Defrocked Pastor Reinstated After Officiating Son’s Same-Sex Marriage

The United Methodist Church has reinstated a Pennsylvania pastor it defrocked for officiating at his gay son’s wedding.

Last year, Rev. Frank Schaefer was found guilty and defrocked for officiating a game-sex marriage — his son’s — back in 2007. But now the United Methodist Church’s highest court has reversed that decision, and announced today, “The Rev. Frank Schaefer will remain a clergyman.”

“The Judicial Council of the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination ruled Monday that a Pennsylvania church jury was wrong to defrock Frank Schaefer last year after he would not promise never to perform another gay marriage,” the AP reports.

The council ruled on technical grounds and did not express support for gay marriage in general.

Although the United Methodist Church has welcomed gay and lesbian members, the church’s Book of Discipline rejects sex outside of heterosexual marriage as “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The Church’s website states the ruling “notes that some may see the appellate committee’s decision as ‘a flagrant disregard for parts of the Discipline’ and some ‘may have wished the trial court’s penalty had been differently constructed so as to meet the requirements of the Discipline and impose a harsher penalty.'”

Schaefer has become an LGBT activist and has written a book, Defrocked: How A Father’s Act of Love Shook the United Methodist Church.

 

Image of Rev. Schaefer via Facebook