Posted on 11/18/2013 3:24:56 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
A Pennsylvania pastor charged under United Methodist law with officiating his son's same-sex marriage is scheduled to go on trial.
The Rev. Frank Schaefer, 51, could be defrocked....
"Public opinion has changed very rapidly," said the pastor's son....
...Schaefer could have avoided a trial if he had agreed never again to perform a same-gender wedding, but he declined because three of his four children are gay.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.chron.com ...
Yep. There are some absolute non-Christians in our pulpits.
I won’t grace the door of a church with a female pastor/priest.
She’s a Christian. And her ex-husband is a pastor(not UMC).
I think there is just so much confusion in the world. Jesus says that a person who divorces and remarries is committing adultery. Is marrying someone of the same sex a “worser” form of adultery?
The real problem is that we have started encouraging sin in the church. We are motivating people towards their own self-destruction, because it is easier than trying to help them.
The term is priestess. Neither will I.
We send people into the darkest parts of the world to bring light and you won’t even bring it to a local church with a pastorette. #irony
My mother-in-law was set against woman’s ordination but she was a member of a PCUSA church. She told me “I go where God wants me to go, not where I want to go”.
1 Timothy 2:11-12 - Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35 - Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
So you have women in the choir? How do they sing if they are silent?
Oy vey.
“Frank Schaefer has said he informed his superiors in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference that he planned to officiate his son’s wedding, and again after the ceremony, which took place at a restaurant near Boston.”
“Sure, son. But we will have to travel out of state, because as everyone knows we have to have the state’s permission and blessing in order to perform this particular facet of our faith—yes, it is a little hypocritical that I think two men may be married to each other, but only if the state they happen to be in agrees with them about it.
Hey, I’m just happy you didn’t want to marry one of your brothers.”
Freegards
There is no form of acceptable homosexuality in the bible, Old or New Testaments.
Is there an acceptable form of adultery?
In our day, we would consider polygamy to be a form of adultery. The Old Testament was not clear at all on that, and the Apostle Paul is the one who broached Jesus’ “one man one woman” teaching (man shall leave his father and mother...) by directly teaching that a bishop (and deacon) could be the husband of only one wife.
The clear object here is that this church officer intends to make the Church accept his views, rather than to accept the Church's published views and leave the ministry (and one would hope the Church) because of incompatibility of his views.
One wonders why the incident took place in MA, but the trial is taking place in PA. Certainly the MA location is not in the same Conference as the trial. Did the minister officiate under MA law of the time (2007)? Would a Massachusetts Conference or Bishop stepping in be seen as a discriminatory form of "hate speech" where same-sex marriage had then become lawful under MA state law? Was/is this minister's charge located in PA, and is the trial thus in PA where the ban of same-sex marriage is still in effect?
And why has this taken six years to bring the minister to trial? Knowing the Church law being beyond question in this matter, why was this minister's qualifications not suspended immediately? If his dismissal from the Conference to be effected, would he not have a basis for a civil trial against the Church?
I think you see the morass that tolerance in doctrinal practice has brought the UMC to, eh?
Clearly, adultery is condemned as is divorce. But we had to stop condemning the latter because of heat from the world. So it is natural that homosexuality should enter through the open door.
I know a pastor that CHOSE to become a homosexual and he got the thumb from the UMC almost immediately.
Hogwash. I left the UM because it joined the enemy. In Oregon, there are several UM churches with gay ministers. One of them had a small flyer in the pews which said, "We're not here to convert you, but to invite you into a community of friendship."
I do believe our winking at divorce (the American church began to “accept” it in the 60s) began the ball rolling wherein the value of marriage was denigrated.
Now, in this culture, the view of marriage is even more perverted.
It’s not as much a moral issue as much as it represents our dismissal of Scripture. We placed a prohibition on some Scripture.
In the Lessons and Carols, they took out the verse in Genesis that states that the man shall rule over the woman. They had to explicitly remove it.
As a Sunday School teacher, I have taught 1 Tim and Jesus’ words on divorce. When people objected, I simply stated “I didn’t write this. It’s not in my handwriting. Don’t blame me”.
It is to the point where it would be impossible to preach the whole NT from the UMC pulpit. OK maybe you could do in the Holston conference but that’s about it.
Not hogwash that they are written down.
As you have experienced, that does NOT mean that some lame bishop looks the other way when it comes to enforcing them.
Oregon and the entire Pacific Northwest is our most liberal area along with northern Illinois and the northwest. The number of Methodists in those regions is dwarfed by other areas that are more conservative.
You have had to live in one of the worst areas, and I have no problem with your rejection of the denomination that has been presented to you. I wish it would have been different for you, but your decision to reject what you found was actually positive in 2 areas: (1) It is a bold witness that those areas are going the wrong direction and dying, and (2) It lessens the numbers in your region, and that reduces their voting power at denominational meetings.
Nothing will happen to him in a denomination which sees nothing wrong with unbiblically ordaining women.
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