Media Coverage
A minister, a marriage, a conviction
Albany Times Union, June 18, 2005
By DANIELLE T. FURFARO, Staff writer

SCHENECTADY -- Delegates to the annual meeting of the Reformed Church in America convicted a prominent theologian Friday for having officiated at his daughter's wedding to another woman last year in Massachusetts.

After a trial conducted at the meeting -- called the General Synod and held this year at Union College -- the Rev. Norman Kansfield was found guilty of the three charges against him: violating the policies of the church; disrupting its peace and unity; and not consulting and being amenable to the General Synod.

Gay marriage has long been officially frowned upon by the Protestant denomination, but it wasn't until last year, at the General Synod, that it was made against the rules for a minister to conduct a same-sex wedding.

A few weeks after that rule was made, Kansfield, who was then president of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, presided over the ceremony for his 29-year-old lesbian daughter, Ann, and Jennifer Aull, who is 31. Both women are studying to be ministers. They met at the seminary in New Jersey.

This spring, the Reformed Church removed Kansfield, 65, from his seminary leadership post and set in motion a disciplinary process. On Friday at 1 p.m., the trial began in College Park Hall.

More than 270 delegates -- elected from 45 classes, or regional groupings -- served as jurors in a large room at the recently converted hotel while several dozen people, including staff members and others attending the meeting, watched the proceedings on a television screen in the lobby.

Following about four hours of testimony, the jurors began their deliberation, and the verdict came at 7:45 p.m., said the Rev. Mark Ennis of the Third Reformed Church in Albany and a member of the Host Planning Committee for the General Synod. Punishment ranges from admonishment to suspension to removal from the church, but that phase of the proceedings was not likely to be completed until today, Ennis said.

While gay marriage is the central issue in the trial, the charges against Kansfield involve violation of church rules.

"If the leadership doesn't adhere to what we believe to be the rules," said Todd Knecht, the attorney for the church, "that is not fair to someone who relies on that. He had a forum to protest these rules, but instead he just goes out and does this."

Because Kansfield openly admitted that he performed the ceremony for his daughter and her partner, the trial included debate over whether the church's rules governing gay marriage are just.

"If marriage is not a sacrament, how can the church control it?" said Ennis, who is also clerk of the Albany Classis, the Reformed Church's regional government group. "It's the government that sets the rules for marriage. Clergy are licensed by the state to perform marriages."

In Massachusetts, a state court decision allowed gay marriages, beginning in May 2004.

Several protesters sat outside the proceedings and denounced the church for putting Kansfield on trial.

"I am in favor of the full inclusion of all people into the church," said the Rev. Stacey Midge of the Glen Reformed Church in Montgomery County: "We are talking about a man who performed the service for his daughter. Every minister wants to do that."

Other Reformed Church in America ministers claim they, too, have performed gay marriages and say that the church is singling Kansfield out.

"Norm is not the only one doing them," said the Rev. Robert Williams of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. Williams said he has performed about a dozen gay marriages in the past 10 years. "I think they haven't confronted me because my church is so big."

The synod continues through Thursday with discussion planned on a range of issues and policy matters, including U.S. policies in the Middle East and health care coverage for the church's ministers and employees, as well as how to relate to gays and lesbians within the church.

Little besides the trial was dealt with Friday.

"This is like the big, white elephant in the room," said Ennis. "We can't do anything else until this is taken care of." T. Furfaro can be reached at 454-5097 or by e-mail at dfurfaro@timesunion.com.


ecclesia reformata, sed semper reformanda