Judicial attacks continue: charges filed against MLP board member Rev. Janet Edwards for marriage ceremony

Wednesday, September 13 2006 @ 06:00 PM

This just in from our field organizer Michael Adee. Extracts from an Associated Press article also appear below. An earlier web site article about Rev. Edwards' case is available on our site, as is some information about the Spahr case ruling mentioned in the AP article.

Call for prayers for Rev. Janet Edwards, National MLP Board member & her witness, family, Pittsburgh presbytery and the Church

Our sister in faith, colleague and friend, the Rev. Janet Edwards, who serves on the National MLP Board of Directors, received notification yesterday that official ecclessiastical judicial charges have been filed against her within the presbytery she has served in for more than 25 years, Pittsburgh Presbytery.

In additional to serving on the National MLP Board, Janet serves with the presbytery's Task Force on Inclusion, with the Telling Our Stories project, and as parish associate at Community of Reconciliation, Pittsburgh, a More Light Church. A faithful member of her presbytery, Janet has served as Moderator of Pittsburgh Presbytery in addition to her ministry as a spiritual director and prayer.

Please join MLP and me in celebrating Janet's pastoral ministry that does not discriminate and embraces all of God's children. Please join MLP in this call for prayer and support for Janet, her witness, her beloved spouse, sons and family, and her home congregation of the Community of Reconciliation.

To send notes of encouragement to Janet, her family and church family:

Rev. Janet Edwards
Community of Reconciliation Church
100 N. Bellefield Ave., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Fax: 412-682-2752

Please join MLP in this call for prayers for Pittsburgh Presbytery for wisdom and courage to recognize ministries of love, grace, justice and witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is good news for all persons, not just heterosexual persons.

Finally, please join MLP in this call for prayer for our Church that it might become a Church that recognizes and embraces the sacred creation, worth and calls to ministry of all of its children, including God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and same-gender loving children and their families.

Together we are building a Church for all God's people.
with hope and grace,
Michael J. Adee, M.Div., Ph.D., National Field Organizer More Light Presbyterians

Minister charged by church for performing gay marriage rites
9/13/2006
By Dan Nephin
The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A Presbyterian minister was charged with breaking church law for performing a marriage for two women, a decision that comes as the church struggles with an ongoing feud over the Bible and homosexuality.

Janet Edwards, a parish associate at the Community of Reconciliation Church in Pittsburgh, said she was charged Tuesday with presiding at the June 2005 wedding in contradiction of the church's position on marriage...

"For me, scripture teaches that the message of marriage is the covenant - the love and commitment between the partners" and not their gender, Edwards said Wednesday.

"I want to participate in the working out of this disagreement over the place of gays and lesbians in the church," said Edwards, an advocate for gays and lesbians during her 28 years as a minister.

Nancy McConn, 66, a retired computer software developer from Dallas, W.Va., said "Having a spiritual marriage was so important to both of us. We're both spiritual people."

Her partner, Brenda Cole, 52, a clinical psychologist and Buddhist, said she was confident that if they "continue to speak the truth" - that love and commitment, not gender, matters - "the church will come to see that reality."

Edwards is also charged with irregularities contrary to the constitution for language she used because the marriage was interfaith; but she said the church allows such leeway.

In March, a longtime Presbyterian minister who was the first of her faith to be tried for officiating same-sex marriages was acquitted of the same charge.

A regional judicial commission of the Presbyterian Church ruled 6-1 that the Rev. Jane Spahr of San Rafael acted within her rights as an ordained minister when she married two lesbian couples in 2004 and 2005.

Read the full AP article...

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