Rev. David Meredith is a United Methodist clergyperson, activist, and long-time advocate for LGBTQ inclusion whose ministry and personal life became a defining witness in the struggle for justice within the West Ohio Conference of The United Methodist Church and across the denomination as a whole. Born in 1956 in Highland County, Ohio, he grew up in the Fall Creek Friends Meeting, where the Quaker understanding of the Divine Light shaped his earliest experience of God. His childhood was steeped in music, community, and the assurance that he was loved.
After moves to Lancaster, Ohio, and later Shepherd, Michigan, David’s call to ministry grew through the life of rural and small-town Methodist congregations, youth group leadership, music, and formative experiences at church camp. His sense of vocation continued through his years at The Ohio State University and his early career as a music educator in Beaver, Ohio, where he became active in Emmanuel United Methodist Church and first felt a persistent call to ordained ministry.
David attended Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City beginning in 1981, where a supportive community allowed him to integrate his spiritual life and his identity as a gay man. He was ordained a Deacon in 1983 and an Elder in 1987 in the West Ohio Conference. His early ministry included campus/young adult ministry and work in HIV and AIDS retreats and care networks, bringing him into close relationship with communities living through the trauma and stigma of the AIDS crisis.
His appointments included significant pastorates at Oxford United Methodist Church, Armstrong Chapel United Methodist Church, Inter Parish Ministry, Broad Street United Methodist Church in Columbus, and Clifton United Methodist Church in Cincinnati. Across these settings he led ministries in youth ministry, social justice, LGBTQ inclusion, homelessness, interfaith collaboration, reproductive freedom, anti-war and anti-death-penalty advocacy, and urban engagement. He also participated in national LGBTQ Methodist movements, including Reconciling Ministries Network, Affirmation, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Soulforce-related protests and arrests, and clergy organizing. He participated in every General Conference from 1984-2024 and led the witness for lgbtq justice in Pittsburgh (2004), Ft. Worth (2008), Tampa (2012), Portland (2016), and Charlotte (2020/2024).
David’s relationship with Jim, his partner and later spouse, shaped his public witness. Beginning in the early 1990s they built a shared life while navigating significant institutional resistance, including a 1993 refusal to appoint David as long as they lived together. Communities of colleagues in West Ohio helped them meet the medical and financial challenges of Jim’s HIV diagnosis in an era before widely effective treatment. Their relationship endured through long years living in separate cities, forced by conference appointment patterns.
Beginning in 2012, David returned to Cincinnati to be with Jim and to serve Clifton UMC as pastor and to serve as Urban Ministry Director for the Ohio River Valley District. In 2013 he led the congregation to establish a marriage policy for blessing same-sex couples and supporting clergy who presided while facing complaints and charges from the United Methodist Church. The creation of the Melvin Talbert Award followed - a recognition of “Biblical Obedience” in the face of unjust law in the UM Book of Discipline. It celebrated the leadership of persons across the denomination who significantly impacted the UMC by their leadership for lgbtq inclusion. In 2014 he co-founded JustLove, an intersectional, interfaith, and intergenerational justice collaboration. The 2015 Obergefell decision by the U.S. Supreme Court making legal marriages between same-gender couples throughout the country opened the way for David and Jim to legally marry, which they did in 2016 at Broad Street UMC.
Their marriage triggered a new round of church complaints that led to a multiyear judicial process. David was acquitted on all charges except having been married in an United Methodist church. The conference appealed the acquittal, sending the case to the North Central Jurisdiction Committee on Appeals. Large communities of supporters gathered at each stage, even as hearings took place behind locked doors closed to family and supporters. The Judicial Council upheld the appeal which continued to hang over David’s head through continued service to the Clifton UMC and the Ohio River Valley District. It also continued during his service on the Protocol (fifteen leaders in the UMC tasked with proposing a resolution to the conflict and impact of the denominations prohibitions against persons who were lgbtq, their loves, pastors, and ministries.) David was the sole gay clergyperson at the table. The proposal instituted an abeyance on all complaints, charges, and judicial processes related to the prohibitions. It was a temporary hold that David lived under through his retirement in 2022.
The 2024 General Conference of The UMC became a moment when the wider church finally recognized the truth people like David had carried for decades. The work he had done through protests, retreats, congregational ministry, LGBTQ organizing, judicial processes, and public witness created a foundation the church could no longer ignore. The courage he showed in living openly, the cost he bore in the complaint and appeals process, and the faithfulness he sustained in every appointment were part of the groundwork that made later change possible. When the denomination eventually moved toward a more honest and inclusive expression of its life, it did so on paths David and many others had already walked, often at great personal risk. The fruits that emerged in 2024 were not sudden. They were the harvest of years of truth telling, persistence, and love lived out long before the institution knew how to honor it.
Throughout decades of ministry, David’s life remained marked by a deep commitment to pastoral care, public witness, justice work, and the conviction that truth telling belongs at the heart of Christian leadership. Now in retirement, his story stands as both a record of institutional struggle and a testament to the enduring power of love, community, and calling.
(This biographical statement provided by David Meredith.)
Biography Date: December 2025
“Rev. David Meredith | Profile”, LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, accessed December 03, 2025, https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/david-meredith.