A Methodist judicial council on
Saturday affirmed an appeals panel's reversal of the conviction of
Frank Schaefer, who was defrocked because he presided at the wedding
of his gay son.
According to Reuters, the decision was
based on technical grounds and did not touch on the issue of marriage
equality. The nine-member council, the church's highest judicial
body, said that it found “no errors in the application of the
church law and judicial decisions.”
While serving as pastor of Zion United
Methodist Church in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Shaefer, who has three gay
children, presided at the 2007 wedding of his son Tim Schaefer to
another man in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize such unions
in 2004.
Last year, the church defrocked
Schaefer, saying his acceptance of gay unions went against the
Protestant denomination's Book of Discipline, which accepts gay
members but rejects homosexual acts as “incompatible with Christian
teachings.”
Schaefer, who has repeatedly called the
church's position discriminatory, applauded the ruling in a
statement, calling it a “small, but significant step toward taking
another look at the exclusionary policies of the United Methodist
Church.”
“Their decision signals hope to our
LGBTQ community that has not always seen the rule of love and grace
winning over the letter of the archaic law the church still
subscribes to,” he said. “Today’s decision also signals a
willingness to continue dialogue and to seek solutions that will
hopefully lead to a change in these archaic and harmful policies.”
An appeals panel in June also found
Schaefer guilty but reduced the penalty to a 30-day suspension, which
it said he had already served, and ordered officials to “compensate
Respondent for all lost salary and benefits dating from December 19,
2013.”
Schaefer is now a minister in Santa
Barbara, California.