Deen Thompson’s Spiritual Journey Comes Full Circle

by

Ordained Ministry

Louisiana Annual Conference | Dec. 1, 2024

Bishop Delores J. Williamston and Rev. Ali Young traveled Sunday to Nashville, Tennessee, to present Rev. Deen Thompson with a stole, marking his reinstatement as an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church. The presentation, held at Edgehill United Methodist Church, symbolized the culmination of Deen’s remarkable journey of faith, resilience, and reconciliation. For Bishop Williamston, the trip was not just a gesture but a deeply intentional act. “This moment was important for Deen, so it was important period,” she said. “When the church seeks to make things right, it must do so with intention and care.”

Deen Thompson’s story reflects a profound healing moment for both Deen and The Louisiana Conference. After nearly 50 years, the Conference publicly acknowledged the harm caused by his removal from ministry because he is gay. In returning his ordination, the Church affirmed Deen’s unwavering faith and love for God, even during the most difficult seasons of his life. “Deen’s story teaches us about resilience, the importance of repentance, and the power of God’s love to heal and transform,” Bishop Williamston shared. “It challenges us to remain open to growth and to embody grace in all we do.”

As the stole was draped over Deen’s shoulders, Bishop Williamston told the Edgehill United Methodist Church community that this is a symbol of the church’s commitment to reconciliation and its willingness to embrace growth. “Deen’s story inspires us to live into our mission of making disciples and transforming the world with grace and humility,” Bishop Williamston said. This moment, shared in Deen’s church home, was a celebration not just of one man’s faithfulness but of the church’s ability to grow beyond its past.

It's a story that began under an oak tree in Eunice, Louisiana, and continued through decades of faithfulness in the face of exclusion.

During the Clergy Session of the 2024 Louisiana Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, Rev. Deen Thompson’s ordination was reinstated, effective July 1, 2024. The following day, the 86-year-old Deen – now living in Nashville as an openly gay man – retired, capping a remarkable spiritual journey that began in Eunice in 1938 with a baptism under an oak tree, a church youth camp calling to the ministry and six United Methodist Church ministry assignments throughout Louisiana.

That journey seemed to hit a dead end in 1985 when Deen was removed as pastor of Kenner United Methodist Church. Deen’s confusion about his sexuality led to a conflict with the Book of Discipline, which stated that homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.” He was coerced into surrendering his ordination credentials, and his marriage to his wife of 23 years ended in divorce. Even though the church left him, Deen never left the church – or his walk with God.

“God has been with me the whole way,” Deen said. “I grew up in the Methodist church. All I knew about God, the goodness of God, was in the Methodist Church.”

Today, Deen and his husband of 17 years, John, live in Nashville, where Deen has been a lay leader at Edgehill United Methodist Church for 30 years. He has a good relationship with his ex-wife and children, and now his relationship with the Louisiana Conference has been restored. 

It’s not because of my love for God; it’s because of God’s love for me. I never stopped being a beloved child of God.

 – Deen Thompson

Rev. Ali Young, Director of Clergy Excellence for The Louisiana Conference, said re-instating Deen was the right thing for the Church to do. "In a very, very small way, to be able to set an institutional wrong right, it was very powerful,” said Young. “This was one man who was faithful despite how the Church treated him. He is a gracious human being.”

Deen was ordained in 1965 and began a string of assignments at churches in Monroe, West Monroe, Sulphur, and Lake Charles. Around 1983, Deen was assigned as pastor to Blackwater United Methodist Church in Baker. Deen said he was enjoying his ministry and his life with his wife and three children, but he began to question his sexuality. During this time, Deen was arrested in a sting operation targeting homosexuals.  “I was put in jail, and I was scared,” Deen recalled. “I didn’t know who to call or what to do.”

Word of the incident spread through the small community of Baker. Deen’s daughter, Connie Cline, remembers it happened about one week before her high school graduation. “It was like the life you knew had changed, ” she said. The morning after, Connie and her mother and brother went to church. Connie remembers feeling self-conscious that morning as she and the other high school seniors were called to the front of the church to be recognized.

“We had just moved from north Louisiana to south Louisiana the summer before my senior year,” she said. “So, in a way, it was sort of a blessing; it was in a place where we really didn’t know everyone.” Deen was removed from Blackwater but was told he could keep his ordination credentials if he took a sabbatical and completed counseling.

Deen, his wife, and his youngest son moved to Nashville while Connie started college at Louisiana Tech. In Nashville, Deen’s counselor helped him deal with the pain of what happened, “but we really did not deal with my homosexuality,” Deen said. “He knew I was a homosexual. I still really didn’t know what it meant to be homosexual. I just knew the feelings I had and the shame that society and the church put on what it meant to be homosexual.”

