A United Methodist Church official has ordered a new hearing to decide whether a Philadelphia minister who acknowledged a relationship with another woman must face a church trial.
The Reverend Elizabeth Stroud told her congregation of her relationship with a woman in a sermon in April 2003. Stroud has served as an associate pastor of First United Methodist Church of Germantown for the last five years.
Retired Bishop Joseph Yeakel is overseeing the case for the United Methodist Church's Eastern Pennsylvania Conference.
He declared last week that a special church committee's indictment of Stroud was "null and void" because the committee was improperly constituted when it voted to send Stroud's case to trial.
Yeakel called for a new hearing to decide whether Stroud should face a trial that could expel her from the ministry. The denomination bars the ordination of "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals."
No date has been set for a new hearing.