UM court hears oral arguments in Houston

Council docket includes
appeal involving pastor
from Pennsylvania

United Methodist News Service
The Judicial Council was to hear oral arguments on three cases Oct. 27 in Houston.
The list included the cases of a Pennsylvania pastor who has admitted she is a practicing homosexual and a Virginia cleric who refused church membership to a gay person.
The nine-member United Methodist “supreme court” was to consider 14 items during its fall session, which began Wednesday on the Westchase Campus of First UMC, Houston. The council is to adjourn Oct 29.
The first oral argument involves the Rev. Irene Elizabeth “Beth” Stroud, associate pastor of First UMC of Germantown in Phila-delphia.
Stroud admitted in a sermon and in a letter to her congregation that she was “a lesbian living in a committed relationship with a partner.”
Last December, she was found guilty of violating church law, which forbids the ordination and appointment of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” and lost her ordination credentials.
In April the Northeastern Jurisdiction Committee on Appeals reversed and set aside the verdict and penalty decided by the trial court.
The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference then filed an appeal with the Judicial Council.
Stroud is on voluntary leave of absence as a clergy member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference but continues to work as a lay minister at her church.
Another oral presentation reviews two related decisions of law in the Virginia Conference by Bishop Charlene Kammerer.
One involves the disciplinary purview of the conference relations committee of the board of ordained ministry and the fair process rights of a pastor.
The second relates to the authority of a pastor under Paragraphs 214 and 225 of the 2004 Book of Discipline to exercise judgment in determining who may be received into membership in the local church.
Those two docket items are related to an action taken against the Rev. Edward Johnson of South Hill (Va.) UMC.
Johnson was placed on involuntary leave by the June 13 clergy executive session of the Virginia Conference for his refusal to admit a gay person into church membership. The yearlong leave began July 1.
The third oral presentation comes from the Tennessee Conference. It concerns the allocation by the secretary of the General Conference of additional at-large members of general program boards and general agencies.
The legal question is whether the formula filling seats on denominational boards and agencies will continue in its current form or could be interpreted differently by the Judicial Council to allow greater representation from areas with more members.
The General Conference secretary makes the appointments from people who are nominated.