“Just because you remove language from the Book of Discipline doesn’t mean that your work is over,” said the Rev. James Howell, pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, one of the state’s largest United Methodist churches. “There’s a huge amount of work to do.”
Howell said he was approached by two or three people on Sunday who he described as “pretty grim” about the actions of delegates to the General Conference.
Many in his congregation, Howell said, would be shocked to learn that the church has had at least one gay minister during every decade, going back to the 1950s, if not earlier.
Daly knows this reality well.
He grew up in a small North Carolina town knowing he was gay, but for most of his life he did not discuss his sexuality with his family or his church.
At 30, he enrolled and was admitted to Union Theological Seminary in New York. After graduating, the North Carolina Conference, which spans the eastern half of the state, offered him the position of licensed local pastor — a position that does not require ordination — of two small churches on the state’s coast.
The congregations he served were conservative, and he did not tell their members about his sexuality. Though he had good relations with church members, he lived a mostly closeted life.
The Rev. Charles Daly speaks to a congregant at Epworth United Methodist Church in Durham, North Carolina, after services on Sunday May 5, 2024. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron
In 2020, he asked for a move to Epworth United Methodist Church in Durham, which six years earlier had become a “reconciling congregation,” meaning that it joined a network of Methodist churches that include people regardless of all sexual orientations. It was an associate pastor role, meaning he would not be the senior pastor, but he figured he could at least work in a more welcoming environment.
He was granted the move and then invited his partner, Luke Bauman, whom he had met at seminary, to move in with him.
Two years later, he and Bauman went to the Durham courthouse and married. They later threw a reception at a church he did not name. He was upfront with the church board interviewing him for ordination and told them he had married.
Last year, he was formally ordained.
“We had a holistic review, and then the board finally decided to recommend him,” said Sangwoo Kim, who chairs the Board of Ordained Ministry for the North Carolina Conference.
Daly said he was elated by the actions of the delegates at the General Conference. For the first time in nearly a decade, his sexuality is no longer an impediment to his ministry.
Recently, the bishop and cabinet of the North Carolina Conference appointed Daly as senior minister to Elizabeth Street United Methodist, the church’s first reconciling congregation, a post he will take up in July.
Several of his congregants are sorry to see him go but thrilled for the recognition he’s finally receiving.
“It’s just a joyous situation,” said Becky Felton, 80, a member of the church who said she gained so much respect for Daly after he told the church that he had married his partner before he was formally ordained. “It’s so wonderful to see the church that I love embracing the people I love.”
This article originally appeared here.
