Blessing of Gay Couple’s Union Splits Methodists

Over the last few months, the Rev. Jimmy Creech has entered his hilltop chapel quietly, almost stealthily. He comes after hours, sometimes at night, avoiding familiar faces as if he does not quite belong there--a hesitancy that is dividing his congregation and roiling his faith.

He is prohibited from leading prayers at the First United Methodist Church. His soul-scouring sermons are bottled up inside him like holy fire. When he showed up recently for a congregant’s funeral, Creech was in the last pew, sitting apart like a stranger.

“It’s painful to go back,” he said. “It’s hard sitting there knowing I can’t relate to my parishioners as their pastor. It’s like being hungry and having a plate set before you and you can’t partake.”

Creech, 53, was suspended from his ministry at Omaha’s largest United Methodist church in November for officiating at a wedding-like covenant ceremony for two female congregants. A church court trial will begin here today to determine whether the minister was acting correctly on his religious principles or should be exiled from his congregation--and perhaps his faith--for flouting the Methodist prohibition against homosexual marriages.

Last Church Trial Held in the 1960s

A proceeding so rare that the last one in Nebraska was held in the 1960s, Creech’s trial is a novel forum for an issue convulsing the country’s Protestant denominations: How inclusively should they embrace homosexuals and same-sex unions?

His is the first public test case of a 1996 doctrine passed by United Methodist leaders outlawing same-sex ceremonies. Protestant ministers have been disciplined for such acts in recent years, but without trial. A United Methodist pastor who stated she was a lesbian was censured after a 1987 church trial. An Episcopal priest in New Jersey was acquitted by trial two years ago for ordaining an avowed homosexual. And in recent weeks, officials of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America revoked the ministry of an avowed gay pastor in Ames, Iowa, after a two-day ecclesiastical trial.

The airing of Creech’s feud with Nebraska’s Methodist leaders, presented in a church auditorium in the town of Kearney before a jury of 13 elders, gives the issue “a forum that forces people to think about it who didn’t deal with it before,” said Keith Hartman, an author who has studied recent internal church battles over homosexuality. “It’s usually handled quietly and quickly as an administrative matter. But not this time.”

But even greater visibility may not alter the views of church leaders. John Gordon Melton, a Methodist minister who directs the Institute for the Study of American Religion at UC Santa Barbara, explains that “the church has been dealing with this since 1972, and a solid majority against gay rights has not moved in a generation.”

Amid the doctrinal debate lies a more personal dilemma that echoes in any congregation led by a pastor impelled to action. How far, both Creech’s supporters and foes wonder, can a religious leader follow his heart before he divides his parishioners and threatens the survival of his church?

“Is this one act worth the risk, not just to Jimmy, but the larger consequences . . . for the whole United Methodist conference?” asked the Rev. Richard D. Turner, assistant to Bishop Joel N. Martinez, the Nebraska United Methodist leader who suspended Creech.

“It’s the pull between being comfortable or struggling with important issues,” Hartman said. “Jimmy’s always taken the harder road.”

A Shrunken, Weak Congregation

That road has left First United a shrunken and weakened congregation. Its 1,900 members are split. Scores already have defected to other churches. Many among the old guard, a faction of conservative worshipers who long have been the most generous of First United’s fund-raisers, are refusing to donate until Creech is replaced.

“When people hear that we’re members of First United, they just shake their heads and say what a terrible thing it is,” said Bob Howell, a retired insurance executive who opposes Creech’s return.

Almost from the moment he came to the church from North Carolina in July 1996, Creech set on an activist course that won admirers among the younger, more liberal members, but alienated First United’s older parishioners. A reedy, somber man with little trace of a regional twang, Creech already had been ejected from a Raleigh church for advocating gay and lesbian issues and was working as a legislative lobbyist when he received overtures from Nebraska Methodist leaders.

In their search for a new minister for First United, Nebraska church leaders had “developed a profile of a minister who was outspoken on social issues,” said Michael McClellan, a lawyer who will represent Creech at the trial. “The problem for them is Jimmy fit it too perfectly.”

The 143-year-old congregation for years was considered the flagship of Nebraska’s Methodist churches, a 200,000-square-foot complex on Omaha’s western edge where many of the city’s bankers, insurance men and political candidates mingled on Sundays.

But as Omaha grew, First United began losing its affluent core membership to suburban chapels. Older defectors were replaced by younger recruits who were more predisposed “to taking stands than standing around,” said McClellan, who counts himself among the new generation.

