Black denomination upholds stance against same-sex marriage. A gay pastor in its ranks seeks change

When the African Methodist Episcopal Church, arguably the world’s largest independent Black Protestant denomination, held its quadrennial General Conference in Ohio in August, among the agenda items was an issue that the Rev. Jennifer S. Leath had labored over for two decades: same-sex marriage.

Leath, 43, self-identifies as “quare” — terminology designed to capture both her same-sex attraction and intellectual heritage as a “blackqueer womanist” thinker. She was a 23-year-old future seminarian when a voice vote was taken in 2004, making participation in same-sex marriages or unions punishable according to official AME church law.

The move was widely seen as a response to the Episcopal Church’s election of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop the year prior.

Since then, marriage equality has become the law of the land. And now Leath is at the forefront of a fight within her own denomination on whether it should moderate its stance.

In doing so, she’s attempting to hold together two opposing sides: one which hopes the AME church moves toward acceptance of same-sex marriage and the other, opposing same-sex marriage, which prevailed in August in scrapping a bill that would have triggered an open debate about the issue.

The recent conference decision effectively threw away three years of research by the Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee, which was established in 2021 by resolution in order to make a recommendation on how the AME should move forward.

It left her “disappointed and frustrated” but not prepared to leave. Instead, Leath contends that the church's posture explains the alienation of LBGTQ+ members of the church.

“LGBTQ+ people in the church suffer in relative silence while those who have left are forced to find or even create new spiritual communities," Leath told The Associated Press.

In the AME, according to interviews with clergy, lay leaders and academics, there is generally an older group who consider LGBTQ+ sexual relations as sinful and believe that God ordained marriage to be between a man and a woman. In contrast, Leath is mindful of a younger generation that accepts sexual diversities while celebrating that all are created in the image of God and should feel safe — especially in the church.

“I feel the undeniable urgency of the children who are feeling like the only way through this is death or out of the church,” Leath said. “As a pastor who follows the way of Jesus, that weighs on me.”

Her profile as a Ivy League-educated academic and her status as the daughter of an outspoken AME bishop adds heft to her commitment as a champion for LGBTQ+ members of the church.

She hopes to help her denomination avoid the schisms that have ruptured most of America’s mainline Protestant denominations. Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians — and most recently United Methodists — dismantled their bans related to same-sex marriage, but substantial minorities of their U.S. congregations joined more conservative denominations.

“To me the AME church is a place where diverse perspectives on issues like these can co-exist while we faithfully pursue justice for all,” she said. “But this is only viable and sustainable as long as we are collectively and individually committed to recognizing the least among us, and recalibrating our faith and practices accordingly.”

Leath felt called to Christian ministry at a young age. She grew up at Mother Bethel AME in Philadelphia, the flagship congregation of the denomination. Her father, the Rev. Jeffrey N. Leath, served there for 14 years in his final pastoral assignment.

“Her dad is one who is willing to stand for what he believes in, even if he is bumping up against opposition,” said the Rev. Reginald Blount, an AME pastor and associate professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.

“I do believe that Jennifer carries some of those traits as well ... the willingness to be that voice in the wilderness when you truly believe that what you are fighting for is right,” Blount said.

At the same time, her parents — at least initially — reacted harshly to learning about her sexuality, which they discovered by reading her diary. 

Not long after an altar call through which she experienced a spiritual awakening, Leath attended the Youth Theology Institute at Emory University in Atlanta. Not only was her call to preach affirmed there, but she also met fellow LGBTQ+ Christians who were called to ministry and were further along on their journey of reconciling their Christian faith and sexuality.

The experience was distinct from the homophobic rebukes and warnings that shaped the cultural fabric of AME churches she grew up in. A handwritten message from that summer still hangs up in her childhood bedroom. “Jen," the note read, "we see God in you.”

While attending the Youth Theology Institute prior to her senior year in high school, Leath met Blount, one of the directors of the Emory program. He saw her ministerial talent and knew she came from a lineage of AME pastors. After graduation from William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, she was accepted and enrolled at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in 2003 with concentrations in Social Studies and African American Studies.

A year later, in 2004, the AME church voted to punish clergy members – potentially revoking their ordination – if they participated a same-sex marriage or civil union. The language stated that the AME church believes that "unions of any kind between persons of the same sex or gender are contrary to the will of God.”

By September 2004, Leath had enrolled in seminary at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. After earning her Master of Divinity there in 2007, she went on to study at Yale, where she earned her Ph.D in Religious Ethics and African American Studies in 2013.

A year into her time in New Haven, in 2008, Leath’s father was elected the AME church's 128th bishop.

Following in his footsteps, she received her first pastoral appointment in 2012 to Campbell AME Church in Media, Pennsylvania. She later served AME churches in New York and Colorado.

In 2015, Leath began teaching at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. It was the same year that Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court case, legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

In 2017, she wrote in the Christian Recorder, a publication of the AME, “Our legislation and position papers on sexual orientation and gender identities are dated, inconsistent, incomplete, prejudiced, contradictory, and unholy.”

She urged the church to adopt an “updated polity” and stressed “that there is not agreement within the AME Church when it comes to matters of sexual orientation and gender identity.” These identities have “sacred” status, she wrote. “People who exist “outside of heterosexual, cisgender categorization … will neither hide and lie nor leave and disappear.”

The General Conference of the AME church meets again in 2028. Between now and then, the Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee is set to reconvene. Leath says she's confident that bills honoring the gender and sexual diversity within the church membership will proliferate until the current language in the discipline is removed.

“Future generations will likely push for even stronger and unequivocal affirmation of our gender and sexual diversity," she said.

As for the present, Leath has not been spared the challenges that LGBTQ+ AME pastors face at the congregational level. When parishioners at her current church in Windsor, Ontario, discovered her sexual identity, some of them wrote letters and left the church.

But the rejection hasn’t stopped her from commuting four hours from Toronto to pastor her people — or from writing on the subject and teaching courses like "Queering Religion" at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where she is an associate professor in Black Religion. “This is my vocation of unconditional love for God, the church, all creation, and myself," she said.

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