By Michael Conlon
\nMon Oct 31,11:26 AM ET<\/p>\n
The United Methodist Church’s top court has ordered a lesbian minister defrocked, overturning a lower panel’s ruling that had reversed the penalty, the church announced on Monday.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Stroud “was accorded all fair and due process rights” and an appeals committee that reversed her removal from the ministry in April erred in saying church officials had failed to define what a “practicing homosexual” was in terms of church law, the ruling said.<\/p>\n
The decision by the nine-member Judicial Council is final. A church spokeswoman said Stroud could ask the panel to reconsider, but the quest would be heard by the same panel, and only two members dissented.
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\nThe ruling is the latest development over an issue that has divided Christian denominations. The ordination of an openly gay man as a bishop in the U.S. Episcopal church continues to strain relations between liberals and conservatives in that body and with the worldwide Anglican community.<\/p>\n
The Vatican has been conducting an investigation of U.S. Roman Catholic seminaries to determine if there is a problem with homosexuality.<\/p>\n
In December 2004 a lower church court stripped Stroud, 35, of her credentials as a minister at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown, Philadelphia, saying she violated the church’s Book of Discipline, which forbids the ordination and appointment of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.”<\/p>\n
Stroud was allowed to have a lesser role in the church but could not perform ceremonies such as baptisms and weddings.<\/p>\n
Stroud told the initial hearing she was in a committed relationship with another woman and had decided to be open about her sexuality because it was the honest, Christian thing to do.<\/p>\n
Her stance was backed by many members of her Philadelphia congregation. By Michael Conlon Mon Oct 31,11:26 AM ET The United Methodist Church’s top court has ordered a lesbian minister defrocked, overturning a lower panel’s ruling that had reversed the penalty, the church announced on Monday. Elizabeth Stroud “was accorded all fair and due process rights” and an appeals committee that reversed her removal from the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-in-america","category-secularismculture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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