c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When the Rev. Norman J. Kansfield learned his daughter was planning to marry her female partner, he wanted to preside at the wedding, even if it cost him his job.

Kansfield said he knew his decision would create a stir and might hurt the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, where he has been president since 1993. The Reformed Church in America, which is associated with the school, opposes gay marriage.

But being there for his daughter Ann was more important to Kansfield.

About 10 days before the June 2004 wedding in Massachusetts, Kansfield wrote to the school’s two dozen trustees, telling them of his plans and letting them know he was not seeking their approval.

“I think there was the almost sure knowledge that there would be some row, some upset, about this in the church. And I didn’t want them to be blindsided by that,” Kansfield said in the first interview he and his daughter gave after he was reprimanded by the trustees. “I judged that there would be some effect from this, but that it would still be of the kind that in the Reformed Church we could talk about.”

On Jan. 28, the trustees decided not to renew Kansfield’s contract _ which expires in June _ despite earlier talks of a two-year extension. Kansfield, who turns 65 next month, could face charges when the General Synod of the Reformed Church meets in June.

A trustee spokesman, the Rev. Larry Williams, said the 22 who voted felt the wedding had “put the seminary in an awkward position” and could hurt the school. He also said the board had long considered bringing in a younger president.

Kansfield and his 29-year-old daughter said their decisions were rooted in honesty and family values, and they joked with each other about Kansfield’s emotional display.

“Dad did such a fabulous job, he cried through the whole thing,” Ann Kansfield said. “A number of people have commented on that, saying they were tears of sorrow knowing he was throwing his career away. But no, my dad cries at Hallmark commercials.”

In writing to trustees that he was not asking their permission to perform the wedding, Kansfield said, he meant only to absolve them of responsibility.

“I do care what they think. I tried to convey that I cared what they thought, but in this case I was expressly not asking them at that point to tell me what they thought. … I was going to do this.

“An officer of the board called Monday of the week before the wedding and said, `Don’t do this.’ And again I said, `You know I didn’t ask your permission to do this, so do understand that I am going to do it.”

“One thing they did say was, `You’ve got to recognize this could cost the seminary a great deal.’ I think I did concur that it could cost the seminary something.”

The potential cost, he said, was a loss of “monetary support from some folks, and it has, but right now, giving from individuals and churches … is more than $25,000 ahead of where it was last year.”

Ann Kansfield, who graduated from the seminary in May and now works at Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn, while her ordination is on hold, said that after Massachusetts began allowing same-sex marriages last year, it was “a no-brainer” that her father would preside at her wedding to Jennifer Aull.

“I think that for him, he would gladly want to perform my brother’s marriage when my brother gets married. So it was only natural for him to do our wedding as well,” Ann Kansfield said.

“In some ways, there was (the thought that), `Yes, this could affect the denomination, this could affect my ordination, this may possibly affect Dad’s job,’ but it was still the right decision to make, and it was a family decision.”

The issue of homosexuality has stirred fierce debates in recent years in several Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church, whose ordination in 2003 of an openly gay bishop led to continuing strife within the Anglican Communion.

The debate over Ann Kansfield’s wedding seems unlikely to create such a prolonged furor. The Reformed Church in America has fewer than 300,000 members.

Still, Ann Kansfield said the trustees’ decision shows the church is polarized over the issue.

She said she is the only Reformed student in her graduating class at the seminary who is not yet ordained, and that she has been told it is because of her marriage. A spokesman for the Reformed Church confirmed her ordination was put “on hold” in September but would not say why.

Until she is ordained, she cannot baptize or give Communion. Her father has periodically performed those functions at her church.

Controversy about the wedding escalated in September, when an Internet site posted criticisms of Norman Kansfield. Attention picked up last week when publications wrote about the trustees’ decision.

“It isn’t particularly easy,” Ann Kansfield said, “to have everyone interested in the scope and shape of everything of your family, your family life, your relationship, and to have it be fodder for everyone’s opinion, to have so many people think that they know who I am, and know who my dad is, and to offer up their learned and erudite comments on how everything should have been played out or should be played out in the future.”

(Jeff Diamant covers religion for the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

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