Bishop to appeal ruling reinstating Beth Stroud

[polmaven]

The local head of the United Methodist Church said yesterday he will appeal a church panel's ruling that restored Beth Stroud, a minister and self-acknowledged lesbian, to her Germantown pulpit.

Marcus Matthews, bishop of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, said he will file his appeal with the church's judicial council.

<snip>

In a statement given to the Associated Press, Stroud said: "When I put my robes back on, whether it's at the conclusion of the judicial process or in a number of years when the General Conference changes this unjust legislation, I want that to be a sacred trust among me, God and the larger church. I don't want my ordination to be a symbol of who is on the winning or losing side of a controversy at any given moment."

Many, many prayers being said for you, Rev. Stroud. May God's Grace be always with you. Thank you for your strength and wisdom for the sake of God's people.

[RevCheesehead]

1. How disappointing, yet not unexpected.

It's probably a foregone conclusion how the judicial council will rule, given what happened last year with Karen Dammen.

I still believe there is room for God's grace to work, and hope and pray for the day when all God's children are welcome in the church, and in the ordained ministry.

[polmaven]

2. I admire the strength and courage it has taken

and will continue to take for Rev. Stroud ...to me, no one deserves the title more....to continue in her struggle to become "legitimate" in the eyes of this church. There are other denominations to which she might have gone where she would not be discriminated against, yet she continues to do this for all of our sakes...straight,gay or bisexual...in the UMC.

I have known pastors who abused their wives, and remained ordained..remained with church assignments. I was once, a very long time ago, engaged to marry a man who aspired to the Methodist ministry, whom I left after the third beating at his hands. Beth Stroud is in a loving, long term relationship. Which is more God's will, do ya think?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. One of these days, the churches will grow up, just as

they did with regard to people with disabilities.

When my father was growing up, his spiritual role model was a man who felt a calling to ministry but could not be ordained because he was blind. The rules of the time said that a candidate for ordination had to be "a male without blemish." (And here I thought that qualification referred only to sheep and goats for sacrifice in Leviticus. Oh well.)

Fast forward twenty years or so. The local Lutheran seminary put out a call for Thanksgiving hosts for seminarians who lived too far away to spend the holiday with their families. My parents signed up, and we were assigned a seminarian who walked with crutches because of an early case of polio.

Yes, in those twenty years, the ban on clergy with disabilities had been lifted, unfortunately too late for my father's mentor, who spent his life as a lay preacher for an organization that distributed Bibles and other religious literature in Braille.