| New Jersey pastor has same-gender wedding |
| Written by Leslie Scanlon, Outlook national reporter |
| Monday, 28 December 2009 23:01 |
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A Presbyterian minister from New Jersey has sent a letter to her congregation and an announcement to her presbytery, telling them that she was married in October in a same-gender wedding in Massachusetts, where such marriages are legal. Laurie A. McNeill, pastor of Central Church in Montclair, N.J., informed her session on Oct. 13 and also mailed a letter to members of her congregation that day, and was married on Cape Cod on Oct. 17, her grandmother’s birthday. On Nov. 14, McNeill stood during the announcements time of a meeting of Newark Presbytery and informed her colleagues in ministry that she had recently married. “Rejoice with me, for I have found a companion with whom to share my life!” she wrote in the letter to the congregation. It may be the first time that a pastor serving a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregation has married someone of the same gender — and done so while working for a denomination that defines Christian marriage as being between one man and one woman. In announcing her marriage publicly, McNeill said she knows that someone from her congregation or her presbytery may file action against her in the PC(USA) courts – although she says she doesn’t know exactly what the charges against her might be. Kevin Yoho, general presbyter of Newark Presbytery, said in an interview that he has received a number of calls of concern regarding McNeill’s marriage, but that as of mid-November no charges had been filed. A member of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry plans to meet with McNeill soon to discuss the situation, Yoho said. The constitution of the PC(USA) requires that those called to serve as ministers, elders, or deacons “lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among those standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.” Also, the Directory for Worship — part of the PC(USA) Book of Order — defines marriage this way: “Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family. Marriage is a civil contract between a woman and a man. For Christians marriage is a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives of discipleship.” Despite that wording, however, some states have come to define civil marriage differently, by permitting marriages between same-gender persons. That reality has presented challenges to Presbyterian ministers in those states, who must decide whether they would perform a same-gender wedding if asked to do so. A special General Assembly Committee to Study Issues of Civil Unions and Christian Marriage is expected to report back to the General Assembly in July 2010. Unlike some of the other high-profile cases involving gays and lesbians in the PC(USA), McNeill is not seeking to be ordained; she already has been a Presbyterian minister for two decades, is a former moderator of Lehigh Presbytery and has served as a General Assembly commissioner. Up until now, she says, her sexual orientation has not been an issue discussed publicly either as she was considered for ordination or as she was a candidate to be called to pastor a particular congregation. In December, McNeill, 49, will have been pastor of Central Church for five years. In coming to the congregation — a congregation of about 150 in an upper-middle-class community about 20 miles from New York City — she said she never discussed her sexual orientation, although she never hid it either. “I didn’t come out to my parents until after I had been here,” McNeill said in an interview. “It was not like I was going to come out to the church before I came out to them.” While she did not discuss her sexual orientation openly, however, McNeill said some in the congregation did perceive that she is a lesbian. During her first week at Central, she said, a “significant” person in the congregation approached her and said very directly: “We’re kind of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ congregation.” To McNeill, “it was a very intentional statement. … It sent a message that I received.” About two years ago, McNeill met Lisa Gollihue, a trial attorney, through an online dating service. Much to her surprise, because McNeill had been skeptical about such things, “it really was love at the beginning. There was a powerful connection that was just ridiculous.” But McNeill kept her personal life private for the most part, and Gollihue did not become involved with the church. About a year ago, they decided to marry. In the months leading up to the wedding, however, McNeill did not discuss it with her congregation. “I intentionally held off telling the church because I didn’t know how it would play out,” she said. “If it went badly, I didn’t want anything to taint the wedding day. I didn’t want to risk that, not knowing if someone would file a case, not knowing if someone would immediately pressure for me to be removed from the church.” A few days before the wedding, McNeill did inform both the session of her congregation and the Committee on Ministry of her impending wedding — and she mailed a letter to members of the congregation as well. McNeill said she told the session that she was getting married “and there will be no groom at the wedding. There was sort of this look — ‘You are gay. You are gay!’ ” Later during that meeting, she said, the session voted unanimously to support McNeill in her decision and to affirm her ministry at Central Church. She said one elder on the session remarked that in calling her five years earlier, “all of us probably sensed we were calling a gay minister. None of us ever talked about it. We didn’t know legally if we could ask the question” or if the presbytery would permit it. “We kind of did a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ ” McNeill and Gollihue were married on Oct. 17 at Christ Church Episcopal in Harwich Port, Mass., on Cape Cod. Earlier, they had approached the governing board of that congregation and asked for permission to marry there, which the vestry did grant. McNeill said she and Gollihue also attended worship at that church, where, during a welcome time, they introduced themselves and told the congregation “how profoundly grateful we were that they allowed that marriage to take place. There was this sense of ‘Wow, there’s not a Presbyterian church in the state of New Jersey or the state of North Carolina,’” where McNeill grew up, that could do the same. “It really was a bittersweet thing for me,” she said, with both a “profound gratitude” for the Episcopal congregation and “this wishfulness that it could have happened somewhere else.” The minister who officiated at the wedding was Caroline Johnson Patterson, a United Church of Christ hospital chaplain from Rhode Island, who as a teenager grew up in the same Presbyterian congregation in Aberdeen, N.C., as McNeill did — Bethesda Church, a congregation of about 150, from which five of the teenagers in the youth group at that time later became ordained ministers, including Patterson and McNeill. “It was the next best thing to having the minister from my childhood and his wife,” both of whom have died, McNeill said. “That made it very special.” Also participating in the service, but not saying the vows or signing the marriage license, were an Episcopal priest from New Hampshire, who is the rector of Gollihue’s parents’ congregation, and the rector from Christ Church Episcopal, where the wedding took place. The Episcopal church “blessed” the marriage, but did not perform it, McNeill said. Since then, McNeill said the reaction, both from her congregation and the presbytery, has been generally supportive but with some expressing concern. One person from the congregation, for example, told McNeill she felt deceived. “I said, ‘What’s the deception?’ I never said I was straight. I’ve never had a man on my arm,” and anytime someone suggested that they knew a nice man and would be willing to fix them up on a date, she turned them down. After the wedding, McNeill went to visit an elderly woman from the congregation. She said the woman told her: “I knew the first day I saw you walk in that you were like that,” that she was lesbian. “That was no surprise.” Some in the presbytery, however, believe that it does violate the PC(USA)’s constitution to have a minister married to a person of the same gender. And they will be watching closely to see what the Committee on Ministry and the presbytery decide what to do. McNeill has taken “contradictory vows,” in her ordination vows and her marriage vows, said Paul Leggett, pastor of Grace Church in Montclair and a former member of the board of directors of the Presbyterian Coalition, an evangelical group. In marrying someone of the same gender, “you’re doing something that’s in direct violation of the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which you took a vow to uphold,” Leggett said. And marriage vows are “serious vows. Those vows are contradictory. I don’t know where that leaves her.” Leggett also said he does not think, given the circumstances, that McNeill can continue as pastor of Central Church. “The question comes back to this: Is the constitution of the Presbyterian church optional, or is it mandatory? … Unfortunately, she’s put herself in an untenable position. Probably what she needs to do is think about moving to a denomination where this is acceptable.” McNeill’s marriage “created kind of a dilemma for the presbytery and a dilemma for Laurie,” Leggett said. “To me, this is really quite extreme. (It’s like) you’re saying the Pledge of Allegiance while renouncing American citizenship — what do you do with that? It raises questions about the character of the person. … There has to be some kind of appropriate exit strategy … .” Yoho, the general presbyter, said the Committee on Ministry “will do sort of a low-level inquiry with (the) Rev. McNeill” to assess the situation, and will report back. While some at the presbytery meeting applauded when McNeill made her announcement, not all did — and it’s not clear whether those who applauded did so because they understood that she had married a woman and approved, or just because she said she had recently married. Yoho said some have expressed discomfort that McNeill did not discuss the matter ahead of time with her congregation, so “there was no way of getting feedback, no way of engaging the congregation in this part of her new life.” One minister asked about the ordination vows that McNeill took, Yoho said, saying that “when one takes that oath and then by their behavior does something contrary to the body to which you pledge an oath, doesn’t that constitute some sort of integrity issue if not a breach of that oath?” As a general presbyter, “I care very much about every member of the presbytery, and I want each member to be able to operate with a high degree of wellness and effectiveness,” he said. So he expects the Committee on Ministry to ask McNeill what impact her marriage has had on her congregation, which he described as moderate theologically, and its ministry. As for whether the marriage itself violates the PC(USA) constitution, “there’s not a whole lot of case law about that, or even ‘best practices’ in presbyteries,” Yoho said. “I’ve reached out to many colleagues. … None of them had personal experience of this kind of thing happening.” As for McNeill, she is not sure what will come next. What she does know is that, at age 49, she has married for the first time, and is thrilled. While the PC(USA) constitution requires those being ordained to practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single, “I do have fidelity in my marriage,” McNeill said. And “I believe that my relationship with Lisa is chaste. I believe it was chaste when we were single and it is chaste now that we are married. … I think of that as purity and a holiness. I believe we have that in our relationship.” Asked whether she intended her marriage as an act of advocacy, McNeill answered that she was married in a relatively small ceremony, with 75 family members and close friends present, and no media. “Lisa asked me to marry her, and I said ‘Yes.’ The fact that it’s an issue in the church, the fact that it’s an issue in the state, that’s not my issue. I got married just like anyone else. … I want to spend the rest of my life with this person in a covenanted relationship. If it ends up as a big test case, there will be advocacy involved in it. If not, I’ll just be living my life. … Maybe charges will be filed. But I’m a happily married woman.” |
Comments
Opinions vary. Some Church members have asserted that her termination was not due to her civil status. Some question her level of pastoral praxis while others extol it. Ms. McNeill appears to believe it to be a manifestation of institutional homophobia, coming as it did some five years into her pastorate and a mere six months after her marriage.
I deeply hope the former to be true, but what we do know with certainty is that the legal mechanisms of the denomination in question indeed provide for the dismissal of clergy found to be practicing, self-affirming homosexuals.
It seems ironic that our local newspaper, the Montclair Times ("Out of the Closet, Out of the Flock," July 8) would report on the firing on the same day the church's 219th General Assembly in Minneapolis voted to permit the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy and elders while denying the rite of marriage to same-sexed couples. It is ironic that here, in the 21st century, such questions would even merit debate. It is beyond ironic given the number of Presbyterian ministers whom I know to be gay and lesbian and who are such extraordinarily capable pastors that one is left to wonder if there is some connection between sexual orientation and pastoral skill.
To those who continue to deny full participation to God's homosexual children in His/Her Church on the basis of barely understood, badly translated “texts of terror” found in their Bibles, I can only say that coming generations will condemn them in the same fashion that we now condemn their heretic-burning predecessors.
History will treat them harshly, and I believe it will have gone better for the citizens of benighted Sodom than it will go for those who foment this kind of oppression in the Church.
To their victims, I can only suggest picking themselves up off the floor, shaking the dust off their sandals, moving on and not looking back. The United Presbyterian Church's loss will accrue to the gain of our Lutheran, Episcopalian and UCC brethren.
All of us — pastors, elders, and deacons — have at our ordination and installation solemnly agreed to be governed by our church's polity and to abide by its discipline. How shall we understand those among us who have thus promised to uphold church polity but who view departures from it with acceptance, approbation, and equanimity? How reconcile an individual's solemn promise to support church polity with the same individual's avowed intention and engagement contrary to that constitutionall y determined church polity?
Shiite Islam's doctrine of dissimulation, practiced, for example, among Americans as "Don't ask, Don't tell," may suit the secular world. It can hardly befit the Christian Church, which from its inception (Acts 5:1-11,KJV) has enjoined straightforward personal honesty as a fundamental mark of its fellowship.
I write this letter in the spirit of the African-American Spiritual, "Standing in the Need of Prayer."
Dick Irvine, elder
Pine, Ariz.