After a year in Nashville, the counselor recommended to the Louisiana Conference that Deen be assigned as pastor at a different church. Deen said the counselor’s report concluded that “the fear and pain that I had of losing my family and ministry would keep me safe to continue my ministry.” Deen was “depressed and confused, and I still did not know who I was or what it really meant being gay,” but he went along with the plan. He hoped that getting a fresh start at Kenner United Methodist Church “would override the feelings I had as a human being,” he said. “That is not what happened.”

Deen was back in ministry, but he continued struggling with his sexuality. “There was still something missing in my life,” he said. “I needed to be loved for who I was, completely who I was.” Deen’s inner conflict eventually became an issue neither he nor the Louisiana Conference could ignore. The district superintendent “told him to surrender his credentials or go through a very public ordeal,” Rev. Young said. “He surrendered his credentials, but he was not given what we consider to be a fair process.”

He was alone, scared, and needed a job. Except for typing, which he learned to do in Louisiana by preparing Sunday bulletins, his degrees in religion and divinity were only good for being a United Methodist Church minister, the one thing he could no longer do. After two months, he landed a job doing office work at The Upper Room, a global ministry affiliated with The United Methodist Church. “I had to learn how to love myself as a beloved child of God,” Deen said, which meant he began living as an openly gay man. He met John in 1996, and they were married in Canada in 2007.

At Edgehill United Methodist Church, Deen found a welcoming congregation with a strong social justice background. He taught Sunday school, served as a lay delegate to Annual Conferences, was a reserved lay delegate to the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference, and served as a lay person appointed to the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. “I don’t think he ever stopped his ministry,” Connie said.

When the General Conference changed the Book of Discipline and opened the door for Deen and other LGBTQ former ministers to be reinstated, Deen asked The Louisiana Conference to reinstate his ordination. There was no monetary gain for Deen; he just wanted his Louisiana family to have a permanent record of his status as an ordained United Methodist Church minister. Bishop Delores J. Williamston and Rev. Young called Deen immediately after the Clergy Session vote was taken, “and they welcomed me back to the conference,” Deen said. “The call from the bishop and Ali was just a joyful thing. It was a relief.”

Had Deen Thompson been born in 1998 instead of 1938, his United Methodist Church story would be very different.

It's a story that reflects the arc of history in the United States and in The United Methodist Church. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that laws targeting homosexuals, like the ones applied against Deen in the 1980s, are unconstitutional. In 2024, The United Methodist Church removed language from its Book of Discipline that had been used to ban LGBTQ individuals from serving. 

Once the General Conference made that change, it was time for The Louisiana Conference to atone for the way it treated Deen when it forced him to give up his ministry without due process. “One thing Deen told me was that it was important for him to heal with The Louisiana Conference,” Rev. Young said. “He said healing together was important so that we both could move forward into a new thing.”

Today, Deen has “nothing but love” for The United Methodist Church “because that’s where I learned about God and where I learned to love God.” Deen said the years he spent on the outside looking in “just happens to be part of the journey that life dealt me.” He described the actions by the General Conference and Louisiana Conference in 2024 as “a growing step. Growth is learning how to accept and how to grow beyond.” Deen’s reinstatement also is significant to his daughter and her family.

“It gave us comfort,” Connie said. “I was happy for my father and happy for my family that things have kind of come full circle and that more of the healing can be complete for my family.” Anti-LGBTQ attitudes touched Connie again last year when her congregation in Ruston voted to disaffiliate from The United Methodist Church because of the anticipated change in the Book of Discipline.

Her father’s saga “probably is what molded me as a person to take a bigger stance on this issue. I already had my family taken from me over the issue, and now I was having my church taken away from me over it,” Connie said. “It was very hurtful to see so many people jump to the other side. So, when it was time to take a vote on disaffiliation, it was very personal to me and my mom. We didn’t have any control over what happened with my dad, but we had control over the way we voted and the way we responded once our vote was cast.”

During the confidential reinstatement vote, Rev. Young said there was “some sadness there for the lost years of ministry for Deen, some lament that we didn’t have him. He could have been a mentor and a friend to a lot of us.” But, beyond the sadness, “there was some joy that this was happening,” she said. “There were tears, there were a lot of wet eyes. There was hope that the door is finally open. Maybe through the pain of disaffiliation, there’s a silver lining to it.”

Deen is happy and relieved, but he stressed that the reinstatement is not a validation of his work or his life. He already had that. “If I had not been arrested, I might have lived out the rest of my life not as God created me, not as a whole person,” Deen said. “It’s not because of my love for God, it’s because of God’s love for me. I never stopped being a beloved child of God.”

Mark Lambert writes for Louisiana Annual Conference Communications. This article is republished with permission from the conference website.