Two female pastors of the United Methodist Church may be defrocked after they officiated a wedding ceremony for a nonbinary couple, according to Religion News Service.
Rev. Elizabeth Davidson and Rev. Paige Swaim-Presley performed a wedding for the couple on January 7, who told Religion News Service that the wedding “was everything that we wanted.” Two months later, both Davidson and Swaim-Presley received an official complaint from the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church (MCUMC) informing the two women that they must either remove themselves from ministry or defend their actions at a church trial.
“When two former students asked their United Methodist college chaplains to help them celebrate their love in Christian marriage, the clergy knew they had to say yes,” a press release from the pastors’ attorneys reads. “To obey discriminatory rules forbidding the officiating of same-sex marriage would mean to break other rules of the Discipline that require ministries of the church to be offered to all people, as well as a requirement for clergy to follow their conscience, resisting harm and unjust rules.”
Requests to discuss the situation and the impending trial from Davidson and Swaim-Presley were reportedly denied by United Methodist Bishop Sharma Lewis of Mississippi, according to Clarion Ledger, and Swaim-Presley was later suspended from her position at Pearl First United Methodist Church, while Davidson appears to be continuing in her role as the executive director of the Faith in Women program for the time being.
The press release called on Davidson’s and Swaim-Presley’s fellow clergymen to come to their defense and “agree that the penalty the bishop is calling for is going too far.” The attorneys also argued that the Book of Discipline, written by John Wesley to give the church a set of rules and guidelines, does not address marriage between two nonbinary individuals but rather same-sex marriage, therefore, the pastors cannot be subjected to a trial for violating the Discipline.
The United Methodist Church has been working to prevent a split as many congregations have voiced opposition to the church’s leniency toward gay marriage, despite the denomination’s claims that it does not tolerate them. In December 2022, 150 Texas churches voted to leave the UMC, blaming the church leadership for not taking a firmer stance on the subject.
An MCUMC spokesperson told Clarion Ledger that “prayers for all those involved” would be “greatly appreciated.”
“The parties involved were properly informed of the complaint and their rights to respond under church law,” MCUMC’s spokesperson said. “This has been a difficult situation for all involved persons. It is out of concern for the well-being of the complainant, the due process rights of respondents and the confidentiality of all persons involved that we are unable to discuss the nature and details of the complaint at this time. The Mississippi Conference of The United Methodist Church has lived under the agreement of confidentiality and is committed to doing so in the future.”
Davidson, Swaim-Presley and MCUMC did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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