WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Wendy Scott and Susan Parker exchanged vows Sept. 9 in a same-sex ceremony at Wake Forest University’s Wait Chapel.
The ceremony, the first on the campus in Winston-Salem, N.C., has drawn criticism and threatens the school’s last tie with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
The church is an autonomous body that worships the university’s chapel. Scott and Parker are members of the church, and Lynn Rhoades, associate pastor at Wake Forest Baptist Church, and senior pastor Richard Groves were among six ministers who participated in the ceremony.
After Scott and Parker made their original request to be united in Wait Chapel, heated debates followed as their congregation wrestled with the issue of same-sex ceremonies, an issue that is splitting congregations and denominations nationwide.
Some members of Wake Forest Baptist left the church over the issue. When church members finally gave their ministers the freedom to conduct a same-sex ceremony, a committee drawn from the university’s board of trustees asked that it not be conducted in Wait Chapel.
After outcries from students and faculty members who supported the couple, WFU President Thomas Hearn emphasized that the committee was only making a request, and university chaplain Ed Christmas agreed to schedule toe ceremony.
Both Hearn and Christman are members of Wake Forest Baptist.
The church left the state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention last year. It maintains affiliations with the Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an organization that also lists Wake Forest’s Divinity School as a partner-theology entity.
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