sex couples, and was called before a bishop 13 years ago after she performed a marriage ceremony for two men in a church in San Francisco, according to a 2004 New York Times article. Oliveto and her wife, Robin Ridenour, married in 2014.
Since becoming bishop Sept. 1, Oliveto has been preaching and visiting about 300 of the 400 churches across her region, which besides Colorado includes Utah, Wyoming, Montana and part of Idaho. The conversations have been “honest,” she said, including some with people who are uncomfortable with her sexuality. “I believe there is room for all of us,” she tells those parishioners. “God is going to love you and so am I.”
More than one person has told her that their son or daughter stopped going to church, “but now that you are our bishop, they are coming back,” she said. The reason, Oliveto said, is that people are craving a church that is open to all.
“Church ought to be a place where we can be our most vulnerable,” she said. “Most of the world does not allow for vulnerability, and I think the world suffers for that.”
The Rev. Walter Fenton, director of development for the conservative Methodist magazine Good News, has authored opinion pieces disavowing Oliveto’s election, calling the Western District’s legal brief in support of Oliveto “a combination of chutzpah and legal hairsplitting.” The church’s law is clear, he said, and Oliveto violated it.
“Most United Methodists have long recognized the debate over the church’s sexual ethics and its teachings on marriage has reached an impasse,” Fenton wrote. He urged the judicial council to put the issue to rest, and said the Western Jurisdiction and Oliveto are not “entitled to flout church law.”
The Rev. Kent Ingram, of First United Methodist in Colorado Springs, said he has been a “faithful foot soldier” who obeys church law, yet he is supporting Oliveto. He struggled for years regarding the church’s LGBTQ stance, and when he learned from the congregation’s youth minister that six gay youths have attempted suicide because they “thought there was no place for them in God’s love,” Ingram made up his mind.
“Lives were at stake,” he said. “The integrity of the gospel was at stake.”
Factions have formed in the United Methodist Church over the matter of gay leadership, within the United States and beyond. The church recently created a commission with 32 members from around the world to attempt to resolve the issue. Among the members are those who believe LGBTQ supporters should leave the church, and others who believe the opposite — that those who do not support gay clergy should leave.
The prayer vigil began at midnight Sunday and continues through 9 a.m. next Sunday. More than 200 churches and individuals signed up to pray for Oliveto in one-hour time slots.