Caught in Methodism’s Split Over Same-Sex Marriage

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

“I actually wasn’t thinking of this as an act of civil disobedience or church disobedience. I was thinking of it as a response to my son,” said the Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Ogletree of officiating his son’s marriage to another man.

By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: May 5, 2013


NEW HAVEN — It started out as a deeply personal act, that of a father officiating at the wedding of his son.

But it was soon condemned as a public display of ecclesiastical disobedience, because the father, the Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Ogletree, is a minister in the United Methodist Church, which does not allow its clergy to perform same-sex weddings.

Dr. Ogletree, 79, is now facing a possible canonical trial for his action, accused by several New York United Methodist ministers of violating church rules. While he would not be the first United Methodist minister to face discipline for performing a same-sex wedding, he could well be the one with the highest profile. He is a retired dean of Yale Divinity School, a veteran of the nation’s civil rights struggles and a scholar of the very type of ethical issues he is now confronting.

“Sometimes, when what is officially the law is wrong, you try to get the law changed,” Dr. Ogletree, a native of Birmingham, Ala., said in a courtly Southern drawl over a recent lunch at Yale, where he remains an emeritus professor of theological ethics. “But if you can’t, you break it.”

For Dr. Ogletree, the issues are not just academic. He has fully accepted, he said, that two of his five children are gay. His daughter married her partner in Massachusetts, in a non-Methodist ceremony. So when his son asked him last year to officiate at the wedding, he said yes.

“I was inspired,” Dr. Ogletree said. “I actually wasn’t thinking of this as an act of civil disobedience or church disobedience. I was thinking of it as a response to my son.”

The wedding of Thomas Rimbey Ogletree and Nicholas W. Haddad, held on Oct. 20, 2012, at the Yale Club in New York, incorporated readings from Scripture and the Massachusetts court decision legalizing same-sex marriages. A wedding announcement in The New York Times prompted several conservative Methodist ministers to file a complaint against Dr. Ogletree with the local bishop.

“This ceremony is a chargeable offense” under the rules of the church, wrote the ministers, led by the Rev. Randall C. Paige, pastor of Christ Church in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y.

In late January, Mr. Paige and Dr. Ogletree, accuser and accused, met face-to-face in an effort to resolve the dispute without a church trial. Mr. Paige, who declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the confidentiality of the proceedings, asked that Dr. Ogletree apologize and promise never to perform such a ceremony again. He refused.

“I said, this is an unjust law,” he recalled telling Mr. Paige. “Dr. King broke the law. Jesus of Nazareth broke the law; he drove the money changers out of the temple. So you mean you should never break any law, no matter how unjust it is?”

But ministers like Mr. Paige believe breaking church law is not the right way to bring about change, said the Rev. Thomas A. Lambrecht, the vice-president of Good News, a traditionalist Methodist group. “Reverend Ogletree is acting in a way that is injurious to the church, because it fosters confusion in the church about what we stand for,” he said. “And it undermines the whole covenant of accountability that we share with each other as pastors.”

The United Methodist Church is the third-largest Christian denomination in the country. Its clergy members pledge to follow the church’s laws as contained in its rule book, the Book of Discipline. The rules can only be amended via votes by clergy and laity that take place every four years.

Like many Christian denominations, the United Methodist Church has struggled over issues of gay rights. In 1972, the denomination added a line to its rule book declaring the practice of homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.” It bars the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” as clergy, and prohibits clergy from officiating at same-sex unions. But it also calls homosexuals “persons of sacred worth,” and welcomes them as members. “We try to be nuanced about it,” Mr. Lambrecht said. “Although we disapprove of the practice of homosexuality, we believe that people who are gay or lesbian are loved and valued by God and worthy of the church’s ministry and welcome to participate in churches.”

The result is contradictory, Dr. Ogletree said. “The church’s official motto is open minds, open hearts, open doors, even though our rules on same-sex marriage contradict that claim,” he said.

Professor Ogletree is now working with Methodists in New Directions, a New York group that is part of a growing movement to change the church’s rules. More than 1,100 United Methodist clergy members — of about 45,000 in the nation — have expressed a willingness to perform same-sex ceremonies, even if it means they may face suspension or censure. But the issue is creating a deep rift with the church’s evangelical, conservative wing, which is being bolstered by the spread of the 12-million-member denomination internationally into Africa and Asia.


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A version of this article appeared in print on May 6, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Caught in Methodism’s Split Over Same-Sex Marriage.

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