c. 2007 Religion News Service
Court says Methodist transgender pastor can stay
(UNDATED) A transgender man can remain pastor of his Baltimore church, the United Methodist Church’s high court announced late Tuesday (Oct. 30), but the court sidestepped larger questions about whether gender change is acceptable in the church.
No law in the church’s Book of Discipline prohibits transgender clergy, the nine-member Judicial Council said, so the Rev. Drew Phoenix, 48, cannot be removed from ministry without “administrative or judicial” action.
The ruling affirms Baltimore-Washington Bishop John R. Schol’s decision to reappoint Phoenix, formerly the Rev. Ann Gordon, after five years of service at St. John’s of Baltimore City.
The decision was immediately hailed by liberals as a historic achievement for transgenderism and for the 8 million-member United Methodist Church.
“The adjective placed in front of the noun `clergyperson’ does not matter,” the council ruled during its semi-annual session Oct. 24-27 in San Francisco. “What matters is that clergypersons, once ordained and admitted to membership in full connection, cannot have that standing changed without being accorded fair process.”
The council acknowledged that it was not addressing “the question of whether gender change is a chargeable offense or violates minimum standards established by the (churchwide) General Conference.”
Schol’s decision to reappoint Phoenix had been challenged by several ministers in the conference who said the church needs to have a discussion about the theological implications of transgenderism.
Phoenix transitioned from female to male with surgery and hormone treatments about 16 months ago after a lifetime he described as feeling he was in the wrong body.
He said he was “happily surprised” by the ruling and called it “a great relief.”
“My hope is that this is the first step in all of us coming to the table to have an open, respectful discussion about inclusion in the church,” Phoenix said.
Conservatives, however, pledged to push for a ban on transgender clergy at next year’s General Conference in Texas.
_ Daniel Burke
Court rules for teacher in private/public school dispute
(RNS) A federal appeals court has ruled for a Texas public school teacher who was denied the chance for a promotion after she refused to withdraw her children from a private religious school.
In 1998, Karen Jo Barrow was denied an interview for an assistant principal’s job with the Greenville Independent School District after she refused to take her children out of Greenville Christian School and enroll them in a public school.
Two years later, Barrow filed suit against the school district.
“Parental rights do not become null and void just because the parent is a teacher,” said Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Legal Institute, which represented Barrow in the recent proceedings. “The decision of whether or not to consider an employee for a job should never be based on where the applicant chooses to educate her own children.”
In its Oct. 23 ruling, which upheld a lower court’s decision in Barrow’s favor, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, “a rule requiring public school employees to enroll their children in public schools is simply more invasive of parental rights and less clearly tied to the public school’s management of its students and educational program” than the law allowed.
_ Heather Donckels
Indian judge says Muslim divorce must allow wife to respond
CHENNAI, India (RNS) A high court in India has ruled that a Muslim couple’s divorce is invalid if the husband pronounces “talaq,” or divorce, in anger or fails to communicate it to his wife without a chance for reconciliation.
The “triple talaq” allows a Muslim man to divorce his wife by simply repeating “talaq” (“I divorce you”) three times. Instant divorce is prohibited in several Islamic countries, but the practice continues in India.
Islamic scholars say the Quran clearly says a talaq must be spread over three months, which allows a couple time for reconciliation. However, many men today use the mail, the telephone or even text messages to divorce their wives.
In the latest triple talaq case, which came before the high court in New Delhi, Justice B.D. Ahmed said the triple talaq was “an innovation which may have served a purpose at a particular point of time in history.” However, if it were phased out, “such a move would not be contrary to any basic tenets of Islam or the Quran, or any ruling of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Ahmed, who is a Muslim, said the “harsh abruptness” of the triple talaq had brought about extreme misery to women and even men, who were left with no chance to undo the wrong or seek reconciliation.
The court, however, ruled against the woman’s claim that she was raped by her husband after he announced the divorce in her absence. The court ruled that since the divorce was invalid, the husband’s physical relationship with the woman could not be considered rape.
“First of all, it (the talaq) was given in extreme anger. Secondly, it was never communicated to the complainant (the wife). Therefore the rape (charge) is not made out,” the judge said.
_ Achal Narayanan
Philly Episcopal bishop suspended pending church trial
(RNS) The Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia has been barred from ministry pending a church trial to determine his culpability in protecting his brother, a former Episcopal priest who was accused of sexually abusing a minor in the 1970s.
Bishop Charles Bennison has been accused of “conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy” by an Episcopal Church committee and was barred from all ordained ministry by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on Wednesday (Oct. 31).
As rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Upland, Calif., in 1973, Bennison acted “passively and self-protectively” when his brother, John, a youth minister at the parish, was accused of having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old member of the youth group, according to the church committee.
John Bennison was married at the time, according to the committee’s presentment, or charge, against the bishop.
