A complaint against the Rev. Mark Edward Williams, an openly homosexual United Methodist clergyman in Seattle, was dismissed May 30 by a committee on investigation in the denomination’s Pacific Northwest Annual (regional) Conference. Consequently, he will not face a church trial and will continue to serve as pastor of Woodland Park United Methodist Church in Seattle.
The complaint alleged that a statement by Williams about being a “practicing gay man,” read into the record of the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference meeting on June 15, 2001, was incompatible with the denomination’s standards for clergy.
The committee on investigation, however, said it “found there was not reasonable cause to forward this matter for a church trial.” The decision of the committee, composed of seven clergy and two lay members, cannot be appealed.
Observers within the denomination were stunned to hear about the decision. Even Williams supporters were surprised, after all he did publicly declare that he was a “practicing gay man” at a denominational meeting. “Figure that one out,” church spokeswoman Scarlett Foster-Moss told the Seattle Times “cheerfully.”
Speaking to the Woodland Park congregation the Sunday after the decision, District Superintendent Robert Hoshibata said that the Williams decision was far more reflective of the attitudes of United Methodists in that area of the country than elsewhere across the denomination reported the Seattle Times. “The joy that you feel is not the joy that others in our denomination feel,” he told the congregants.
Williams’ statement in the 2001 conference session led the conference to seek a ruling from the Judicial Council—United Methodism’s highest court—as to an apparent conflict between its prohibition of appointing “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” to lead congregations and its requirement that all clergy in good standing be given an appointment.
Bishop Elias Galvan filed complaints against Williams and another clergyperson following the Judicial Council’s October declaratory decision that the admission of being a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” was sufficient cause for a pastor to undergo a ministerial review. Galvan filed the complaints in December. That action started the process that concluded with the committee’s decision.
Williams has told the media that he was asked very personal and intimate questions in order to decide whether he was a “self-avowed practicing homosexual.” Williams simply refused to answer. He believes that the statement he made last June was meant to refer only to his sexual orientation and “at no point have I ever intended to discuss my sexual behavior.”
“For me (not answering the question) was not a dodge,” Williams says in the Seattle Times. “It’s just a matter of good taste and dignity. I would find the question reprehensible to be asked of anybody.”
“This gives tremendous encouragement to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals in the ministry who realize that if they won’t testify against themselves, it will be very hard to make charges against them stick,” said the Rev. Paul Beeman of the Reconciling Ministries Network in Washington state.
“I hope my success is the first step toward full acceptance within the United Methodist Church,” said Williams.
“Williams’ refusal to answer the question about his behavior was, indeed, a ‘dodge,’ and should not have been allowed by the Committee on Investigation,” said James V. Heidinger II, President and Publisher of Good News, an evangelical renewal ministry within the United Methodist Church. “Judicial Council ruling No. 920 gives to those claiming publicly to be ‘self-avowed, practicing homosexuals’ every benefit of the doubt in the process of ministerial review by mandating the inquiry of whether one is ‘engaged in sexual acts with a person of the same gender.’ This was done to protect one from being wrongfully understood. For the church ‘to maintain the highest standards of holy living’ among its clergy,” Heidinger continued, “it simply can’t allow a non-answer to a Committee on Investigation by a pastor charged with behavior the church has said ‘is incompatible with Christian teaching. Apparently the investigating body lacked the will to do its mandated task.”
Adapted from United Methodist News Service.