|
Gender-bender Methodist minister wins approval of denomination
Gender-bender Methodist minister wins approval of denomination
Jim Brown, Allie Martin, and Jody Brown OneNewsNow.comMay 31, 2007
A conservative activist believes the United Methodist Church's affirmation of a transsexual minister in Baltimore "sets a troubling precedent." Mark Tooley contends the denomination isn't helping anyone "when it fails to faithfully transmit the gospel of hope and transformation."
The United Methodist bishop of the Baltimore-Washington Conference has reappointed a female minister who underwent a sex-change operation and now goes by the name of "Drew Phoenix." Ann Gordon, aka "Drew Phoenix," is the first openly transsexual minister in the United Methodist Church and one of the very few publicly transsexual clergy in the U.S. Her reappointment to St. John's UMC in Baltimore is effective July 1.
Speaking last week to a gathering of Methodists in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, the 48-year-old pastor shared that last fall, "after a lifelong spiritual journey and years of prayer and discernment," she decided to change her name "to reflect my true gender identity and to honor my spiritual transformation and relationship with God." The United Methodist News Service also reports that over the last year, she has been undergoing "medical procedures for the transition from female to male."
"Fortunately," said Phoenix, "God's gift of medical science is enabling me to bring my physical body into alignment with my true gender."
UMNS reports that the United Methodist Book of Discipline has no specific policies regarding what the news service refers to as "gender reassignment" -- and quotes Bishop John Schol of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, who says he and his cabinet "have done everything to ensure that the Discipline is being carried out." In addition, the report says, membership at St. John's has increased and the congregation's financial situation has improved under Phoenix's leadership.
Mark Tooley is director of United Methodist Action at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, DC. Tooley says Drew Phoenix is part of a growing movement which claims that gender is fluid and self-determined. But in a press release about Phoenix's surgical change and reassignment, he states that "gender is not a choice but a reality."
"The omni-gender movement and the acceptance of a clergy who has professed to change sexual identity is almost gnostic in its understanding of sexual identity in that it claims that sex is not set by your physical reality, but by your feelings and by your thoughts," he says during an interview. "Theologically, for that reason among many others, it's a troubling development."
It is apparent, says Tooley, that Gordon has struggled with the issue of her gender identity during most of her life -- and it is clear, he adds, that Gordon "is in need of the direction and guidance of the church." But the IRD spokesman believes the UMC is not helping Gordon with that struggle, but instead is "facilitating her problems."
"[R]ather than getting firm, biblical, Christian guidance from her denomination, instead [she] is getting affirmation for a poor life choice that probably will end up being very harmful to her," he asserts, confessing that he finds the actions of church officials confusing. "I think the church historically, in continuity with ancient Jewish teaching, has always affirmed that God created male and female, and that is a given. Gender identity is not self-determined ... it's not a matter of mind or feelings." (Hear Audio)
The Methodist activist notes that the denomination has no explicit, official teaching on sexual identity change. "The church has a teaching on marriage and [on] sexual ethics and disapproves of homosexual practice," he points out, "but has never addressed sexual identity change."
The UMC, along with increasing numbers of churches, will eventually have to tackle the issue of transgender pastors, says Tooley, because it seems to be "the edgy issue of the future." In the wake of Phoenix's reappointment to St. John's, some UMC ministers in the Baltimore-Washington Conference reportedly have asked for a "ruling of law" that automatically takes the issue to the denomination's highest court, the Judicial Council, which next meets in October.
In addition, Tooley's group is calling for legislation at next year's General Conference of the United Methodist Church to address the issue. "We hope the United Methodist Church will act, where the leadership of the Baltimore-Washington Conference has failed, by establishing clear ethical and theological guidelines about the role of gender in God's creation," the IRD spokesman says.
|
Linear Mode