Charles Bennison failed to provide pastoral care to the girl, who was not identified by Episcopal News Service. Neither did he take steps to end the “affair,” report his brother to anyone, investigate whether his brother was abusing other children or tell the girl’s parents about the affair until three years had passed, according to the presentment.
Later, Bennison did not prevent his brother’s ordination, his later request to be reinstated after renouncing his orders in 1977, or his transfer between two California dioceses, according to the Episcopal committee.
John Bennison was forced to leave the priesthood in 2006 when news of his abuse was made public, according to Episcopal News Service.
A trial date for Bishop Bennison has not yet been set. He will be paid in the meantime, ENS reported.
_ Daniel Burke
Kerry laments faith missteps in 2004 race
WASHINGTON (RNS) In 2004, then-presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., didn’t make his religious background and convictions clear to the public, he said Thursday (Nov.1), and paid a price for it.
“The challenge for anyone running for president is how to explain who they are … I could have done a better job of that, and probably should have,” Kerry said at a session hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Looking back on his own journey of faith, experience on the campaign trail and religious studies since the 2004 election, Kerry outlined his mistakes and mapped out areas of common ground for religious liberals and conservatives.
In 2004, Kerry said, he hesitated to forcefully rebut attempts by conservatives who used wedge issues to drive religious voters to President Bush. “That was a lesson for me: Don’t let anything hang out there.”
Wistfully recalling the experience of another Catholic politician from Massachusetts, Kerry said: “President Kennedy’s challenge was to prove that he was not too Catholic to be president. My challenge was to prove that I was Catholic enough.”
The senator said he should have responded to the handful of Catholic bishops who pledged to ban him from Communion because of his support for abortion rights.
Those bishops “made the argument” on banning him from Communion “but it’s not a church position,” he said. “And what we didn’t do was make … sure the Catholic position was in front of people as much as it should be.”
_ Daniel Burke
Connor blasts conservatives for abandoning principles
NEW ORLEANS (RNS) The former head of the Family Research Council said evangelical leaders who once marshaled millions of votes for conservative presidential candidates have lost their principles in this election cycle.
Influential conservatives remain on the sidelines because they fear the loss of their political clout if they back a long-shot candidate and then lose, said Ken Connor, who now leads the Center for a Just Society, a policy center that advocates for conservative causes, especially in life and marriage issues.
“There are perceptions these guys are more concerned about being players than they are about principle,” said Connor, who headed the Family Research Council from 2000-2003, in an interview at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher before becoming governor of Arkansas, is a natural fit for social conservatives on the issues that have dominated their agenda for the past 20 years, Connor said.
But Huckabee, though climbing doggedly from single-digit poll results, remains a second-tier candidate and a long shot for the GOP nomination against front-runner Rudy Giuliani and contenders Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Connor said leading conservatives like James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Tony Perkins, current president of the Family Research Council; and Paul Weyrich, a fundraiser and strategist who founded the Heritage Foundation, have not thrown in with Huckabee because a Huckabee loss would tarnish their image as powerful kingmakers.
“They’ve enjoyed having a seat at the table for so long that they didn’t in many instances stand on principle when they should have, and they’ve lost credibility with their people,” he said.
Connor said some evangelical leaders long friendly to the GOP have come to identify themselves as Republicans rather than principled conservatives. Perkins and others in the movement recently threatened to support a third-party candidate if Giuliani is the GOP nominee.
In 2006, Connor said leading social conservatives were “embarrassingly silent” in the face of the congressional ethics scandals “when (evangelicals) would have been howling with indignation had it been Bill Clinton and trying to run him out of town on a rail.”
Connor said he thinks the evangelical old guard has lost credibility with conservative voters.
“I think evangelicals out there on the hustings are going to make their own decisions, and they’re going to split,” paving the way for Giuliani’s nomination, Connor said.
“I think they’ve helped promote the thing they feared the most. And it’s happened because they didn’t take a stand on principle.”
_ Bruce Nolan
Pittsburgh takes first step toward leaving Episcopal Church
(RNS) The Diocese of Pittsburgh has taken a big step out the door of the Episcopal Church, declaring itself at odds with the denomination’s more liberal view of Scripture and homosexuality and paving the way to join a more conservative Anglican branch.
By a tally of 227 to 82, lay and ordained delegates to Pittsburgh’s annual convention on Friday (Nov. 2) voted to change their diocese’s constitution, removing language that requires “accession” to the national church.
“As a diocese we have come to a fork in the road,” Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told delegates on Friday. “Indeed, it has become clear that our understandings are not only different, but mutually exclusive, even destructive to one another.”
Pittsburgh is the third U.S. diocese to take that step, following San Joaquin, Calif., and Quincy, Ill. Constitutional changes require the approval of two consecutive diocesan conventions. San Joaquin is scheduled to hold its second vote on the constitutional change in December.
