A Methodist minister has been defrocked by a jury of fellow ministers for officiating at the marriage of two homosexual men.
"I feel the penalty severely," says the Rev. Jimmy Creech to the Associated Press. "The church has said it will use its power…to enforce bigotry. It is a scandalous day for the United Methodist Church."
A thirteen-member panel found Creech guilty and stripped him of his credentials, but Creech tried to put a brave face on the proceeding. "I do not feel deserted or abandoned by God," he said, "and I do not feel that the end of my ministry has come." The AP says he can appeal the decision to national United Methodist Church officials.
The jury's foreman, Rev. Jeff Kelley, tells the AP the panel just followed church law, but he said the penalty phase was the difficult part because "we were dealing with a colleague whom we love."
Creech was put on church trial because he officiated at the marriage ceremony of two gay men in North Carolina last April. The night before his trial, moreover, he presided at a recommitment ceremony for the two men, James Raymer and Larry Ellis. He refused to enter a plea, the AP says, because doing so, he believed, would legitimize the church law he was accused of violating.
This wasn't Creech's first controversy within the church. He'd first come under fire for a 1997 ceremony involving two lesbian women in his Omaha congregation. A church tribunal didn't act against him, but the church's Judicial Council has since ruled a ban on performing same-sex commitments has the weight of church law. Creech lost his pulpit but remained a clergyman after that trial.
Creech's case is said to have plunged the United Methodist Church into a bitter debate over its doctrines. Another suspended Methodist minister, Rev. Gregory Dell of Illinois, tells the news wire the Creech verdict saddened him. "It suggests how deeply the polarization has gone in the church," he says.
Bishop William Grove presided over Creech's trial and says the controversy could further divide the church. "We think the church did what it was called on," he tells the AP.