Creech seemed to deepen those divisions. His lashing sermons against the death penalty and in favor of homosexual rights rattled many among the church’s older worshipers.

“People went to Rev. Creech and said: ‘You’re driving a wedge in the congregation,’ ” said longtime member Virginia Semrad. “Rev. Creech wanted us to accept that lifestyle, and that was going too far to a lot of us.”

When Creech informed church leaders in the winter of 1997 that he would lead a same-sex ceremony at First United if asked to by congregants, McClellan said, he was given no indication that he risked danger--despite the doctrine forbidding such rites.

“Bishop Martinez only asked Jimmy to tell him before he did it,” McClellan said. “He didn’t say anything about not doing it.”

When the minister informed the bishop in July that he was going to perform the union, Creech said, he heard nothing until September--two weeks before the ceremony--when Martinez “instructed me not to do it.”

Creech went ahead. On Sunday, Sept. 14, he celebrated the union of two women he has only referred to in public as “Mary and Martha.” As congregants guarded the doors, watching for news crews, the ceremony proceeded. A classical guitarist played. The women exchanged rings. A friend sang the Lord’s Prayer. Creech preached an admiring homily and served Holy Communion.

“We didn’t want it to be different than any heterosexual marriage,” Creech said. “And except for sanctioning by the state, it wasn’t.”

The two women have declined to come forward out of “privacy concerns,” McClellan said--a reticence that could become an issue at trial. Because the couple have not made their sexual orientation public, McClellan said, church officials would have to prove in court that they are lesbians. But to do so, the lawyer asserted, would “invade their privacy”--a move likely to bring countersuits.

Although Martinez would not comment on the case, Turner insisted Creech’s fate hinges on his conduct. “The issue is the tactics and methods [he] used,” Turner said. “And his defiance of the bishop’s order.” The larger question of Methodism’s treatment of same-sex marriages, Turner said, “requires more patience and more time.”

Creech and other Methodist activists say that time has only led to a hardening of the church’s position. Over the last decade, they claim, Methodist ministers have performed dozens of same-sex unions--but quietly and with the private assent of ranking church leaders.

Creech says that he presided at “more than a dozen” same-sex ceremonies in North Carolina before coming to Omaha in 1996--the year United Methodism’s ruling body, the General Conference, ordered that ministers could not perform such unions.

Like other Christian branches, United Methodism--a socially liberal denomination with 32,000 churches and 8.5 million members in the United States--has found itself increasingly polarized over how to deal with homosexual worshipers seeking an official sanction of their unions.

“Gay Methodists want their relationships recognized in the same way that heterosexual weddings are recognized,” said Mark Bowman, executive director of Reconciling Congregation, a movement of 144 churches and 250,000 Methodist worshipers who are pressing for more inclusiveness.

But as activist ministers push harder for acceptance of gay members, church leaders have responded with tougher edicts. “There has always been a vocal and well-organized pro-gay group during national conferences,” Melton said. “They can command some votes and they’re astute politically. But each time they push, they face the same massive opposition.”

Other Protestant denominations have taken similar stands. In recent years, Southern Baptist leaders ejected a congregation for voting to allow a same-sex union. And the top leaders of the Episcopal Church last year voted down a call to draw up language to bless same-sex ceremonies.

According to Bowman, a New England Methodist minister was disciplined in the early 1970s for presiding over a same-sex union. But “that was before the church had explicit rules against it,” he said. “There’s more at stake now.”

The proceedings against Creech will resemble closely the workings of typical civil court cases. A counsel for the bishop will lay out his case. McClellan will argue for Creech. Both Martinez and Creech will likely testify. The trial, expected to last two to three days, may be appealed to a higher Methodist authority by either side.

Even if Creech is acquitted and returned to his congregation, such a verdict will have no binding impact on church doctrine. “It’s not the typical forum for deciding religious policy,” said retired Methodist Bishop Jack Truell, who has presided over several trials.

Supporters Talk of Ringing Courtroom

Whatever the verdict, Creech insists that he will have “followed my heart.” His supporters talk of marching to the church in Kearney and ringing his courtroom within a giant prayer circle. Inside, Creech said, he will have only his words to explain his defiance of his faith’s strictures.

Those few moments of testimony, Creech said, are worth his long absence from his altar--and the permanent exile he may have to endure if he loses.

“The church is being held accountable as much as I am,” Creech said. “From the moment I came here, I made clear my disagreement with the official position. Now we’ll see who’s doing the right thing and who’s doing the expedient thing.”