BREAKING: Methodist Church gives pastor 30 days to desist or give up credentials

Renee K. Gadoua

(RNS) A United Methodist jury Tuesday night gave a Pennsylvania pastor 30 days to agree not to break church law by presiding at future same-sex weddings or give up his clergy credentials.

The penalty was announced just before 9 p.m., in Spring City, Pa., after an emotional two-day church trial. On Monday, the Rev. Frank Schaefer was found guilty of violating church law by officiating at his son’s 2007 wedding to another man.

The denomination’s Book of Discipline forbids the ordination of “avowed” homosexuals and bans clergy from officiating at same-sex marriages or holding such ceremonies in its churches. But a growing group of clergy and lay members oppose these rules and are ready to defy them. Schaefer is one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of clergy who have rebelled by performing gay weddings.

Tuesday’s penalty was sure to raise the specter of schism within the 7.5-million-member denomination, the nation’s second largest Protestant group.

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/11/19/methodist-court-gives-pastor-30-days-desist-give-credentials/