Media Coverage
Seminary president is ousted
Minister officiated at same-sex wedding
SHARON WATERS
Published in the Home News Tribune 02/12/05


The contract of the president at New Brunswick Theological Seminary was not renewed and he was formally reprimanded after he performed the gay wedding of his daughter last year in Massachusetts.

The Rev. Norman J. Kansfield, seminary president since 1993, objected yesterday to characterizations that he was fired.

"It doesn't feel like a firing. My relationship to the board is perfectly fine," said Kansfield. "If the board were to say to me today, "Go off to this distant place and do this,' I would."

But the seminary's trustees voted Jan. 28 not to retain Kansfield as president and to reprimand him "for taking a controversial public action while president" by officiating at his daughter's same-sex wedding without prior board discussion or approval, according to a written statement from the board.

The board also "emphasized its commitment to continue the ongoing dialogue as it relates to the presence and participation of gays and lesbians in the church."

Kansfield appears to be the first Reformed Church minister to officiate at a gay wedding, said Paul Boice, a spokesman at the national office of the Reformed Church of America, which supports the seminary.

The national office, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., declined to weigh in on the seminary trustees' decision, saying the board was an autonomous body.

Two charges, which remain confidential, were filed against Kansfield last week, Boice said. An investigative committee will review the complaints and expects to issue a report in midsummer, he said.

Possible punishments for the charges Kansfield faces include being temporarily suspended or permanently removed from his position as a professor of theology; being stripped of his pastoral ministry; or being excommunicated from the church, Boice said.

"It's very early to focus on any of those things," said Boice.

Kansfield has no regrets about officiating at the wedding of his 29-year-old daughter, Ann Kansfield, and her partner, Jennifer Aull. The couple lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The ceremony in Northampton, Mass., on June 19 was quiet with fewer than 40 friends and relatives in attendance, said Kansfield.

"The intent of keeping it small was we did not intend to raise a row," said Kansfield, adding the day was one of the best of his life.

His sermon, which Kansfield said "was riddled with gay marriage," referenced Deuteronomy 23 and Isaiah 56.

The seminary president alerted the trustees and faculty to his plans in a confidential letter he sent about 10 days before the wedding. Kansfield said he did not seek their counsel or consent.

"What I was trying to do was buffer the board and faculty so if this did go bad . . . so they would later be able to say he didn't ask our advice or permission," said Kansfield. "In the end, I told them I'm still going to do this and quietly hope for the best."

His daughter seems to be following in her father's footsteps as a trailblazer in the Reformed Church of America. She graduated from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in May and is a 1994 graduate of Rutgers Preparatory School in Franklin.

A former Wall Street investment banker, Ann Kansfield experienced an "extremely powerful turning point" after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and entered the seminary soon after, her father said.

She is now serving at the Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn, but her ordination is on hold because some people object to her being openly gay, her father said.

"She's a good pastor. She should be not only allowed but encouraged to carry on her ministry," he said.

The Reformed Church of America does not have any openly gay pastors, said Boice. If ordained, Ann Kansfield would be the first.

Garden State Equality, an advocacy group for gay rights, condemned the New Brunswick Theological Seminary trustees' decision to end Kansfield's term as president.

"It's sickening and completely out-of-step with the pro-LGBTI attitudes of New Jerseyans, including New Jerseyans of faith," said Steven Goldstein, chairman of the statewide political organization.

Kansfield said yesterday the group reached out to him, offering help.

The New Brunswick Theological Seminary typically enrolls about 265 students, approximately 70 percent of whom are members of racial minority groups.

Kansfield will be leaving not only a position at the seminary but a home — he and Mary, his wife of 40 years, live on the 8-acre New Brunswick campus near Rutgers University. The couple plans to move to a house they own in Pennsylvania. Kansfield wants to pursue various writing projects and also "work for the full inclusion of everyone in the church."

Kansfield's term ends June 30, and he has no plans to leave any earlier.


ecclesia reformata, sed semper reformanda