Twenty years ago, Beth Stroud was defrocked as a United Methodist Church pastor after telling her Philadelphia congregation that she was in a committed same-sex relationship
. On Tuesday night, less than three weeks after the UMC repealed its anti-LGBTQ bans, she was reinstated. In a closed meeting of clergy from the UMC's Eastern Pennsylvania region, Stroud exceeded the 2/3 vote requirement to be readmitted as a full member and pastor in the UMC. Bishop John Schol of Eastern Pennsylvania welcomed the outcome, stating, “I’m grateful that the church has opened up to LGBTQ persons.” Stroud was brought into the meeting room after the vote, overcome with emotion.
Yet even with the new teaching job, Stroud wanted to regain the options available to an ordained minister as she looks for a congregation to join near the Delaware, Ohio, campus. When Stroud finally made her decision, she knew it was the right one. But the decision did not come easily as she followed the UMC’s deliberations on the anti-LGBTQ policies. “The first thing I felt was just anger — thinking about the life I could have had,” she told the AP at the time. “I loved being a pastor.
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