Media Coverage
RCA re-enters gay debate after lesbian wedding
Saturday, February 12, 2005
By Charles Honey
Press Religion Editor

A seminary president who lost his job after presiding at his lesbian daughter's wedding has rekindled debate about the place of gays in the Reformed Church in America.

The Rev. Norman Kansfield, a Hope College graduate and former librarian at Holland's Western Theological Seminary, hopes the controversy will prompt renewed discussion about the RCA's stance toward gays.

"It is very clearly time for the Reformed Church in America and all the rest of the body of Christ to take up a conversation about how we are going to treat homosexual persons," said Kansfield, 64.

The board of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, an RCA-affiliated school in New Jersey, recently voted not to renew Kansfield's contract when it expires June 30. Trustees reprimanded Kansfield, president since 1993, for officiating at his daughter's wedding in Massachusetts last June without consulting them.

In addition, clergy from West Michigan are among two church groups that have filed ecclesiastical charges, which could lead to discipline or even a church trial of Kansfield at this summer's General Synod.

Further fueling the debate: Kansfield's daughter, Ann, has been asked to lead an RCA church in Brooklyn where she serves as an unordained pastor.

Resolution of both cases will test an RCA stand against gay marriage and its position that "the practicing homosexual lifestyle is contrary to Scripture."

To officials' knowledge, it is the first gay wedding performed by an RCA minister.

The issue likely will surface at the General Synod this June, said a top RCA official.

"We've studied and reflected on this carefully for 25 years," said the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, who serves as general secretary of the 284,000-member RCA from its West Michigan regional offices. "I think it's important that that dialogue and reflection continue."

It has been a quiet dialogue since the 1998 General Synod put a two-year moratorium on RCA debate about gays. Granberg-Michaelson hopes the controversy won't lead to major conflicts other denominations have endured.

"Most of those in the church ... don't want to see the denomination torn up in endless and divisive and very painful judicial processes and fights over this," he said.

But the issue already has stirred up passions in West Michigan. Three churches withheld their denominational dues, and regional church bodies of South Grand Rapids and Zeeland sent letters in protest of Kansfield's action.

The executive committee of the Synod of the Great Lakes sent letters to 180 pastors reminding them of RCA teaching.

"The statement that the practicing homosexual lifestyle is contrary to Scripture has been affirmed several times," said the Rev. Sherwin Weener, regional executive minister.

The Rev. Kathryn Davelaar, of Holland's Hope Church, said she supports Kansfield.

"It's not someone's sexual identity or orientation that makes them sinners or not," Davelaar said.

Kansfield insists nothing in RCA policy forbids gay marriage, and that the church calls for pastoral treatment of people born homosexual. He said he is not angry with the seminary board, adding it was "under very severe pressure."

"I am uneasy about what it says about the definition of the church (and) the way we're defining grace," Kansfield said.

The board praised Kansfield's leadership, but a trustee said the decision was in the school's best interest.

"We decided that the president put the seminary in an awkward position by performing the ceremony without giving us the benefit of offering sufficient counsel," the Rev. Larry Williams Sr., a board member, told The Newark Star-Ledger, in a Friday story.

Ann Kansfield, a New Brunswick graduate, said she is "deeply saddened."

Her father "has dedicated his life to serving our denomination," she wrote in an e-mail.

Since 2003, she has led Greenpoint Reformed Church, which has asked her to serve as permanent pastor. She is waiting to see if the regional classis will ordain her to do so.

"Lesbians and gays have become the 'untouchables' in our denomination," she wrote. "There must be a place in God's church for lesbian and gay people."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


ecclesia reformata, sed semper reformanda