Associated Press
SEATTLE — The openly gay pastor at the Woodland Park United Methodist Church will stay on after a local investigative committee decided Thursday there is insufficient evidence to sustain a charge of homosexuality.
"Figure that one out," church spokeswoman Scarlett Foster-Moss said cheerfully.
The decision by a nine-member investigative committee in the matter of the Rev. Mark Edward Williams sets up a possible confrontation between local and national church officials. Foster-Moss said she believed it was the first time an openly gay minister had been allowed to remain in the pulpit.
" (W)e have no idea how it’s going to play out," she said. "Most of the rest of the conference are more conservative — and especially on this issue."
Calls to the national office in Nashville, Tenn., were not immediately returned.
The United Methodist Church, the nation’s third-largest denomination with 8.4 million U.S. members, forbids openly practicing homosexuals from being pastors. But pastors cannot be removed without due process, according to the Methodist Book of Discipline.
Williams declared himself "a practicing gay man" last June at the Methodists’ Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, which includes Washington and northern Idaho.
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