Methodist minister suspended for performing ‘holy union’
The Layman Online, March 30, 1999
A United Methodist Church court has found a Chicago minister guilty of blessing a “holy union” of two gay men in violation of church law.
On March 26, a jury of 13 Chicago-area ministers voted 13-0 to find Rev. Gregory Dell guilty of conducting the service between Keith Eccarius and Karl Reinhardt on Sept. 19, 1998. By a 10-3 vote they found him guilty of disobedience to the order and discipline of the United Methodist Church.
Dell, pastor of Broadway United Methodist Church on Chicago’s North Side, was suspended from ordained ministry until he either agrees in writing not to perform homosexual unions in the future or until the church repeals the law. The sentencing will take effect July 5.
Dell said he would stick by his principles.
A wake-up call
Dell performed a holy union between to male parishioners last September, a month after the denomination’s highest judicial body ruled that church law did not sanction holy unions between members of the same sex.
He based his defense on the assertion that the prohibition of homosexual unions conflicted with his obligation to minister to all people, including approximately one third of his congregation which is gay or lesbian.
In an interview two days after the decision, Dell told Ecumenical News International he was “shocked” by the severity of the penalty. He said his conviction, and a separate action under way in California against a group of clergy who participated in the union of two women in January, would probably become a major, and possibly divisive, issue for the UMC at its quadrennial general conference next year.
“I see the verdict and the penalty as a teaching opportunity for the church, and a kind of wake-up call,” he told ENI. “Is this the character of the church we want? Are we the kind of denomination that has this kind of punitive response?”
Dell’s bishop, C. Joseph Sprague, will have to enforce the decision, but has expressed anguish over it. Citing the time, energy and nearly $100,000 spent on the trial, Spague told The Chicago Tribune that he would have to think twice in the future about filing similar complaints against other pastors.
According to the Tribune article, Dell requested a truce during the trial. “I suggest that we call a truce. Penalize me with a reprimand. Enter a letter of censure in my permanent record of ministerial service … Decide that our denomination can and even must live with such disobedience until May of 2000, when we meet in General Conference. Let me and the hundreds of other clergy, and the thousands of laity … who support this kind of ministry – minority though we may be – stay in the family.”
Significant damage
Church counsel Rev. Stephen Williams asked the jury to bring justice to Dell, choking back sobs as he argued that it had no option but to ban Dell from ordained ministry.
“Significant damage and confusion has been inflicted on this branch of the body of Christ,” Williams said. “I do not believe Greg Dell wants to destroy the temple of God, but I do believe his acts are destructive.”
Williams called Dell a brother, a friend and a superior pastor in many ways.
“If Greg would promise me, promise you, that he wouldn’t violate the covenant again . . . I would be the first to say, ‘Thank you, go home,’ ” Williams said. “But he won’t.”
During closing statements, defense counsel Rev. Larry Pickens asked the jurors to preserve Dell’s “unique and incredibly effective ministry.”
“If the church cannot enforce this binding provision,” said Williams in his closing statement, “then the General Conference is stripped of its full legislative authority. The Judicial Council is stripped of its judicial authority. And 8½ million Methodists are stripped of their right, through the General Conference, to determine what may or may not be done in the name of the church.”