Red Emma's, an anarchist bookstore and café in Baltimore, has come to the rescue of struggling St. Paul's United Methodist Church, whose originally female pastor now claims to be a man.The Baltimore Sun published an entertaining piece on November 27 about the new anarcho-Methodist partnership, though it omitted the transsexual angle. "Anarchists and Methodists may seem like unlikely business partners," the Sun reported understatedly. But this "quirky venture" has brought "new energy" to the small congregation, whose doors might otherwise shut without the infusion of anarchist funds.
"It's a crazy little project," anarchist Kate Khatib of Red Emma's explained to the Sun. "There are not many churches that would reach out to a bunch of crazy anarchists, and there are not many anarchists that would reach out to a bunch of crazy Methodists."...
Red Emma's appears to be mostly a venue for faux radical yuppies to express their interminable angst about leaving in repressive capitalist America. Its programs tend to involve "fair trade" coffee, vegan menus, and lots of lectures against the World Bank. It's all mostly just big talk and very little actual revolution. And seemingly the anarchists are financially better organized than the poor Methodists of St. John's Church and their transsexual pastor.
Oddly, the Sun article declined to mention that St. John's Church pastor the Rev. Drew Phoenix was, until last year, the Rev. Ann Gordon. The Sun's religion reporter over the last year has reportedly extensively about Phoenix's spiritual, hormonal and surgical journey. "Fortunately, today, God's gift of medical science is enabling me to bring my physical body into alignment with my true gender," the Rev. Phoenix explained in June to the local United Methodist Baltimore Washington Annual Conference. "I am making this transition under the care of an excellent medical team. I am grateful for their expertise. They have been instruments of God's grace for me."
The former Ann Gordon embraced the name "Phoenix" to symbolize the rebirth from woman to man, like the ancient Greek mythological creature that arose anew from the ashes. Local United Methodist Bishop John Schol enthusiastically reappointed Phoenix/Gordon back to St. John's Church, making Phoenix The United Methodist Church's first openly transsexual minister, and one of the very few of any denomination in America...
But wait, the weirdness of this deal isn't over with. Read the rest of Mark Tooley's FrontPage Mag report (and there's a lot more to it) right here.
