Posted on 03/14/2004 6:12:49 PM PST by ahadams2
Lesbian minister faces a church trial: Proceeding could presage a split in Methodism
By WYATT BUCHANAN, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
ELLENSBURG -- Karen Dammann never chose to take on the Methodist church.
She chose to be a minister, a right that women in the church have had since 1956.
Then she fell in love, with a woman named Meredith Savage.
When Meredith gave birth to a son five years ago, Dammann adopted him.
In 2001, Dammann decided that she could not live in the closet and minister at the same time -- she felt dishonest to herself and to her parishioners. She wrote to her bishop, telling him that she was in a relationship with a woman and had a 2-year-old son. She asked for an assignment to pastor a church, her right as a church elder.
What Dammann thought would be a simple "yes" or "no" answer to determine the next step in her life has forced the country's second-largest Protestant denomination -- and one of the most progressive -- to address the same question facing the rest of the nation: How much does sexual orientation matter?
Next week, 13 United Methodist ministers will answer that question for Dammann at a church trial in Bothell. She is accused of being unfit to serve as a minister because she is a self-avowed, practicing lesbian.
The decision will be watched closely by the church's Judicial Council -- its Supreme Court -- which has made an unprecedented demand that anyone not able to uphold the church's rules banning gays from ministering should step aside from jury duty.
Two previous church proceedings exonerated Dammann, leading to her appointment as pastor of First United Methodist Church in Ellensburg.
Whatever the outcome, church scholars see the makings of a split in the denomination, similar to the fissure over slavery that took almost 130 years for Methodists to bridge.
Leave of absence
"It was a lot of small decisions. It's not like I met Meredith and said, 'Oh, I want to be the poster child for gay clergy,' " Dammann, 47, said recently while standing in the kitchen of the Methodist parsonage, where she has lived since July.
Dammann has taken a leave of absence and she and her family have moved to the Oregon coast, hoping to escape the spotlight -- and stress -- leading up to the trial, which starts Wednesday. On Thursday, she and Savage were married in Portland.
Dammann tracks the years by watching her son, whose well-being has been the major factor in most of her decisions. She thought that the issue would be resolved while he was still a toddler. If she could do it over, Dammann said, she would have not written the coming-out letter to the bishop.
"Only for his sake," she said, motioning to the boy, now 5, who played nearby with the last of his unpacked toys. She worries about how the upheaval will affect him and regrets the stress in the home that may have added to asthma problems he had this winter.
During the 1999 baby shower, hosted by women in a Seattle church, Dammann sat across the room from Savage as she opened presents. Officially, they were roommates.
"That's when I said that I really had to stop doing this," Dammann said. But she wasn't ready for a public proclamation of her sexual orientation, and she did not want to leave the church. Instead, she took a leave of absence, and the family moved to Massachusetts and later to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Savage, a wetlands biologist, had a job assignment.
During that time, the church body also struggled with homosexuality, as delegates to the 2000 quadrennial summit turned down a bid to require pastors to sign a statement condemning gays for living outside the will of God.
Protesters demonstrated against the continued ban on gays in the ministry, and more than 200 people were arrested in two days, including two bishops. Similar protests are planned for Dammann's trial.
The church has debated different aspects of homosexuality since 1972, when Methodists declared that "homosexuals no less than heterosexuals are persons of sacred worth." The church's motto is "Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors." Never has the church voted to deny membership to gays.
At the same time, the church's official position states: "Although we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider the practice incompatible with Christian teaching, we affirm that God's grace is available to all."
The common ground that allowed Methodists for the past 30 years to hold both of these beliefs has shrunk, church scholars say. And it is that gap between partial and total inclusion of gays that is on trial with Dammann next week, although in practice the jury's decision affects only her.
"The church is deeply divided on this issue, and my guess is we're not going to face a situation where there is one deep fracture down the middle," said the Rev. Bruce Robbins, pastor of Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church in Minneapolis.
"What we do have are people who are extremely frustrated and in disagreement with one another, saying the center is not holding," said Robbins, who helped lead a church committee that examined the debate in 1997 and 1998 over homosexuality in the church. He supports the inclusion of gays in the ministry.
Raised Roman Catholic
It was the progressive nature of the church that helped persuade Dammann to join the United Methodist Church.
She was raised Roman Catholic and from childhood had wanted to become a priest. She studied theology in college, earned a master's degree and began work in the campus ministry at Seattle University. She also served as a chaplain for the Army Reserves and worked for the archdiocese.
"But I still felt the call to be ordained," she said. But that's not possible for women in the Catholic Church, so she joined the Methodists, drawn by the Wesleyan focus on grace. She was ordained in the church, and in 1992, accepted her first post, as pastor in St. John, an Eastern Washington town between Spokane and Colfax.
During this time, she did not consider herself gay and had a romantic relationship with a man while she attended seminary.
After St. John, she led churches in Mill Creek and in Seattle. It was during her last year at Mill Creek that she met Savage at a potluck dinner party. The couple describe the encounter as love at first sight.
