Lesbian pastor appointed to Seattle post
SEATTLE — The bishop of the United Methodist Church’s Pacific Northwest Conference, a focal point of the church’s debate over homosexuals in the ministry, has appointed a lesbian pastor to the same congregation that two other openly gay ministers once led.
Bishop Elias Galvan has named the Rev. Katie Ladd, currently pastor at Crown Hill United Methodist Church in Seattle, to succeed the Rev. Mark Williams at Seattle’s Woodland Park United Methodist Church on July 1.
Williams, who disclosed he was gay at the annual gathering of the regional conference in 2001, is leaving to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Washington.
Ladd’s appointment comes less than three months after the Rev. Karen Dammann, who served as Woodland Park’s pastor before Williams, was acquitted at a church trial of violating Methodist rules barring “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from the ministry.
Thirteen fellow pastors in the jury said Methodist laws and teachings against homosexual acts were not strong enough to find that Dammann had engaged in practices that were “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
The verdict thrilled some and dismayed others in the 8.3 million-member denomination.
Ladd, 35, said she’s eager to focus on her ministry and doesn’t want to cause more division.
“I’m not hoping to be in the center of any furor,” Ladd, 35, told The Seattle Times. “I simply want to be the best pastor I can for the people to whom I’m assigned and the church to which I’m appointed.”
Resolutions aimed at broadening acceptance of gays in the church were defeated when the Methodist’s policy-making body met in Pittsburgh last month.
Delegates voted to affirm church teaching that gay sex is incompatible with Christian teaching, but also resoundingly voted down a resolution for the denomination to split because of the rift over homosexuality.
The church’s highest court declared that the practice of homosexuality is a chargeable offense for clergy and that local bishops cannot appoint to ministry positions those found at church trials to be “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.”
The Rev. Elaine Stanovsky, spokeswoman for the Northwest Conference, said Galvan and his advisers are “not aware of any reason that Katie Ladd is not fully appointable within the church.”
“In the United Methodist Church, the way the character of a clergyperson is reviewed through a complaint process,” Stanovsky said. “There is not now, nor has there ever been, a complaint against Katie.”
Galvan appointed Ladd based on her ability and the needs of the Woodland Park congregation, Stanovsky said. “Katie Ladd’s sexual orientation has never been the topic of conversation,” she said.
Ladd said she disclosed she was gay three years ago because “it seemed like an appropriate and opportune time to add my voice to an ongoing conversation that we had been having in the annual conference around the issue of homosexuality. I wanted to be honest about who I am with my congregation and with my colleagues.”
She doesn’t believe she is violating any church laws.
Only a church trial court can determine if a member of the clergy is a “self-avowed practicing homosexual,” she said, and she has never faced church trial.