Midday Roundup: Methodists reinstate pastor after gay marriage dispute

Refrocked. The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church (UMC) has voted to reinstate Pastor Frank Schaefer, who was defrocked last December after presiding over his son’s same-sex wedding ceremony. The decision is based on a technicality; the Council ruled a lower church court issued an improper penalty against Schaefer. The court suspended Schaefer and gave him 30 days to agree to abide by church laws, which prohibit presiding over same-sex marriages, or else be defrocked. The UMC’s decision does not take a stance on same-sex marriage, though the issue is increasingly causing strife within the church. A task force is studying possible changes to church law on the issue and holding panel discussions with Methodists around the country.

Ebola overkill? Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told NBC on Sunday that New York, New Jersey, and Illinois might have overreacted to the latest Ebola case in New York by imposing mandatory 21-day quarantines on healthcare workers returning from West Africa. On Fox News Sunday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said asking people to voluntarilyself-quarantine is not good enough. “We had this situation in New Jersey … with the NBC news crew … that said they were going to self-quarantine, and then two days later, they were out picking up takeout food in Princeton,” Christie said. He ordered a Doctors Without Borders nurse who returned Friday from West Africa quarantined at a Newark hospital. The nurse, who had no symptoms, threatened to sue, and Christie agreed this morning to release her. Meanwhile, a 5-year-old boy who just returned from Guinea is being tested for Ebola at New York’s Bellevue Hospital.

Basement terror alert. After attacks last week in Canada and the United States, government officials agree “lone wolf” terrorists are the biggest domestic terror concern. They also agree the increase in attacks, including the shooting on Canada’s Parliament Hill or the hatchet attack on police in Queens, New York, is a sign of the effectiveness of the Islamic State’s online propaganda campaign. The senior editor of Islamic Monthly, Arsalan Iftikhar, downplayed the terror threat on NBC: “We’re dealing with loner idiots who are sitting in their tidy whities in their mother’s basement, playing Call of Duty on their X-box 4, who are disenfranchised, disengaged from the rest of the community.” But Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said this weekend those are exactly the people we should be worried about because they are “very hard to stop.”

Snowed. Two Christian schools in Sioux Falls, S.D., have been asked to paint over religious messages students put on a city-owned snow plow blade. Students at Sioux Falls Lutheran School painted the blades for the city’s Paint the Plows program. One blade featured the words “Jesus Christ;” the other said “Happy birthday Jesus.” Members of Siouxland Free Thinkers complained, saying religious messages don’t belong on city vehicles. Principal Derek Bult said he was upset when he learned that his students had to redecorate the blade or the city would paint over it, noting they didn’t have time to come up with a new design. “You may paint over our plow, but that doesn’t change what we feel or what we believe,” Bult said.

WORLD Radio’s Jim Henry and Steve Coleman contributed to this report.