Minister Who Presided at Daughter’s Gay Wedding Defrocked

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) After a former seminary president was defrocked for presiding at his daughter’s gay wedding, the top official of the Reformed Church in America said the denomination must not be paralyzed by disagreements over homosexuality. On Friday (June 17), church leaders defrocked the Rev. Norman Kansfield, the former president of […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) After a former seminary president was defrocked for presiding at his daughter’s gay wedding, the top official of the Reformed Church in America said the denomination must not be paralyzed by disagreements over homosexuality.

On Friday (June 17), church leaders defrocked the Rev. Norman Kansfield, the former president of New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, for presiding at the wedding of his lesbian daughter a year ago.


The church’s general secretary, the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, urged delegates at the RCA’s General Synod in Schenectady, N.Y., not to lose sight of more important issues, like accomplishing a 10-year goal of starting 400 new churches.

“We are unexpectedly at a crossroads, where the priority of our call to common mission is being tested,” Granberg-Michaelson told delegates on Saturday.

“We can decide that fighting over issues related to homosexuality is our most important task, and proceed down that road. Or we can keep the main thing the main thing, while agreeing to an honest and discerning dialogue over differing perspectives.”

The speech came on the heels of Kansfield’s church trial on Friday by RCA ministers and elders gathered at Union College for the annual conference.

Delegates voted 2-1 to discipline Kansfield for presiding over the June 2004 wedding of his lesbian daughter. They then decided in a closed-session meeting to suspend him from serving as a minister. Kansfield in March was ousted as president of New Jersey’s New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

Kansfield could not be reached for comment. Church critics have been asked not to comment publicly, one pastor said.

Kansfield’s daughter called the controversy “a great sadness for our denomination.”

“In this action, we have made a grave mistake,” said Ann Kansfield, a seminary graduate who has been asked to lead an RCA church in Brooklyn, where she serves as an unordained pastor. “In so doing, we have left not just a little bit of the church out, but a whole third. Not every congregation is like some of the congregations where the accusers serve.”


Delegates will talk more about homosexuality in coming days, as several proposals are on the docket to amend the church constitution. Some regional groups of churches, called classes, want to prohibit gay ministers and gay marriages.

Though the 284,000-member RCA is based in New York City, nearly one-third of members live in Michigan, including Granberg-Michaelson. He said he fears the homosexuality debate will steal time and energy as the RCA tries to meet its growth goals.

“Let’s provide a pastoral place for this conversation, and not ongoing judicial confrontations,” he said. “We have no right to close our hearts and our doors to those on society’s margins whom Jesus would invite to dinner.”

A proposal by a group of churches in Grand Rapids, Mich., that has spoken against homosexuality would require the general secretary to be elected every four years, to make sure the position represents “the thinking and heartbeat” of the denomination. Granberg-Michaelson has filled the post for 11 years.

The RCA has struggled with declining membership, and Granberg-Michaelson called for the church to pursue a more multicultural presence. He also wants to streamline church bureaucracy.

Officials admit that the 10-year growth plan will bring “deep, painful change,” but fear that a lack of action will bring “slow, painful death.”


KRE/JL END VANDEBUNTE

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for file photos of Kansfield to accompany this story. Search by name.

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