I would have far more respect for those Presbyterians who insist that “gay marriage” between individuals of the same sex who love each other is now an issue whose time has come, if they would cease and desist the many (and sometimes creative) attempts to slip around, and behind, Biblical and constitutional requirements, and become honest and ethical in their approach. How about this? How about some session and presbytery crafting a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church that is flat-out honest, and that says something like this: In view of the fact that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) no longer holds to Scripture, or to tradition, in matters of homosexuality, but instead believes that modern understanding demonstrates that sexual love between two persons of the same sex (who are not otherwise married, and who are of legal age) is just as legitimate, and just as worthy before God as sexual love between two persons of opposite sex, therefore the Presbyterian Church upholds “marriage” between such persons as legitimate in the eyes of the church and the eyes of God, and no longer interposes any church-sanctioned burden of any kind on such relationships, where they are otherwise legal under the laws of the state. Smooth out and clean up the language, and put such a proposal before the whole church for vote by the presbyteries. At least that would make us honest on the matter. Whatever the outcome of such a vote, live with it with no additional proposals on the table for, say, ten years.
Of course, if the Presbyterian Church were to vote in favor of such a proposal, I believe that many Presbyterians would quickly depart the denomination, as indeed I would. But least it would be honest, which as a denomination, we are not at the present time.
Stephen A. Moss, H.R.
Salisbury, N.C.
Externally, policy, laws, and codes are what the organization wishes to project or have as its face to the outside world. For the laws, policy, and doctrines to exist and withstand challenge those whose jobs it is to either enforce, manage or defend such, must first believe in them, and then apply them in such a way that all, external and internal, to the institution agree the process is fair and balanced.
Gay and lesbian clergy and church officers do have a point when they say that heterosexual behaviors are at times held to different standards; The single heterosexual clergy who marries a parishoner, or has a consentual sexual relationship prior to marriage. The single, or divorced heterosexual clergy involved in a consentual sexual relatiosnhip with another adult over a period of time, which may or may not result in a marriage. Or any other adult heterosexual activity legal within civil laws, but not in keeping with the Constitution as it is currently written. Let alone heterosexual clergy who have extra-marital affairs and are moved from church to church with the consent or knowledge of friendly COMs or EPs. To deny this does not happen is deny reality and human behaviors.
The case of the minister from NJ may be adjudicated on a number of grounds, but the ice is very thin indeed, if one chooses to make this a case of sexual orientation and behavior alone. If the laws, policy do exist as written in the Constitution, Book of Order, then what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe in the end she wanted to make some sort of a statement, she has, and will live with the consequences. But that will be a matter for her, her church and presbytery. Care must be given to the principles of fairness and equal application of policy which speaks to all church officers at all times, single, married, gay, straight,
It seems to me that we need to support relationships that are mutually submissive and committed. Gay or straight that standard supports marriage and healthy relationships. Is this not the goal the church intends with the law? I pray it is.
It will happen again because there are pastors and elders who are gay and serving congregations either openly or in the closet. These are people who are sometimes deeply conflicted about what true and faithful service to God and His people calls them to do in the face of who they are.
In addition to responding faithfully to their own situations they bear further weight.
They know, out of personal experience, that there are brothers and sisters of faith who are denied equal status and wonder how their own action or inaction in taking a stand regarding same sex unions or ordination standards is serving them. Although what action or lack of action a person is willing to take has an impact on the individual it becomes multiplied or mitigated by the impact it can have on behalf of others.
Laurie Ann McNeill’s marriage to Lisa Gollihue looks to me to be a step out in faith on several levels. It is a step out into the spiritual and personal wholeness that marriage can provide but at the same time, it is providing an opening and support to others who are hesitant or silent about who they are.
How long can we continue to adjudicate or super scrutinize every gay Presbyterian who simply wants their sexual orientation to be no more relevant than that of their heterosexual counterparts?
It is easy to say, “…what she needs to do is think about moving to a denomination where this is acceptable.” If we belonged to a club and not a Church this suggestion might serve but what of the prophetic voice?
We must continue to engage this subject and observe the fruit that is being borne by faithful gay Christians who serve in spite of barriers and intimidation. As the secular world, including our colleges and universities, businesses and community organizations, our state and federal government, in effect, main stream gay people how can we continually respond with legalism and censure without becoming irrelevant, especially to our youth?
I say, good for Laurie Ann McNeill. I appreciate the courage it takes in the face of everything that has been and will be thrown at her to diminish who she is and how well she serves.
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