Elizabeth Stroud

Irene Elizabeth (Beth) Stroud is a United States writer and Methodist pastor who was stripped of her ordination rights in 2006 for being openly in a same-sex partnership.

Stroud received her Master of Divinity (M.Div.) From Union Theological Seminary in New York City . She previously graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a bachelor's degree . Before becoming a Methodist minister, Stroud was a writer and publisher in New York City.

Stroud pastored a Methodist church in Germantown , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania for six years . Strout reported her lesbian relationship with Chris Paige to her church leadership in April 2003; she also stated in a sermon that she had been in a homosexual relationship for two and a half years.

Stroud lives openly homosexually with her partner, they have a foster daughter.

The Book of Discipline , which was last approved in 2004 by the general conference, the supreme body of the United Methodist Church, prohibits the ordination or employment of pastors of people who claim to be practicing homosexuals.

Due to the church order, the Methodist Bishop Marcus Matthews spoke out against further employment of Stroud as a pastor and turned to a Church Court of the Methodists, which found in December 2004 that Strouds had declared that he was practicing practices that the United Methodist Church considered incompatible with of Christian doctrine, and therefore revoked Stroud's ordination rights. Stroud appealed. In April 2005, the Court of Appeal overturned the December 2004 decision of a second instance in relation to a 1992 precedent due to formal errors, while at the same time ruling that the facts were undisputed. The Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference appealed against this decision. In November 2005, the Judicial Council , the supreme ecclesiastical authority of the United Methodist Church, stated that the Court of Appeal's decision to set aside the original judgment was a mistake because there had been no due process in the case of precedent, while Stroud had all the rights to a fair trial have. Paragraph 304.3 is also non-discriminatory against people with a homosexual orientation, since the spiritual office is open to all people regardless of their sexual orientation. Paragraph 304.3 does not refer to sexual orientation, but only to prohibited sexual practices, whereby paragraph 304.2 also lists prohibited sexual practices for heterosexually oriented persons in the clergy. The original verdict that revoked Stroud's ordination rights is therefore valid.

Since then, Beth Stroud has been active in her parish as a lay preacher and in youth work, which is not a legal problem, since according to the social principles of the United Methodist Church, people with homosexual orientation have full membership rights, canonical restrictions only apply to ordination. Stroud also works for the Metropolitan Community Church .

In other cases in the past, pastors who openly practiced homosexuality have been deprived of their ordination rights. This was the case with Rose Mary Denman in New Hampshire in 1987 , who then joined the Unitarian Universalist Church . Karen Dammann was also dismissed as a Methodist cleric in Washington, DC after her public coming out .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography of Beth Stroud
2. ↑ http://www.bethstroud.info/biography/
3. ↑ UMC Book of Discipline: Passages Pertaining to Homosexuality ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ decision of the Judicial Council, December 2005 summary of the case (English)
5. ^ Staff member of the First United Methodist Church of Germantown ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Beth Stroud biography
7. ^ New Church for Gay Minister , New York Times, December 6, 1987
8. ↑ gay.com ( Memento from May 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

• Official site of Stroud
• Decision of the Judicial Council, December 2005 summary of the case (English)