LOS ANGELES – A pastor who was defrocked by the United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania because of his support for same-sex marriage has been offered another position by a Methodist bishop in California, a sign of the deep split within the church over acceptance of gay men and lesbians.
The defrocked pastor, the Rev. Frank Schaefer, who led a congregation in Lebanon, Pa., was stripped of his clerical credentials Dec. 19. Since then, Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño has invited him to minister in the California-Pacific Annual Conference, the church region including Southern California and Hawaii.
Schaefer said Monday he was “very seriously considering” the offer and would discuss it with his family during the holidays.
A complaint was filed against him within the church this year because he officiated at his son’s 2007 wedding to another man. His trial in November highlighted the increasingly loud objections within the nation’s third-largest Christian denomination to its opposition to same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay people. Since then, a number of Methodist pastors and bishops have spoken out in support of Schaefer, denouncing the ban on same-sex weddings.
“I think it’s time for some civil disobedience within our church,” Carcaño said Monday.
Though she cannot restore Schaefer’s ministerial credentials, she can offer him a position at a church with many of the same responsibilities as a licensed local pastor. Schaefer also has appealed his defrocking.
“We could create a safe space for him for work in the California-Pacific area that was not available to him in Pennsylvania,” Carcaño said.
“This is a more inclusive area,” she said of her region. “It is a part of the church that has been practicing what the church proclaims: God’s grace and mercy available to all of God’s children.”
Schaefer already has signaled his plans to remain a part of the Methodist Church. On Sunday, he spoke to parishioners at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, where he urged people to keep fighting to change Methodist doctrine.
“Within the next three years,” he said, “I think the United Methodist Church as a whole will come to the right conclusion that the anti-gay laws are discriminatory and will abolish them – or at least part of the church will affirm that, and it will come to a splinter.”
The next chance to amend the church’s Book of Discipline will be at the quadrennial conference in 2016.
