A United Methodist pastor in Reynoldsburg is calling for the suspensions of three fellow clergy members within the wake of Saturday's same-intercourse marriage ceremony of a minister in violation of church rules.
The Rev. Jeff Greenway, who heads up the Evangelical Fellowship of West Ohio, wrote in an announcement on behalf of the neighborhood that the public marriage of the Rev. David Meredith is a "clear act of disobedience to the spirit and letter of our covenant."
"These moves are troubling to us as contributors of the Evangelical Fellowship of West Ohio who hang a high view of scripture and seek to reside out our Wesleyan expression of historical, orthodox Christianity," he wrote, regarding John Wesley, on whose teachings Methodism is primarily based. "it's with terrific sadness that we write as humans who love the Church, have been devoted to and invested in the United Methodist Church, and who've invariably endorsed for solidarity."
once formal complaints are submitted, the letter says, the bishop of the West Ohio conference should still suspend Meredith, as well because the pastor who presided over the marriage and the pastor of extensive street United Methodist Church, where the marriage took vicinity. Meredith served as pastor there from 1997 to 2012, when he took the helm at Clifton United Methodist Church in Cincinnati. The current pastor of the Downtown Church is the Rev. Lou Seipel. while nobody presided over the couple's vows, an all-church blessing of the union became led via the Rev. John Girard, who serves as affiliate pastor at Worthington United Methodist Church.
The United Methodist Church's publication of self-discipline calls the apply of homosexuality incompatible with Christian educating and says that "self-avowed training homosexuals" can not be ordained or appointed to serve the denomination. It extra states that ceremonies that rejoice equal-sex unions shall now not be performed by using United Methodist mi nisters or in United Methodist churches.
The concerns had been debated inside the denomination for many years, and Meredith's marriage is simply the latest in a line of acts of clergy defiance that have heated up because final year's U.S. Supreme court docket ruling that legalized civil equal-sex marriage.
Meredith acknowledges that the marriage became held to overtly challenge the church's suggestions, and it was purposely timed to ensue simply three days before the denomination's conventional conference in Portland, Oregon, where the suggestions will be debated. The ceremony itself become a press release, rife with comments calling for acceptance of LGBT individuals and clergy and identical-sex marriage. a number of United Methodist clergy members have been in attendance at the marriage ceremony, and a letter of help signed by using ninety one clergy individuals within the West Ohio conference changed into launched to the information media almost immediately afterward.
Greenway points out in his letter that files responding to the marriage also have been prepared through the Reconciling Ministries community, which advocates for LGBT clergy and members, and the United Methodist Centrist stream, which seeks a "third approach" that would permit traditionalists and progressives to dwell united in the church.
Greenway says that actions, letters and signatures of aid for Meredith's marriage ceremony " increase the disaster the United Methodist Church is facing over human sexuality."
"We urge our colleagues to accept as true with the harm that they've completed to the textile of our covenant neighborhood and the techniques they've undermined the ministry of alternative elders and deacons with these movements," he wrote. "The various requires guide are evidently a part of a broader, coordinated circulate of disobedience which is divisive in and of itself and may foster and exacerbate the division and potential rancor as we enter regular conference."
Methodists make up the greatest Protestant Christian denomination in valuable Ohio and the U.S. They don't seem to be the most effective religion community whose rules oppose same-intercourse unions. amongst others are the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist convention, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Judaism and Islam.
jviviano@dispatch.com
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