Duncan said Pittsburgh’s action “announces an intention without actually making a change. … Of course, in another sense, adoption signifies an intention, gives warning, opens a possibility.”
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori publicly warned Duncan before the convention not to lead his diocese from the church.
Duncan, who leads an effort to realign U.S. Anglicans upset with the liberal drift of the national church, responded defiantly to Jefferts Schori.
“Here I stand, I can do no other,” the bishop said, quoting Martin Luther’s famous declaration. “I will neither compromise the faith once delivered to the saints, nor will I abandon the sheep who elected me to protect them.”
_ Daniel Burke
Bush names Glendon as Vatican ambassador
WASHINGTON (RNS) President Bush has nominated Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor and prominent conservative commentator, as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
Glendon, 69, is a longtime opponent of abortion and gay marriage and has written widely on culture and ethics in books and scholarly journals.
Her appointment must be confirmed by the Senate.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II named Glendon to the then-new Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a Vatican advisory panel. She headed a Vatican delegation to the United Nations’ Women’s Conference in Beijing the next year.
The Massachusetts native has also served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and, until her nomination Monday (Nov. 5), was an adviser to the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
“While I may have lost her trusted counsel to our campaign, our country has gained an extremely gifted ambassador,” Romney said in a statement.
Kishore Jayabalan, director of the Rome office for the the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Acton Institute, said Glendon’s Vatican experience makes her appointment “unprecedented.”
“She knows the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Curia,” he said. “She has no learning curve when it comes to Vatican City.”
_ Daniel Burke and Francis X. Rocca
Catholics urge civility in run-up to 2008 elections
WASHINGTON (RNS) A year to the day before the 2008 presidential elections, a group of Catholics urged civility in American politics, asking Catholic voters and politicians to avoid dragging the church into divisive partisanship.
With five Catholic candidates in the presidential field, the group released a statement co-written by former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Thomas Melady addressing issues raised in the campaign.
The document also comes one week before Catholic bishops will meet in Baltimore to debate their election-year document, “Faithful Citizenship” on the role of Catholics in public life.
Forty-seven prominent Catholics, including former politicians and ambassadors, signed the statement, which was released Tuesday (Nov. 6) by Melady and 14 others at a Washington news conference.
It is not the place of lay Catholics to question whether politicians who take positions conflicting with church teaching should receive Communion, their statement says.
At the same time, “Catholic politicians who advertise their Catholicism as part of their political appeal, but ignore the Church’s moral teachings in their political life, confuse non-Catholics by giving the appearance of hypocrisy,” the statement said.
The statement also urges church members to remember there are Catholics “of equally good will but differing political convictions” who deserve their respect.
Other signers included former Republican National Committee chairman Frank Fahrenkopf; Terry McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee; and former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating.
_ Beckie Supiano
Calvin tells black prof to choose between school, church
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) Professor Denise Isom loves her work at Calvin College and her Grand Rapids church, Messiah Missionary Baptist. The problem: Isom must choose one or the other.
The Calvin board last month refused to exempt Isom from a rule that requires professors to attend a congregation with ties to the Christian Reformed Church.
The issue sparked a student “prayer protest” and discussion about how the church-membership policies may hurt diversity on campus. It also has drawn disdain from Isom’s pastor, the Rev. Clifton Rhodes Jr.
“I’m not sure I understand the position of the school,” Rhodes said. “She’s not involved in some cult. We are a community of believers and we, in my eyes, are quite compatible.
“I think it’s rather narrow of the college to say: `If you want to continue your worship, you’ll have to find different employment.”’
Isom, an assistant professor of education since 2003, is black and her research focuses on race and education. She told the board she finally found what she was looking for at the predominantly black Messiah Missionary Baptist.
“Though there are CRC churches and communities that are striving to reflect a multicultural vision in the church’s make-up and worship content, they’re not `there’ yet,” she wrote in a recent letter requesting the exemption.
Since the board’s Oct. 18 decision, college leaders and Isom have been exploring her options, according to Provost Claudia Beversluis. Those include Isom’s departure from the private college or finding a partnership with a CRC church.
Isom, 42, told the board she visited churches of various denominations without finding a good fit.
“I need a place of worship that is already consistent with my culture and able to grapple with issues of race in ways which make it a respite, a re-charging and growing place for me, as opposed to another location where I must `work’ and where I am `other,’ ” she wrote.
_ Nardy Baeza Bickel and Nate Reens
Quote of the Week: Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.
(RNS) “You have to describe the enemy as who they are. They’re not Irish Catholics, they’re not Ukrainian Orthodox. They are who they are, and their faith is integral as to why they are doing what they are doing.”
_ Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., speaking about Muslim extremists and his involvement in Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. He was quoted by the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa.
KRE END RNS
