The nine-member Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) of Pittsburgh Presbytery unanimously ruled that the constitutions of the PC(USA) and the state of Pennsylvania define marriage as an act between a man and a woman. Therefore, judges said, the ceremony could not have been a wedding ceremony.
“It can’t be an offense to the constitution to attempt to do the impossible,” said the decision, read by Stewart Pollock, the PJC’s chairman, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Edwards, a parish associate at the interdenominational Community of Reconciliation, never denied officiating at the June 2005 marriage ceremony of Brenda Cole and Nancy McConn, who reside near Wheeling, W.V. Edwards has steadfastly argued that there is no prohibition on same-sex wedding ceremonies in the PC(USA) because the courts have said clergy “should not” conduct them — language she believes is advisory, not binding.
“I am blessed to serve Christ in the Presbyterian Church of the Reformed tradition, which welcomes the fact that change is part of God’s good plan,” Edwards said in a statement. “I pray that the dialogue sparked by this trial will provide another step along the path as we seek to reconcile our church with the fine future for marriage God has in store for us.”
This week’s trial was the second time Edwards faced church legal action for performing the ceremony.
Pittsburgh Presbytery officials dismissed a similar complaint during a trial in November 2006 on a technicality. The presbytery PJC ruled that an investigating committee filed charges against Edwards after its deadline for doing so. Edwards’ accusers then filed new accusations last year resulting in the latest trial.
Edwards, a direct descendant of legendary Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards, could have faced a number of punishments, including removal from ordained ministry, if she had been convicted.
According to the Post-Gazette the testimony during the two-day trial at a hotel on Pittsburgh’s north side was lopsided on the side of the defense. The prosecution called one witness, a church official who had told Edwards that she could bless a gay couple, but not marry them.
The defense presented three biblical scholars and theologians who testified that her acceptance of same-sex marriage was within the Presbyterian tradition of interpreting Scripture in its cultural context, the newspaper reported. They also called an authority on church law who said that it did not prohibit same-sex marriage.
The prosecution “offered no evidence that the accused violated [eight Bible passages it cited] or any other Scripture passages,” Pollock said, according to the Post-Gazette.
Pittsburgh Presbytery has 45 days to file an appeal.
Edwards said she was pleased the trial furthered discussion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the church.
“If the conversations it has inspired become part of the dialogue on how our church can fully embrace its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender members, I believe this trial can be a blessing to us all,” she said in the statement.
McConn and Cole, the couple whose wedding Edwards performed, were present at the trial.
Even if the court called their marriage impossible, “it was the happiest day of my life. I’m so grateful that Janet was courageous and compassionate,” McConn told the Post-Gazette.
McConn, a longtime Presbyterian and former member of Dallas Church in Dallas, W.V., currently worships at a Unitarian congregation. Cole was raised Methodist but now is a practicing Buddhist.
“We know no other word except ‘marriage’ that fully describes what we share,” Cole told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “It’s a covenant between us and God.”
James C. Yearsley, a Presbyterian minister who is currently serving in Florida, filed a complaint against Edwards shortly after the lesbian marriage, only to see the charges against Edwards dismissed on the technicality in 2006.
Yearsley submitted a new grievance against Edwards in February 2007. Seven other PC(USA) ministers and six elders from Texas, North Carolina, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington state signed on to the new complaint, joining Yearsley as “co-accusers.”
A Pittsburgh native, Yearsley has been pastor of Village Church in Tampa, Fla., since February 2006. When he filed his original complaint against Edwards he was serving as pastor at Mt. Hope Community Church, a Presbyterian congregation in suburban Pittsburgh.
Yearsley attended this week’s trial but flew back to Tampa before the verdict. Before leaving, he said an acquittal would signal collapse of church discipline, the Post-Gazette reported. But he said he would not push for an appeal or leave the denomination.
“This is the church I was called to serve,” Yearsley told the newspaper. “I’m a Presbyterian and I’m going to stay and contend for what I think the church should be.”
Yearsley told the Tribune-Review, “I’m not frustrated; this decision does not surprise me. This is the direction of our denomination, and it is accelerating. But it’s the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. It’s a further attempt to accommodate culture at the expense of scriptural authority and belief.”
He described Edwards as “a very gracious, kind soul,” the Tribune-Review reported.
Bob Anderson, interim pastor to Pittsburgh Presbytery, said he knew some local Presbyterians would be disappointed in the verdict.
“It’s a very sensitive issue,” he told the Post-Gazette. “We in the presbytery offices are very sensitive to those concerns and we will keep this as a matter of prayer as we go into the future.”
Thursday’s PJC ruling follows a similar church court ruling earlier this year involving the marriage of same-sex couples. Jane Adams Spahr, a Presbyterian lesbian activist from San Rafael, Calif., was found not-guilty of misconduct in April after a trial on charges that she violated the PC(USA)’s constitution by performing weddings for two lesbian couples.
The Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly (GAPJC), the PC(USA)’s highest court, found that Spahr did not violate denominational law when she officiated at the weddings in 2004 and 2005. Like the Pittsburgh ruling, the GAPJC found that the ceremonies Spahr performed were not marriages, so she did not violate the church’s constitution, the high court ruled.
The six ministers who joined Yearsley in signing his most recent complaint were: David Perry of Coastal Carolina Presbytery; James Coone of Grace Presbytery; Robert Kopp of Blackhawk Presbytery; Jim Tilley of Blackhawk Presbytery; Toby Brown of Mission Presbytery; and Mark Hughey of Blackhawk Presbytery.
One of the co-accusers, L. Russ Howard, eventually withdrew his name from the complaint after the congregation where he’s a pastor left the PC(USA) for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
The six elders who signed the complaint were: Sarah Beard of Mountain View Church in Marysville, Wash.; Everett Worrell of First Church in Belvidere, Ill.; Mark Rouleau of Westminster Church in Rockford, Ill.; Robert Gagnon of Eastminster Church of Pittsburgh; Pamela Easton of Bethany Church in Loves Park, lll.; and Virginia Worrell of First Church in Belvidere, Ill.
