When the African Methodist Episcopal Church, arguably the world’s largest unbiased Black Protestant denomination, held its quadrennial Normal Convention in Ohio in August, among the many agenda objects was a difficulty that the Rev. Jennifer S. Leath had labored over for 20 years: same-sex marriage.
Leath, 43, self-identifies as “quare” — terminology designed to seize each her same-sex attraction and mental heritage as a “blackqueer womanist” thinker. She was a 23-year-old future seminarian when a voice vote was taken in 2004, making participation in same-sex marriages or unions punishable in response to official AME church legislation.
The transfer was broadly seen as a response to the Episcopal Church’s election of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as its first brazenly homosexual bishop the 12 months prior.
Since then, marriage equality has develop into the legislation of the land. And now Leath is on the forefront of a struggle inside her personal denomination on whether or not it ought to reasonable its stance.
In doing so, she’s making an attempt to carry collectively two opposing sides: one which hopes the AME church strikes towards acceptance of same-sex marriage and the opposite, opposing same-sex marriage, which prevailed in August in scrapping a invoice that will have triggered an open debate concerning the problem.
The latest convention choice successfully threw away three years of analysis by the Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee, which was established in 2021 by decision with the intention to make a suggestion on how the AME ought to transfer ahead.
It left her “disappointed and frustrated” however not ready to go away. As a substitute, Leath contends that the church’s posture explains the alienation of LBGTQ+ members of the church.
“LGBTQ+ people in the church suffer in relative silence while those who have left are forced to find or even create new spiritual communities,” Leath advised The Related Press.
Within the AME, in response to interviews with clergy, lay leaders and lecturers, there’s typically an older group who take into account LGBTQ+ sexual relations as sinful and imagine that God ordained marriage to be between a person and a lady. In distinction, Leath is conscious of a youthful era that accepts sexual diversities whereas celebrating that each one are created within the picture of God and will really feel secure — particularly within the church.
“I feel the undeniable urgency of the children who are feeling like the only way through this is death or out of the church,” Leath mentioned. “As a pastor who follows the way of Jesus, that weighs on me.”
Her profile as a Ivy League-educated educational and her standing because the daughter of an outspoken AME bishop provides heft to her dedication as a champion for LGBTQ+ members of the church.
She hopes to assist her denomination keep away from the schisms which have ruptured most of America’s mainline Protestant denominations. Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians — and most lately United Methodists — dismantled their bans associated to same-sex marriage, however substantial minorities of their U.S. congregations joined extra conservative denominations.
“To me the AME church is a place where diverse perspectives on issues like these can co-exist while we faithfully pursue justice for all,” she mentioned. “But this is only viable and sustainable as long as we are collectively and individually committed to recognizing the least among us, and recalibrating our faith and practices accordingly.”
Leath felt referred to as to Christian ministry at a younger age. She grew up at Mom Bethel AME in Philadelphia, the flagship congregation of the denomination. Her father, the Rev. Jeffrey N. Leath, served there for 14 years in his closing pastoral project.
“Her dad is one who is willing to stand for what he believes in, even if he is bumping up against opposition,” mentioned the Rev. Reginald Blount, an AME pastor and affiliate professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.
“I do believe that Jennifer carries some of those traits as well … the willingness to be that voice in the wilderness when you truly believe that what you are fighting for is right,” Blount mentioned.
On the identical time, her mother and father — no less than initially — reacted harshly to studying about her sexuality, which they found by studying her diary.
Not lengthy after an altar name by way of which she skilled a religious awakening, Leath attended the Youth Theology Institute at Emory College in Atlanta. Not solely was her name to evangelise affirmed there, however she additionally met fellow LGBTQ+ Christians who had been referred to as to ministry and had been additional alongside on their journey of reconciling their Christian religion and sexuality.
The expertise was distinct from the homophobic rebukes and warnings that formed the cultural cloth of AME church buildings she grew up in. A handwritten message from that summer time nonetheless hangs up in her childhood bed room. “Jen,” the word learn, “we see God in you.”
Whereas attending the Youth Theology Institute previous to her senior 12 months in highschool, Leath met Blount, one of many administrators of the Emory program. He noticed her ministerial expertise and knew she got here from a lineage of AME pastors. After commencement from William Penn Constitution College in Philadelphia, she was accepted and enrolled at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in 2003 with concentrations in Social Research and African American Research.
A 12 months later, in 2004, the AME church voted to punish clergy members – doubtlessly revoking their ordination – in the event that they participated a same-sex marriage or civil union. The language said that the AME church believes that “unions of any kind between persons of the same sex or gender are contrary to the will of God.”
By September 2004, Leath had enrolled in seminary at Union Theological Seminary in New York Metropolis. After incomes her Grasp of Divinity there in 2007, she went on to review at Yale, the place she earned her Ph.D in Non secular Ethics and African American Research in 2013.
A 12 months into her time in New Haven, in 2008, Leath’s father was elected the AME church’s 128th bishop.
In 2015, Leath started educating at Iliff College of Theology in Denver. It was the identical 12 months that Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Courtroom case, legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
In 2017, she wrote within the Christian Recorder, a publication of the AME, “Our legislation and position papers on sexual orientation and gender identities are dated, inconsistent, incomplete, prejudiced, contradictory, and unholy.”
She urged the church to undertake an “updated polity” and burdened “that there is not agreement within the AME Church when it comes to matters of sexual orientation and gender identity.” These identities have “sacred” standing, she wrote. “People who exist “outside of heterosexual, cisgender categorization … will neither hide and lie nor leave and disappear.”
The Normal Convention of the AME church meets once more in 2028. Between at times, the Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee is ready to reconvene. Leath says she’s assured that payments honoring the gender and sexual range throughout the church membership will proliferate till the present language within the self-discipline is eliminated.
“Future generations will likely push for even stronger and unequivocal affirmation of our gender and sexual diversity,” she mentioned.
As for the current, Leath has not been spared the challenges that LGBTQ+ AME pastors face on the congregational degree. When parishioners at her present church in Windsor, Ontario, found her sexual id, a few of them wrote letters and left the church.
However the rejection hasn’t stopped her from commuting 4 hours from Toronto to pastor her folks — or from writing on the topic and educating programs like “Queering Religion” at Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario, the place she is an affiliate professor in Black Faith. “This is my vocation of unconditional love for God, the church, all creation, and myself,” she mentioned.