A United Methodist minister who was suspended in 1999 for blessing the union of two gay men has returned to his North Side church and is once again celebrating same-sex unions.
This time, though, he has found a way for his Broadway United Methodist Church community to hold the service without breaking the laws of the parent church.
The minister, the Rev. Greg Dell, had his church homecoming in July after a yearlong suspension, the first under a 1996 church law that forbids pastors to officiate at same-sex unions and bans the ceremony from occurring on church grounds. Now, Mr. Dell says, he has found a loophole in the rule.
Mr. Dell's new church policy on same-sex unions slips through the "order and discipline" law by changing the who and where of the ceremony. What his church has done, Mr. Dell said, is simple.
"We hold the ceremony away from church grounds, and I don't preside over the union," he said. "That's all it is."
One recent ceremony was held at a home, where the couple exchanged vows with friends and Mr. Dell present. The next day a service of celebration was held in the sanctuary of the church, where the couple received communion and repeated their vows.
The new policy, introduced by the Broadway church in September, is the latest in a series of alternative actions taken by Mr. Dell and other ministers across the country in an effort to allow same-sex unions within the confines of the United Methodist Church, the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination after the Southern Baptist Convention.
The United Methodist Church has 8.5 million members and maintains a wide spectrum of ideologies. There has recently been a surge in the number of Methodist congregations opposing the ban on same-sex unions.
This opposition is part of a movement by religious organizations across the country to recognize and administer faith services to gay and lesbian parishioners.
Since September, Mr. Dell said, his church, which has a racially, socially and sexually diverse congregation, has celebrated a handful of same-sex unions, a ceremony he says he cannot ignore if he is to minister to his 200-member congregation, 35 percent to 40 percent of which consists of gay men and lesbians.
In Mr. Dell's view, the union is a covenant blessed by God, not by the minister. Following this interpretation, vows are shared between the couple and God, and the minister and the community are mere observers and celebrants of the union.
By removing the pastor and the church setting, the Broadway congregation has provoked reactions running the gamut from praise for a groundbreaking principle that others may follow to criticism that the policy disregards church law.
"It's really been something of a spectrum," Mr. Dell said. "Those in the religious right are really enraged. They see it as something of a disobedience. And those in the middle have comments ranging from 'Isn't that clever?' to 'They are walking close to the line.' "
One of Mr. Dell's critics, James V. Heidinger II, president of the Good News Caucus, an evangelical renewal movement, contends that the removal of the minister from the service "trivializes the ceremony by virtually removing the pastor's role."
"This is not a tangential issue," Mr. Heidinger said. "It goes right at the heart of what we believe about marriage. It seems to us that what the church has done is to find a clever way to circumvent the Book of Discipline and its standards. To do it outside in a courtyard or away from the church and to let them go into the church and celebrate it seems like they are clearly ignoring and evading the letter, and more so the spirit, of church policy."
Within the Broadway church, support for the policy is widespread.
"The sense of unity around the policy has been very strong," said Eva Dahm, a lay leader. "It is not the ideal situation, of course, but it's all we can do right now, and so everybody is taking it in stride."
At the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Cleveland last May, when the denomination's governing body affirmed the ban on same-sex unions within the church, Mr. Dell was one of several members of the clergy who staged a protest and were arrested.
On his return to his congregation two months later, Mr. Dell said, he decided that creating the new union policy was the best short-term answer for his congregation. The policy "is something of a compromise without violating the integrity of the ceremony," he said.
Others within the denomination say Mr. Dell and the Broadway church are clearing a new path.
"It's interesting to me that they've adopted this," said Jack Tuell, a retired bishop who presided at Mr. Dell's 1999 trial, "and perhaps it will provide a model that others may greatly appreciate."
Although no formal complaints have been brought against his church, Mr. Dell admits that the policy may be challenged in the future -- that future being the next General Conference in 2004.
"I'm not expecting we'll have a complaint filed against us, but I wouldn't be shocked," he said. "They could tighten the loophole, and already this policy is something of a compromise, but a compromise of practice, not of integrity."
GRAPHIC: Photo: The Rev. Greg Dell of Chicago was once suspended for blessing the union of two men but now witnesses ceremonies off church grounds. (Todd Buchanan for The New York Times)