UNSPOKEN VOW.

A gay Methodist minister is defrocked when he refuses to remain celibate

As the Rev. Phil Hart looked at the hundreds of assembled church leaders sitting in judgment, he felt calm, even confident. "I told them that growing up I had always felt a desire to preach and to serve the church," he says of his testimony before the Clergy Session of the United Methodist Church's West Ohio Conference on May 31. "When I was 8 I practiced by preaching in the barn, and all the cows and chickens came to hear me. Nothing had changed since I came out as a gay man. I was still the same person they had ordained--I was simply being honest."

By the time he made this statement, Hart already had become something of a cause celebre in the United Methodist Church. A year and a half ago he told church elders not only that he was gay but that he refused to promise to remain celibate. Church doctrine states that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching."

Despite his impassioned plea May 31, the body voted overwhelmingly that same day to dismiss Hart as a deacon. Had he not renounced celibacy, Hart, who was ordained in 1997, would be on his way to becoming a full minister with his own congregation, a lifelong goal for the 30-year-old.

"I think Phil may have been naive about what his coming-out would unleash," says Bishop Judith Craig, who ordained Hart. "But he's become an exemplary role model for gays in the church. I hope that someday we will be able to retain talented openly gay ministers like Phil, but we are just not there yet."

Indeed, Hart's case is just one of dozens of gay rights skirmishes in the United Methodist Church, a mainline denomination with more than 8 million members nationwide. At its quadrennial general conference in Cleveland May 11, the church voted to retain its policies prohibiting "practicing homosexuals" from ordination and barring ministers from blessing same-sex unions.

But the votes did not come without dissent. More than 200 protesters, including some prominent church officials, were arrested after expressing their displeasure with the antigay policies. And despite the ban on blessing same-sex unions, dozens of Methodist ministers have flouted church policy by conducting the ceremonies anyway.

"Phil puts a human face on what for many has been little more than a political battle," says the Rev. Grayson Atha, pastor of the King Avenue Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio, and an ally of Hart's. "That's what God had in mind when he sent what we call a `real human being' into the world to teach us what God is like. A few years ago about 40 members of my church decided that they were tired of asking about other people's families and not being able to talk about their own. It changed the entire church, and we are all the better for it. This is driving the progress in the church."

Hart says he subscribed to church teaching about homosexuality for most of his life. When he realized he was gay, it set off a long struggle for his soul. "God and my sexual orientation were the two dominant themes of my life," he says. "I just couldn't figure out how to reconcile them, so I simply repressed my desires. I kept telling myself that if the right woman would come along, I would straighten out."

After graduating from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., Hart served as pastor at Christ United Methodist Church in Ironton, Ohio. During these years he was drawn to conservative Christian televangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart, staying up late to catch their cable shows. "I felt a strong evangelical bent, and they were the only ones out there doing the preaching," he says. "There were not any more liberal role models out there for me to follow in my search for God."

But while at Circleville [Ohio] Bible College, where he taught theology, Hart fell into a deep depression. Lonely and tormented about his sexual orientation, he contemplated suicide. "One night I prepared to end it all," he recalls. "I felt that was a better choice than to--quote, unquote--fall. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I went to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning I just couldn't stop crying. I realized I had to do something."

At the time, students often came to Hart with their personal problems. "Rather than making me bitter, my internal struggle made me very sensitive to the emotional needs of my students," he says. "They came to me struggling with everything from pornography to relationships. I was struck by how harsh their view of God was. I kept saying to them, `What about love?' `What about grace?' I started asking myself the same questions."

In the summer of 1999 Hart's spiritual quest led him to the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church in Columbus. "It was basically, Joe Evangelical goes to the gay church," he laughs. "I wanted to be invisible, but at 6 foot 8, that's impossible. A lesbian in a cowboy hat came up to me and said, `You sure are handsome.' I wanted to crawl under the pews. But during the service, I noticed that the organist knew a lot of the religious songs I'd listened to over the years. Afterward I cried, and he told me his story. We had so much in common that I knew I had finally found a home."

Hart has had a male partner for a year and a half now. (Citing concern over his future in the church, he declines to reveal his partner's name or how the couple met.) Now a social worker, Hart says he has had conversations with the United Church of Christ and other gay-positive denominations about opportunities to serve as a minister again. And he is in the early stages of founding an organization called Sanctorum, which will allow religious people from a variety of denominations to explore their sexuality in what he calls a "safe and affirming environment."

"I believe that some day the Methodist Church will realize that it's wrong to discriminate against gay people," he says. In the meantime, he wants to help those who are "closeted about their sexuality or about their desire to have a relationship with God. I know they are out there because I was out there for so long, but I'm not quite sure how to find them. That's my challenge."

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