Congregation Embraces Transgender Minister

Sept. 30, 2009— -- The sermon the Rev. David Weekley delivered late last month to his congregation in Portland, Ore., took, he said, "more than half a century to write."

Calling it the most "deeply personal message" of his career, Weekley, 58, told his congregation that the man who had ministered to their spiritual needs, married them, buried their parents and baptized their children -- was actually born a girl.

"It was a little unnerving," the Methodist minister said about his Aug. 30 sermon in which he disclosed to his congregation at Epworth United Methodist Church that he was transgender.

"I was grateful for the day. The service began like any other and I called the message that day 'My Book Report,' because the congregation knew I was working on a manuscript but they didn't know what the book was about. That it was my history, my life story, my life in the church," he said.

When he finished his speech the congregation burst into applause.

Weekley is only the second transgender Methodist minister to openly disclose his former gender, and is but one of a small number of transgender clergy people ministering to congregations across the country.

Members of Epworth's 220-strong congregation have been "overwhelmingly supportive" and "took the news really well," but Weekley worries that his coming out could cause a rift in the global United Methodist Church.

"The congregation accepted it without question," church member George Azumano told ABC News Portland affiliate KATU-TV.

In 2008, at the church's general conference a motion to exclude transgender people from joining the clergy was narrowly voted down, but the body will meet again in 2012 and could change the policy, which could mean he would lose his ordination.

Weekley said he hopes to be able to educate other members of the church and act as an advocate for openness before the next meeting.

There is currently no law in the Methodist rule book, the "Book of Discipline," that disqualifies transgender people from joining the clergy, said Bishop Robert T. Hoshibata, Episcopal leader of the Oregon-Idaho Conference.