Norman Kansfield, 83, Dies; Defrocked for His Daughter’s Same-Sex Wedding
For most of his life, the Rev. Dr. Norman Kansfield seemed to personify the Reformed Church in America. To an extraordinary extent, he had grown up in the world of his church’s 17th-century Dutch founders.
His hometown, South Holland, Ill., consisted largely of descendants of Dutch immigrants who still spoke the language and farmed onion seedlings.
Social distinctions did not rest on who kept the Sabbath — pretty much everybody did that — so much as on who peeled their potatoes on Saturdays, in order to more fully avoid labor on Sundays. (His family would not so much as mow the lawn.) Dr.
Kansfield grew up to be a professor of theology, the denomination’s most esteemed rank, and president of the school that trains its ministers, the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, which is the oldest seminary in the United States.
