Update: Methodist Appeal Committee Re-Instates Defrocked Minister Frank Schaefer

UPDATE:  
Wa-a-a-ay back in December, I shared an article about the defrocking of Methodist minister Frank Schaefer after he performed a same-sex wedding ceremony for one of his three gay children.:
http://whateyethynk-politics.blogspot.com/2013/12/eye-recommend-defrocking-of-minister.html

I found it sad that a church could exclude a man like this and ask him to deny his own progeny the rite of marriage.  In a church that claims to be inclusionary, this made no sense to me.  

Yesterday, a Methodist appeals committee overturned Mr. Schaefer's defrocking.  The nine-member panel made up of clergy and lay people decided that the action taken last year was more a retaliation for Mr. Schaefer's refusal to promise never to perform another same-sex marriage ceremony than a punishment for having performed one in the first place.  A representative for Mr. Schaefer cited the case of two Methodist ministers in Washington State who were given 24 hour suspensions after they performed same-sex marriage ceremonies.

Mr. Schaefer explained his decision to celebrate his son's same-sex marriage this way: "I did this as an act of love.  He had been harmed and hurt by the message of the church that said you can't be homosexual and go to heaven."

While the United Methodist Church's official Book of Discipline continues to define marriage as between a man and a woman and forbids the ordination of "self-avowed practicing homosexuals," there are examples of gay clergy serving in the Methodist church, and hundreds of Methodist ministers have signed a document stating their willingness to perform same-sex marriages.  That document begins, "Even as we sign, we repent that it has taken us so long to act.  We acknowledge our complicity in the church's discriminatory policies that have tarnished the witness of the Church to the world."

Conservative Methodists see the committee's decision as the end of a united church.  Reverend Rob Renfroe, president of Good News, a United Methodists organization that opposes same-sex marriage said, "This will be confirmation for traditionalists that we are deeply divided and may not be able to live together.  When we have people who are not only disobedient, but who find a way to not have to keep the covenant they have made with the rest of the church, it helps us to see that maybe we are so different that we've come to the end of the road together."

I prefer to agree with the Mr. Schaefer: "Today there was a very clear and strong signal from the church, and that message is 'Change is on the way.'  One day we will celebrate the fact that we have moved beyond this horrible chapter in our church's life."

Amen to that.