Why Rev. Jane Spahr Should Be a National Religious Icon

Imagine being persecuted for celebrating love. Sound like the spirit of a Shakespeare tragedy?

If only this were a story of fiction. Meet Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, a retired Presbyterian minister in California. Today, Rev. Spahr will be hauled into a Presbyterian court, and put on trial for potentially violating the constitution of the Presbyterian Church. What did she do that was so heinous?

She married 16 same-sex couples in California in 2008, between the time that the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, and the time that California voters passed Proposition 8. Yes, while same-sex marriage was legal during that brief window of time, it remains questionable, according to some, whether the Presbyterian Church gave its pastors permission to perform same-sex marriages.

But staying on the sidelines when there were scores of people in love and willing to commit to one another was not something that Rev. Spahr was willing to do.

"As a matter of my conscience," Rev. Spahr says, she "cannot be a part of … people being seen as second class or less than. I have seen the violence it has done."

Rev. Spahr's trial starts today in Napa, California. During the course of the trial, 11 of the same-sex couples that Rev. Spahr married will testify, trying to convince the Presbyterian Church that by honoring their relationships, Rev. Spahr did nothing but practice the inclusive love and freedom that should be at the heart of Presbyterian Church doctrine.

Last week, Rev. Spahr was on MSNBC, where she remained calm despite being the center of controversy within the church.

"As pastors, we should be able to marry the people who come to us. For me, I take over a year to meet with couples, to work with them, to talk with them about their love," Spahr said. "What I say to people: it doesn't matter to me what your sexual orientation is, it matters to me whether you have a healthy, just, loving relationship."

Shouldn't those tenets be what all minsters, regardless of denomination, place at the core of their decisions on whether or not to marry a couple, gay or straight?

Perhaps in a dose of gross irony, as noted by the Los Angeles Times, the complaint that started Rev. Spahr's trial proceedings was submitted anonymously to Presbyterian authorities. Meaning that the person who technically got this ball rolling wasn't brave enough in their own religious convictions to put their name down on the complaint. Talk about an act of cowardice.

Whatever the result of this trial, one thing is clear: Rev. Jane Spahr should be celebrated as a national religious icon. In a day and age where the national religious figures that get all media attention do so because they blame Haiti for bringing on their own earthquakes, or because they accuse President Obama of being a Muslim, or because they fight like hell to demonize immigrants and LGBT folks and those considered "the other," it seems like our national consciousness could use a woman like Rev. Spahr.

Someone so sure of her principles, and so sure that love is the ultimate test for any faith, that she's not willing to let anything cloud it.

Photo credit: Rev. Jane Spahr Trial Updates