Pastor Led Son’s Gay Wedding, Revealing Fault Line in Church

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/us/a-pastor-his-son-and-the-test-of-gay-marriage.html?_r=0

By MICHAEL PAULSON
JULY 12, 2014


The Rev. Frank Schaefer at a news conference on Tuesday. He had been defrocked for officiating at the wedding of his gay son.

Father and son had always been close, from the moment Tim Schaefer was born, six weeks premature, with blood poisoning, a weak heart and lungs, and a doctor who thought he would not make it through the night.

His father, the Rev. Frank Schaefer, a United Methodist minister, thought of his eldest son as a miracle child, saved by some combination of medicine and prayer, saved for something special.

“We couldn’t even touch him; he was in an incubator, and we had to reach in with latex gloves through those holes in the sides,” Mr. Schaefer said. “I begged God to please save his life.”

Their bond was such that, years later, facing a choice between upholding his church’s teaching and affirming his son’s sexual orientation, Frank chose to endanger his own career by officiating at his son’s same-sex wedding. The actions that followed — a rebellion in his congregation, a church trial, a defrocking and then, last month, a reinstatement — have made the Schaefers symbols of the conundrum facing much of American Christianity: How does religious doctrine on homosexuality respond to the longings for spirituality and community from congregants and family members who are gay?

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