When leaders of the United Methodist Church's Northern California and Nevada region meet here on June 15, they will begin grappling with the unusual decision of whether to charge 68 ministers with violating church law for having jointly blessed a same-sex union in January.

The ceremony was public, held in the convention center here, with more than 1,000 people attending and wide news coverage.

A church spokesman said that never before had so many ministers faced the possibility of a formal charge of disobedience, which could lead to a church trial. Trials themselves, in which a conviction can carry penalties as severe as removal of ministerial credentials, have been rare -- until recently -- in the denomination, which has 8.5 million members.

In March, the Rev. Greg Dell, a minister in Chicago, was suspended from office by an ecclesiastical court after it found him guilty of violating church law for having blessed the union of two gay men.

A year earlier, the Rev. Jimmy Creech, of Omaha, Neb., was acquitted after conducting a ceremony for two women. But Mr. Creech's bishop removed him from his pulpit. An official complaint, which can lead to a trial, has been filed against Mr. Creech for a same-sex union he recently performed in North Carolina.

These events illustrate the escalating tension within many mainline Protestant churches over how to respond to gay and lesbian members. Among Methodists, the second-largest Protestant denomination after the Southern Baptist Convention, the debate has focused on clergy members' blessing same-sex unions.
