United Methodist conference debating transgender clergy

The decades-old discussion of sexuality in the United Methodist Church includes a new wrinkle -- transgender laypeople and clergy -- as the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination meets this week in Texas.Methodists are meeting for their quadrennial General Conference from April 23-May 2 in Fort Worth, Texas. Beyond sexuality, they are expected to discuss possible divestment from companies operating in Israel, questions related to their increasingly international membership, and possible statements on the Iraq war.

Resolutions related to sexuality and gender number in the hundreds, but an increasing number deal with transgender people after the church's highest court permitted Baltimore pastor Drew Phoenix to remain in his pulpit. Gender change had not been addressed in the church's constitution, the Judicial Council ruled last October.

In light of that decision, some conservative Methodists now want to see church rules codify that transgender people should not be allowed as clergy.

"It illustrates that the proposed liberalization of the church's standard doesn't stop with homosexuality," said Mark Tooley, director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy's UMAction, a conservative group. "We proposed legislation that would, in effect, disapprove of a sex-change operation and would affirm biological gender as a divine gift."

Rev. Rachel Cornwell, senior pastor at Woodside United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, MD, sees it differently. "I personally support people that are called by God regardless of their sexuality or sexual orientation," Pastor Cornwell told the District Chronicles. "So long as they are sexual ethical people and are in monogamous relationships, they should be allowed in the church and in the pulpit. I think it's a conversation that we still need to have, but in general I support the ordination."

Pastor Cornwell's church belongs to the same Baltimore-Washington conference of United Methodists Churches as St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore where Rev. Drew Phoenix remains pastor after undergoing a sex change from a woman (Ann Gordon) to a man.

"My understanding of that situation is that this person who has gone through a gender reassignment is a very effective pastor and that the church he is serving is very supportive," Pastor Corwell said. "So I think in that case he's clearly called by God and the church has been supportive of his journey."

Pastor Cornwell says the controversy about sexuality and gender issues tends to take away from some important issues facing the church. The larger issues the denomination faces, she said, are tensions between conservative and progressives over how to read the Bible and interpret scriptures. "We tend to focus on these specific issues rather than getting to the root of the conversation."

Rev. Joye E. Jones, Pastor of Good Shepard United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, Md, points out that the discipline of the Methodist Church is silent on the question of transgenders. "It says absolutely nothing about transgender," she says. "Transgenders and homosexuals are not the same thing."

Pastors Jones likes to remind people that there was a time not so long ago when the church said that women and black people couldn't be pastors. "Things change over time," she added.

"As we develop an understanding of who is in and who is out and what is sin and what isn't, I believe that our opinions change. That's not to say that what sin and what isn't changes, but what we think about it does," said Pastor Jones.

But Associate Pastor Mel Grover at Lexington Park United Methodist Church in Lexington Park, MD, is not that accommodating. "The church itself should be open to all people," he told the District Chronicles. "With the pulpit, my personal opinion, and the discipline goes along with it, is that there should not be homosexuals in the pulpit. That's what the discipline says."

Affirmation, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Methodists, oppose that viewpoint, saying such a move doesn't reflect a denomination whose slogan is "Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors."

"I'm concerned about the church, that it's going down a path of exclusion. Drew who has clearly exhibited the gifts and graces of the ministry needs to be able to have the right to serve," said Diane DeLap, an Affirmation spokeswoman and a transgender laywoman who formerly was a male pastor in evangelical churches.

"The idea that because we are transgender we can automatically be excluded from the ministry is, to me, personally offensive."

Even as Methodists say they want to maintain overall unity, there continues to be disagreement over whether the church should change current language in its Book of Discipline that calls homosexual behavior "incompatible with Christian teaching."

"Probably more than anything else, what will take place is a generational change in terms of attitudes toward gay and lesbian people," predicted Jim Winkler, general secretary of the church's General Board of Church and Society.

But Patricia Miller, executive director of the Confessing Movement, a group of conservative United Methodists, said: "I know a number of young people who are very supportive of the current Discipline.