By Bob Allen
A special meeting to decide whether to kick an Alabama Baptist church out of its local association over homosexuality has been postponed due to weather.
Officials of Madison Baptist Association announced that tonight’s called meeting of the executive board is canceled due to a winter storm passing through the area creating dangerous driving conditions on icy roads.
The meeting’s purpose was to consider a recommendation to withdraw fellowship from Weatherly Heights Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala., under scrutiny after one of its members was featured in national media for officiating at one of the first legal same-sex marriages in Alabama history.
Ellin Jimmerson, a documentary filmmaker and activist on immigration issues ordained by Weatherly Heights, said in the church newsletter she’s stopped using the “honorific” title of “minister to the community” in the church.
Jimmerson said the title was initially intended to simplify reporting about The Second Cooler, her award-winning documentary about migrant justice shot primarily in Alabama, Arizona and in northern and central Mexico and narrated by actor Martin Sheen. She said negative reaction to her activism on LGBT issues, however, was not good for the church, so she is relinquishing the title.
“In the event a member of the media or someone else asks, I will say that I have resigned,” Jimmerson said.
The association’s main interest is no longer Jimmerson, however, but a sermon archived on the church website describing evolving views on homosexuality by the church’s pastor, David Freeman, and recent news that church leaders are OK with him performing a same-sex wedding, as long as it’s on his own as a minister and not identified with the church. The church has not taken a position for or against gay marriage.
Freeman said in the March 3 church newsletter that in the event of inclement weather, the association plans to reschedule the meeting and will give the congregation 10 days advance notice before the vote is taken.
Freeman alluded to “tension” in the church sparked by the controversy, and announced that deacons would sponsor groups to flesh out discussions begun in a congregation-wide gathering held Sunday night, Feb. 22.
After months of reaching out to media while promoting her film, Jimmerson more or less inadvertently made national headlines with a Facebook posting on how excited she was to be taking part in Wedding Week, a weeklong celebration of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Alabama sponsored by local gay-rights activists in Huntsville.
Photos of her marrying two women while wearing a rainbow-colored clergy stole on the first day marriage licenses were granted to gay couples appeared around the world.
On March 3 the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt to same-sex marriages in the state, defying a U.S. Supreme Court order allowing them to proceed.
Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, and Alabama Baptist State Convention President Travis Coleman Jr., issued a joint statement March 4 affirming “all those who seek to restore biblical marriage to its rightful place of sole authenticity and legality in Alabama and elsewhere.”
“We continue to pray for local, state and federal officials — in all three branches of government — who will make decisions in the months to come about this issue,” the Baptist leaders said. “We continue to pray that any actions and rulings will affirm biblical marriage as the only legally sanctioned form.”
A previous statement by the two leaders endorsed a Feb. 6 resolution by the state convention’s executive board expressing “moral outrage” at court decisions that “have effectively abolished biblical marriage as the only legally sanctioned form in numerous other states across our nation.”
A subsequent statement Feb. 10 warned that “any church that allows staff members to officiate at same-sex ceremonies is clearly outside biblical teachings about marriage and human sexuality, and they demonstrate that they are not in like-minded fellowship or friendly cooperation with Alabama Baptists and Southern Baptists.”
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