c. 1999 Religion News Service

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. _ Sounding every bit a prosecutor while claiming not to be one, the Rev. Stephen C. Williams tore into fellow United Methodist minister Gregory Dell Thursday (March 25) in his opening statement at Dell’s church trial for presiding at a same-sex union ceremony.

The trial was expected to conclude late Friday or Saturday.

Dell’s counsel declined to make an opening statement.”You will hear a novel and self-serving opinion”from Dell in defense of his action in which he”placed his own agenda before his duty”as a Methodist clergyman, Williams told the 13 members of the trial court, or jury, who will decide Dell’s fate.

The jury members, Methodist ministers for the denomination’s Northern Illinois Conference, were selected earlier in the day at Downers Grove First United Methodist Church here in the Chicago suburbs.”The facts are clear, the law is clear,”said Williams, who is serving as church counsel, or prosecutor. He was appointed by Bishop C. Joseph Sprague, head of the Northern Illinois Conference.

Dell’s trial is the latest conflict over homosexual issues to rock the 8.5-million member United Methodist Church, the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination. Earlier this week, a complaint was filed against 69 United Methodist ministers for their role in performing a same-sex union ceremony held in Sacramento, Calif., in January.

Last September, Dell, the pastor of Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago, performed a same-sex union ceremony for two men. He is the second Methodist pastor to stand trial on the controversial issue, but the first since the denomination’s Judicial Council ruled that the ban on same-sex celebrations has the force of church law.

In the first trial, the Rev. Jimmy Creech, then of Omaha, Neb., was narrowly acquitted, in part because the ban on same-sex unions was found at that time to not yet have the force of church law.

Williams said Dell”placed himself above”the church’s Judicial Council, or supreme court. He”arrogated to himself the right to violate”the ban on same-sex marital unions, Williams said.”Unless we are going to parse the meaning of `is,'”the jury will find Dell guilty, argued Williams, a United Methodist pastor in Franklin Park, another Chicago suburb.

Williams followed up on this apparent reference to President Clinton’s impeachment defense with another impeachment-reminiscent comment:”The world grows weary of parsing the truth so as to empty it of its plain meaning.” Williams said he felt”woefully unqualified”to take on the task of prosecutor.”I’m not a lawyer,”he said, but was just trying to uphold”the honor of the (church’s) judgmental process.” Among the witnesses called by Williams was Bishop George Bashore, the president of the denomination’s Council of Bishops, who gave an authoritative explanation of church law.

Williams said he called on Bashore, of the church’s Western Pennsylvania Conference, to show”that no Methodist minister may take the law into his own hands.” Bashore agreed that the Judicial Council had ruled that performing a same-sex union ceremony is an act of disobedience to church law.

Retired Bishop Jack Tuell of Des Moines, Wash., called the public trial of Dell”highly unusual.”Most church trials dealing with personnel matters are private, but Dell’s has been open at his request.

At least nine of the 13 jurors must rule against Dell for him to be declared guilty. If that happens, he could be expelled from the ministry for”disobedience to the Order and Discipline”of the church.

IR END BOWMAN