"I think it was a depth of feeling that I had that I hadn't experienced before and a sense of rightness that I hadn't experienced," Dammann said. "I had dated men before, but I never wanted to be committed in a long-term relationship until I met Meredith. I don't know how to explain that; I experienced a rightness, it felt right for me."
Dammann stayed in the closet for three more years, as she led the congregation at Woodland Park United Methodist Church. (The current pastor at that church, Mark Williams, is gay and faced proceedings similar to Dammann's, although his case did not advance. The hearings were closed to the public.)
"I felt I had been following a call. As it unfolded, it always felt right," Dammann said. "I couldn't bring myself to choose between life with Meredith and life as a pastor, so I lived in that tension."
Some in the congregation knew the truth and were fine with it, while others objected, she said. No one made an official complaint to the bishop, but the double life was too much.
"There are a lot of contradictions in living a life of truth, integrity and openness and then living in the closet," Dammann said.
After taking the leave and moving to California, the family joined a Methodist church that encouraged the women to be open about their relationship. Emboldened, Dammann came out publicly, sending a letter to Bishop Elias Galvan in Seattle on Valentine's Day 2001 and asking for a position at a church.
The letter was a clear admission by Dammann that she was in violation of the church's rules, but a committee said the admission did not mean she was unfit to serve as a minister. That decision was appealed and then upheld.
It was then that the church's highest court stepped in, demanding that a trial be convened if Dammann was found to have violated the church rules.
Some see the unprecedented demand regarding juror selection as a separation-of-powers issue and believe that the council overstepped its bounds. That, combined with those who may defy the church ban on moral grounds, could mean a "not guilty" verdict.
Nine of the 13 jurors must vote "guilty" in order to convict. Punishment could range from a slap on the wrist to the loss of Dammann's credentials, which would strip her of her ministry.
Either way, the split between progressive and traditional factions will widen, people on all sides of the issue say. When slavery split the church into progressive and traditional camps in 1844, the church divided along North-South lines. That same dynamic -- progressive or liberal congregations in the north, traditional or conservative in the South -- is at play in the debate over gays, said Robbins, the church scholar.
Even if she is allowed to preach, Dammann won't return to Ellensburg, at least for now. Members there support her and want her back, but the outcome of the trial is uncertain, and Dammann is looking forward to a fresh start.
"We all just really love her just as she has loved us," said Dodie Haight, who represents the congregation at the annual conference of churches in the region. "She isn't set apart. She's just a good pastor. The fact that she is gay is incidental."
But like the church body, there is disagreement among the 60 church members in Ellensburg.
"We're talking about sacred beliefs. This is not nickel-and-dime stuff," said Richard Tate, who has stayed a member of the congregation despite his belief that gays should not be ministers. He said he speaks up when necessary and refuses to take communion from Dammann.
He views her efforts as part of an activist minority changing the rules for the majority, as officials in cities like San Francisco and Portland are trying to do. Tate calls this "anarchy" in the legal system.
"There are two parts to Karen. One is the person, the other is the symbol. It's the symbol I have the problem with, not the person," he said.
"It's one thing to listen to her. We all have got something to say. But as a symbol, she is up there in defiance of the Methodist system, religion and religious values."
I say that this article's characterization of the denomination as split into "progressive" and "conservative" camps based in the north and south entirely misses the mark. I say the denomination is, instead, split into orthodox and ultra-liberal with only 2 western conferences and pieces of the northeast and north central supporting that ultra-liberal, non-Christian position. (Interestingly, the number of methodists in our western conferences is very low and nowhere near the number of our smaller conferences in the central and south.)
There is so much left out of this article that should be included. However, let me suggest that there are errors in this article.
She was raised Roman Catholic and from childhood had wanted to become a priest. She studied theology in college, earned a master's degree and began work in the campus ministry at Seattle University. She also served as a chaplain for the Army Reserves and worked for the archdiocese.
The above indicates that she was a "catholic" chaplain in the Army Reserves. I am a retired Army chaplain, and I know that to be an outright lie or an ignorant mistake.
There is ABSOLUTELY no such thing as a female Catholic priest, and there is ABSOLUTELY no Catholic chaplain who is not a fully ordained, Catholic priest. It is entirely in opposition to the standards of the Army Chaplaincy to have ANY chaplain who is not fully acceptable and ordained by the sending denomination. There is no way that the Catholics COULD "send" a female priest.
If this article will make this egregious kind of misrepresentation about this point, then what else will it misrepresent?
Finally, I have been told that "Dammann" is not this woman's original name, but is instead a name that she adopted. I will see if I can find a reference for that.
Dam Mann -- if true, it says a lot about what is going on here.
For example, I'm in the west Ohio conference that covers half of Ohio. Our bishop presides over approximately 1500 churches and roughly 300,000+ regular members.
Is that significantly different in size than a diocese?
The article also compared it to slavery, wasn't it subtle??
Their bias is so evident in their sliming of the orthodox position.
I'm pretty sure most people could see right through that.
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