UMC Clergy Member to Be Tried for Being ‘Practicing Homosexual’
The Iowa Conference Committee on Investigation has decided that United Methodist Church (UMC) clergy member, Rev. Anna Blaedel, will face a trial. Blaedel has made no secret that she is an “out, queer, partnered clergy,” and is consequently facing discipline for violating the UMC’s rules which stipulate a clergy member cannot be “a self-avowed practicing homosexual.”
“I receive this news with deep sadness and grief,” Blaedel wrote in a Facebook post reacting to the committee’s decision. “I grieve what and who the Iowa Annual Conference and UMC is becoming. Is this the church you want to be?”
According to United Methodist News (UMN), Blaedel has been charged under Paragraph 2702.1 in The United Methodist Book of Discipline. There, the Book of Discipline states that a clergy member may be tried for a variety of offenses, one of which is “practices declared by The United Methodist Church to be...