A US pastor who was defrocked after officiating at his son’s same-sex wedding ceremony, and later reinstated, made an appeal to hang onto his ordination before a Methodist judicial council yesterday.

The church punished Rev Frank Schaefer, who has three gay children, last December by defrocking him when he refused to say he would never perform another gay ceremony. But an appeals panel reversed the decision last June.

Yesterday’s hearing in Memphis, attended by dozens of Schaefer supporters wearing rainbow scarves, was before the nine-member Judicial Council of The United Methodist Church, the church’s highest judicial body.

Schaefer, former pastor of Zion United Methodist Church of Iona in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was charged underUnited Methodist Church law for having officiated at the same sex-marriage ceremony of his son in 2007.

The appeals decision overturning Schaefer’s removal from ministry “sends a message to the church that it’s OK to ignore and violate the discipline,” said the Rev. Christopher Fisher, counsel for the church’s Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, who argued against Schaefer’s reinstatement at Wednesday’s hearing.

Schaefer’s counsel, Scott Campbell, called the appeals decision, “wise, faithful, and just.”

“Schaefer began to see all the ways our church has done harm to our LGBT brothers and sisters and realized he could no longer remain silent,” Campbell told the council.

Schaefer said after the hearing that he felt “cautiously optimistic,” and that he has no regrets.

“I did what I did based on my heart and my conscience,” Schaefer said, adding that he thought the church’s stand against gay marriage thrust his son into depression.

The judicial council’s decision is not expected to be announced until “several days” after its meeting concludes on Saturday, the church said.

Source and Original Content by Christian Today

Tavis Smiley raised a lot of eyebrows this weekend when he spoke on ABC-TV’s “This Week” news show, hosted by George Stephanopoulos.

Smiley pointed to double-digit unemployment in the Black community under President Obama and said: “If you’re Black or Brown, other than saving the Democrats’ hide, what inspires you to go out and vote?”

Economic empowerment for minority families is surely a vital issue, a hardy perennial in off-year elections. But it’s not the only issue. Minority voters have always been concerned with Civil Rights. And this year is no exception.

In Houston, Texas, we have seen a bizarre twist on traditional Civil Rights play out. The Mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, has been waging an uncivil war on people who oppose the far-reaching homosexual rights ordinance she powered through the City Council.

That ordinance was widely criticized by Houston lay people and pastors, It would endanger protected Civil Rights already covered by the First Amendment, i.e., freedom of religion, critics of Mayor Parker’s ordinance said.

Opponents of the Parker measure organized in their churches and resolved to take the issue to Houston’s voters. They circulated petitions to put the ordinance on the ballot for a referendum. They spoke out in their congregations. They heard sermons from their pastors. They spoke in their fellowship halls and Sunday school classes.

All of these activities were hallmarks of the Civil Rights movement that arose in this country to put an end to Jim Crow injustices. All of these now-threatened activities were employed by Civil Rights advocates throughout the South. Americans are justifiably proud of how we came together to reclaim our American heritage in the 1950s and 1960s.

Visitors to Washington, D.C. can see the timeless words of the First Amendment etched in marble in foot-high letters on the wall of the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue… Read More

Source and Original Content by BCNN 1