The United Methodist Church filed charges this week against 69 of its northern California and Nevada pastors for going against church law and blessing a lesbian couple.
And for the second time in a year, the church announced this week it will bring another of its ministers, this one from Chicago, before an ecclesiastical tribunal because he violated a church law against ministers' officiating at same-sex unions.The minister, the Rev. Greg Dell, 53, has been formally charged with disobedience to Methodism's "order and discipline" for having blessed the union of two men in his church, Broadway United Methodist Church, last September.
The trial will begin on Thursday, with 13 ministers acting as a jury and a retired bishop as judge. A verdict could come on Saturday. Conviction could lead to loss of his ministerial credentials.
In Sacramento on Tuesday, Bishop Melvin Talbert, announced charges against the 69 United Methodist clergy, along with a plea for the church to change its stance and fully accept gays and lesbians.
"This is a very painful day for me," the bishop wrote. "I will uphold the law, but I will not be silenced."
He called on Methodists on both sides of the controversy to agree to disagree and keep working together.
Both actions, in different parts of the country, illustrate a brewing national controversy in both religious and secular spheres over same-sex unions. Even while gay men and lesbians have filed lawsuits in states like Hawaii and Vermont seeking legal recognition of their unions, the federal government and a majority of states have passed laws against recognizing the legality of such bonds.
Many religious groups have been wrestling with questions of how to relate to the gay men and lesbians in their midst. But while much of the controversy in Protestant denominations has turned on whether to ordain noncelibate homosexuals as clergy members, controversy over same-sex unions has become acute lately among the country's 8.5 million United Methodists, who constitute the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination, after the Southern Baptist Convention.
In part, this is because the church, whose members include Hillary Rodham Clinton, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and former Sen. Bob Dole, is theologically diverse, including liberal and conservative wings, as well as a broad center. It also lacks a single, central authority, like the pope, but at the same time does not permit its congregations the sort of autonomy found within Jewish synagogue organizations and some other Protestant denominations.
Filing of charges against the 69 clergy in San Francisco triggers an investigation that could lead to a church trial of the group, or the charges could be dropped. At worst, they could lose their ordinations.
The issue threatens to split the United Methodist Church and is causing controversy in every other major Protestant Christian denomination in the country.