VIGNETTE FROM A DECLINING SEGMENT (via John Resnick):

Lesbian Pastor's Appeal Expected to Bear No Fruit (Jim Brown and Jody Brown, January 3, 2005, AgapePress)

A Methodist minister who was defrocked for declaring that she's a lesbian living with her partner is taking her case to a church appeals court. But one Methodist activist doesn't expect the appeal will change the original decision, which was handed down in early December.

Elizabeth Stroud of Philadelphia was ousted on December 2 for violating the United Methodist Church's law against "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" in the clergy. The 34-year-old minister said she hesitated to appeal because she is tired and dislikes being in the spotlight -- but decided "there were some questions the church needs to wrestle with that we were not able to wrestle with at the trial." [...]

"I expect that Beth Stroud will try to say that the trial court, at least the judge there, refused to allow her to make her so-called 'constitutional argument,' in which she was going to say that the church's prohibition of homosexual clergy violated the church's constitution," [Mark Tooley, an orthodox Methodist activist with the Institute on Religion and Democracy, ] says. Admittedly, Tooley says, Stroud's appeal will generate much media attention, "but her story is largely a vignette from a segment of declining liberal mainline Protestantism of the last century. It does not represent a large segment of American religious life." [...]

Tooley contends Stroud and her proponents are attempting to secularize the gospel of Christ. Most of the Christian church, he points out, holds to the teaching that sex is for marriage between a man and a woman.

"[But] Stroud's supporters want to replace the gospel, which emphasizes self-denial and love of others, with a secularized and Westernized pseudo-gospel of self affirmation," he says. "As appealing as self-worship might seem, demographic trends around the world show that actual church-goers prefer to worship Someone higher and greater than themselves."

As Mr. Resnick points out, that last has to be the quote of the day.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 5, 2005 3:22 PM