A Spirit of Power and Love: Rev. Kathleen Weber Comes Out

The Rev. Kathleen Weber told members of her congregation at Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church in Seattle this week that she is lesbian. During a sermon by senior minister, Rev. David Nieda, Weber told members she has always known this about herself. No longer willing to be closeted by our denomination's discriminatory policies toward gay and lesbian persons, she courageously chose to come out in a spirit of power and love (1 Timothy 6:6).

Supported by both her congregation and District Superintendent, Weber will remain as pastor at Blaine Memorial. Yet, we can be assured her story is not yet over.

Some in our Church will no doubt interpret her coming out as an affront to the denomination and a break in the clergy covenant. News releases, articles and blogs will rant and rage about the flagrant abuse of church doctrine and law. Calls will be made for charges, a trial and a defrocking. Weber's testimony will be submitted as evidence at the coming General Conference of the irreparable fissure in our denomination and plans for schism will once again surface.

Yet, all this raucous will be nothing more than futile scapegoating. Weber is not the reason for our dis-unity in the United Methodist Church, no more than any other faithful gay, lesbian, bi-sexual transgender person or straight ally. It is not our queer sisters and brothers who have broken covenant, but the Church itself.

The United Methodist Church ceased being the Church when it began to systematically exclude members of Christ's Body on the basis of their sexuality alone. It is the Church and not Weber who has broken covenant by failing to fulfill the promise made at baptism to love and nurture those blessed by God's grace and initiated into the community of faith. Rev. Weber, like so many other beloved lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, has already been grafted into Christ's Body. How can the Church separate them from what has already been made real through the power of God's grace?

“The exclusion of homosexual persons from the life, leadership, and rites of the Church threatens the very nature of the Church itself. It not only causes irreparable harm to the children of God but also to the Body of Christ itself. Each time a person is rejected or ejected from the “koinonia” fellowship of United Methodism, a new wound is inflicted and the Body of Christ is broken once again.”

Rev. Dr. Don Messer in an address to the United Methodist Council of Bishops, May, 2002