Methodist church acquits pastor who performed lesbian ceremony

Off Our Backs, Apr 1998 by Ross-Fowler, Gigi

Keaney, NE-Jimmy Creech, a pastor who last year presided over a ceremony where two women pledged love and fidelity to each other, was tried and acquitted, on March 13, of "disobedience to the Order and Discipline of the United Methodist Church." He was tried before the Nebraska Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC). Bishop Leroy Hodapp of Evansville, Indiana, acted as judge, and thirteen members of the clergy were the jury. Five of the 12 white jurors were women, and one of the men was a native of India.

Creech is the senior pastor of Omaha's 1,900-member First United Methodist Church. Another UMC minister, Glenn Loy, brought charges, on September 16, 1997, after receiving telephone calls about the September 14th ceremony and seeing Creech's statement regarding the ceremony on the Internet. Loy is the pastor of Ogallala United Methodist Church in Ogallala, Nebraska.

In November 1997, Bishop Joel Martinez suspended Creech for 60 days and then extended the suspension indefinitely, despite requests from church leaders that he return to his pastoral duties.

During the trial, Creech admitted performing dozens of covenanting ceremonies celebrating pledges of love and fidelity between two women or two men. He stated that regardless of the verdict he would continue to perform such ceremonies.

The Creech trial is the latest event in the struggle between conservative forces in the United Methodist Church and those pushing for open acceptance of lesbians, bisexuals, gay men, and transgendered persons in the full life of the church, including ordination and marriage ceremonies.

On the acceptance side, over 1,300 UMC ministers have signed a petition titled "In All Things Charity," a petition calling for "full, unqualified membership to lesbians and gay men, including the marriage rites." Creech was one of the original 15 signers. Also, 144 UMC churches are part of a movement called "Reconciling Congregations" that publicly accepts lesbians, bisexuals, gay men, and transgendered persons and UMC ministers who perform convenanting ceremonies.

Until 1996, the UMC did not officially prohibit union ceremonies between persons of the same gender. In May of that year, the General Conference, the UMC's rule-making body, added the following words to the denomination's Social Principles: "Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches."

This policy follows the denomination's other decisions to condemn and exclude people because of who they love. In 1972, the UMC added language condemning people they called homosexuals." In 1984, the church officially prohibited the ordination of those they termed "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals." (see box.)

Attempting to appear openminded and fair, the General Conference authorized a four-year long study of "homosexuality," beginning in 1988. In a move reminiscent of the military's refusal to abide by a study that showed that the presence of same-gender loving people does not adversely affect combat readiness and military performance, the 1992 General Conference decided to ignore the recommendations of the majority of the members on the study's task force. The majority found no grounds for maintaining the negative, exclusionary language in the Social Principles and The Book of Disciplinethis totalitarian-titled tome is the principal book of rules for the UMC. The General Conference, instead, took the advice of the task force's minority to keep the language. Since then, the General Conference has added even more exclusionary rules.

Technically, the jury's verdict means that the UMC did not prove by "clear and convincing evidence" that Creech disobeyed "the Order and Discipline of The United Methodist Church." Nine votes were needed tn convict. The final vote was 8 responding yes, he was guilty, and 5 saying, no he was not guilty.

Bishop Martinez says he plans to ask the Judicial Council, the UMC's highest judicial body, to rule on the language in the Book of Discipline that was the basis for charging Creech. Creech returned to his duties as senior pastor at First United Methodist Church where he preached three services on March 16 while protesters picketed outside the building.

in from a soulforce alert 3/13/98; reconciling congregation program webpage

The last known time that the United Methodist Church had a thal related to the issue of homosexuality was in 1987. The Rev. Rose Mary Dena a pastor in the former New Hampshire Annual conference, admitted to the bishop that she was a lesbian Charges were filed against her, and she was given a choice of withdrawing from the ministry under complaint, being involuntarily terminated or going to trial. Denman chose the trial in an effort to bring the issue of homosexuality and ministry into the public eye before the 1988 General Conference. She was found guilty of violating church law, which prohibits self-avowed practicing homosexuals from serving as ministers. The proceeding marked the first trial of a pastor charged with violating the denomination's 1984 ban on openly gay and lesbian clergy.