Release #033 {2897} April 22, 1996
DENVER (UMNS) -- Four decisions released April 22 by the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church involved bishop's rulings in cases from 1995 relating to various questions of clergy status.
They were concluded after additional information was received by the council, the denomination's highest court.
Reconsideration of a decision from the Judicial Council's October 1995 meeting resulted in affirmation of Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher's ruling that a clergy person who gave up the ministerial office must follow the steps set forth for readmission according to the rules of the church.
Another decision was related to the Iowa Conference board of ordained ministry and Bishop Charles Wesley Jordan. With additional documents requested in an earlier decision, the Judicial Council ruled that suspension from clergy duties was affirmed to the extent that the suspension was recommended by the board of ordained ministry and the reference in the conference journal constitutes consent to its continuation pending outcome of a trial.
In a case related to a former navy chaplain, the decision of Bishop William W. Morris in the Alabama-West Florida Conference was reversed at some points and modified at others.
The Judicial Council ruled that the case, which originated in 1989 under another bishop, lacked a signed grievance and a complaint specifying the chargeable offense in terms that conformed to the requirements found in the Discipline.
Without those "indispensable requirements" the matter could not be referred correctly to the joint review committee, the council's decision says. Since the clergy person in the case has been given an appointment, many of the questions put to the bishop for decisions of law were declared moot.
The council affirmed Bishop Kenneth Carder's ruling at the 1995 Tennessee Annual Conference that the appointment of the Rev. Amy Douglas-McVay as a staff physician at Charity Hospital in Louisiana was not in compliance with the Discipline.
-- Joretta Purdue
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