For many of his life, the Rev. Dr. Norman Kansfield appeared to personify the Reformed Church in America.
To a rare extent, he had grown up on this planet of his church’s Seventeenth-century Dutch founders. His hometown, South Holland, Sick., consisted largely of descendants of Dutch immigrants who nonetheless spoke the language and farmed onion seedlings. Social distinctions didn’t relaxation on who saved the Sabbath — just about everyone did that — a lot as on who peeled their potatoes on Saturdays, in an effort to extra absolutely keep away from labor on Sundays. (His household wouldn’t a lot as mow the garden.) —
Dr. Kansfield grew as much as be a professor of theology, the denomination’s most esteemed rank, and president of the college that trains its ministers, the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, which is the oldest seminary in the US. On particular events, he gave sermons in Dutch.
So when his daughter, Ann Kansfield, was contemplating popping out of the closet to him, she was nervous. After she did, Dr. Kansfield went past responding with heat acceptance. Years later, in June 2004, he insisted that he officiate at her wedding ceremony, held in Massachusetts weeks after the state legalized same-sex marriage.
“Clad in his church vestments, he learn with emotion from the Ebook of Isaiah a couple of God who extends his kingdom of affection past Israel to cowl foreigners and eunuchs,” The Star-Ledger of Newark reported.
There had been no different recognized occasion of a Reformed minister officiating at a same-sex wedding ceremony. Earlier the identical 12 months, the Basic Synod, the church’s annual assembly, had voted to affirm the definition of marriage “because the union of 1 man and one lady.”
Dr. Kansfield advised The Bergen File that he realized his selection may provoke a “dust-up.” It led to rather more: his termination as seminary president, the primary trial of a Reformed minister in 100 years, his defrocking, and the beginning of an existential debate amongst church members, which helped to provide a significant schism almost 20 years later.
“Individuals presume I’ve been on a campaign,” he advised The Related Press in 2005. “Actually, I’m a conservative theologian. I’d not do something that goes in opposition to the church.”
Conservative, maybe — however not typical.
”He would say his orthodox theology is what assured he grew to become a social liberal,” his daughter, who’s herself a graduate of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, stated in a telephone interview.
Dr. Kansfield died on Jan. 27 at a hospital in Manhattan. The trigger was problems of a collection of infections, together with pneumonia, his daughter stated. He was 83.
His dying was not broadly reported, and The New York Occasions was solely not too long ago knowledgeable of it.
Inside days, information of Ann’s wedding ceremony unfold amongst members of the Reformed church. In January 2005, the seminary’s board fired him. On the Basic Synod in June, he went on trial.
“I assist marriage — marriage in its broadest potential context in order that it may well do essentially the most good for our entire society,” he stated in his testimony. He added that ministers weren’t requested “to pledge ourselves to the unity, purity and peace of the church, however to the issues that make for unity, purity and peace.”
The Synod discovered in any other case. It pronounced Dr. Kansfield responsible of failing to maintain his ordination vows, to heed the admonitions of the Basic Synod and to maintain the religion of the denomination. He misplaced his standing as a professor of theology and was defrocked as a minister. He ready to maneuver out of the 139-year-old president’s dwelling on the seminary grounds.
“I’ve by no means lived other than the Reformed Church,” he advised The File.
Norman Jay Kansfield was born on March 24, 1940, in East Chicago, Ind. His father, Orval, was a truck driver, and his mom, Margaret (Norman) Kansfield, was a secretary on the native workplace of the Reformed Church in South Holland, the place the household moved shortly after Norm’s delivery.
As a younger man, he earned 5 tutorial levels, learning two topics, library science and faith (primarily the Outdated Testomony).
He took pre-seminary coursework at Hope Faculty in Michigan, the place he developed a crush on a younger lady named Mary Klein when he noticed her taking part in a hymn on a piano inside a sorority home. He graduated in 1962, and so they married in 1965.
Dr. Kansfield was a pastor and librarian at numerous establishments within the Midwest and the Northeast. He extolled the previous of the Reformed Church — believing that, centuries in the past, theology had been a matter of on a regular basis dialog for the frequent man — but his mannequin minister of latest instances was a progressive determine: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
His traditionalism and egalitarianism discovered twin expression within the uncommon syntax he used to explain the mission of the church in a 1993 interview with The Central Jersey Residence Information Tribune: to current “a brand new imaginative and prescient of what society was meant to be.”
After he was defrocked, he taught theology at Drew College in New Jersey and served as theologian in residence at Zion United Church of Christ in Stroudsburg, Pa., the place he and his spouse moved. He remained there even after the Rockland-Westchester governing physique of the Reformed Church voted to revive him to the workplace of minister in 2011.
Ann Kansfield was ordained as a Reformed minister across the identical time. She works as a chaplain with the New York Metropolis Hearth Division and as a minister at Greenpoint Church in Brooklyn, alongside together with her spouse, the church’s co-pastor, the Rev. Jennifer Aull.
In 2022, theological debates throughout the Reformed Church about homosexual rights led greater than 40 congregations to separate from the primary group, which in the end went in a much less restrictive course, Christianity At the moment reported.
Along with his daughter, Dr. Kansfield is survived by his spouse; their son, John; and three grandchildren.
There have been non-theologial points with Ann and Jennifer’s wedding ceremony — drinks weren’t served to friends upon arrival on the celebration venue, and the individuals who had been speculated to go round slices of cake failed to indicate up. Dr. Kansfield was too comfortable to care. He gave the place an unlimited tip.
He had felt pleased with getting by means of the entire service with out tearing up, he advised NPR in 2012. When it ended, two ladies approached him. They stated it was the primary church service they’d felt genuinely a part of in years. They had been a lesbian couple. At that time, Dr. Kansfield may comprise himself now not: He wept.
