Officiant at lesbian daughter's wedding broke ordination vows

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. -- Leaders of the Reformed Church in America suspended a New Jersey minister Friday night, ruling that he violated the denomination's teachings by officiating at his lesbian daughter's wedding.

A majority of delegates voted to suspend the Rev. Norman Kansfield from the ministry until he changes his views to fall in line with church doctrine. They also stripped him of his standing as a professor of theology in the RCA.

Kansfield, 65, who has served in the church for 40 years, said the decision was "going to be very hard to deal with -- my life has been the ministry."

"The church of Jesus Christ needs to be as inclusive as the arms of our Lord himself," he added.

He had performed his daughter's wedding ceremony last June in Massachusetts, shortly after it became the first state to allow same-sex marriages. Kansfield was dismissed in January from his presidency of one of the church's two seminaries.

The case against Kansfield, filed by dozens of church leaders, alleged that he acted intentionally against Bible teachings and the church constitution when he officiated at the wedding of his 29-year-old daughter Ann and her girlfriend. The women met while studying to be ministers at Kansfield's seminary.

Kansfield had sent his seminary's board a letter shortly before the wedding announcing his decision to officiate and saying he was not seeking the board's permission to do so.

The church leaders who brought the case said Friday they had decided as a group not to speak to reporters.

"I really believe they were trying to do what they think is best with a sense of love, though that might be hard to explain," church spokesman Paul Boice said.

The Reformed Church in America, one of the more conservative Protestant denominations, has 279,000 members in 897 congregations, many of them in New York, New Jersey and Michigan. The church's roots date to Dutch settlers who arrived in America 400 years ago.