The Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church has concluded its investigation into the Rev. Stephanie Remington’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein and lifted her four-month suspension, the conference announced last Thursday.
Remington will not face disciplinary action but has been granted a change in clergy status that bars her from serving as pastor of a United Methodist congregation for the time being.
She was suspended in March after church officials learned she had worked for Epstein — as an administrative assistant from August to December 2018, then as a temporary property manager on his private island through May 2019 — without disclosing the employment to the conference.
Remington’s employment came more than a decade after Epstein had already served time for sex crimes involving teenagers, but just weeks before his final arrest on child sex trafficking charges that summer. He died in federal custody a month later.
While Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide, polling shows that many believe he was murdered due to his connections to high-profile public figures.
“This matter raised serious concerns about judgment and public witness,” said Bishop Robert Farr of the Missouri Conference of the UMC, who oversaw the investigation into Remington. “Clergy are entrusted with a visible and accountable ministry, and employment with a company connected to Jeffrey Epstein is deeply troubling given what is now known about the scope of his crimes and the harm done to his victims.”
While Remington won’t face disciplinary action, she will no longer serve as a clergy member in the Missouri Conference. She has been granted a change in status to “honorable location,” which means that she will “not be appointed to serve at a United Methodist congregation” and that “any future ministry role in The United Methodist Church would require the appropriate review and approval under [UMC] law.”
When news of Remington’s suspension first broke earlier this year, the Missouri Conference noted that she had worked in extension ministry through the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary while she worked for Epstein and had served in extension ministry as recently as 2025. Wesley Theological Seminary acknowledged that Remington “served as a part-time contractor in 2017 and 2018 and has not been employed by the seminary since that time.”
In addition to examining Remington’s ties to Epstein, the investigation conducted by the Missouri Conference also probed her “ministerial status, reporting and appointment relationship, including inconsistencies in the Conference’s understanding of her extension ministry relationship with the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary.”
Another focus of the investigation was “areas where the Missouri Conference needs to strengthen its documentation and supervisory practices related to clergy serving in extension ministry appointments beyond the local church.” The Missouri Conference insisted that it was “reviewing its internal procedures to ensure clearer annual documentation of appointment relationships, reporting expectations and supervisory accountability for clergy serving in these ministry settings, including expectations for bi-vocational employment.”
For her part, Remington assured the publication United Methodist News that she “never saw anything” related to abuse during her time working for Epstein, adding, “I knew him for the last nine months of life, well after he served time for the things that he was accused of doing.”
Remington also defended working for Epstein despite his criminal record. “Jesus got into a lot of trouble for the company he kept, but he didn’t let that trouble pressure him into rejecting the people who, by their standards, did not deserve to be human,” she said at the time.
“Social death is just another kind of murder. He opened his heart and his mind to them, and they opened their tables and alabaster jars to him. Is Jeffrey not among their kind?” she asked. “Of course, they did not deserve a second chance. None of us do. That’s not how grace works.”
Remington added, “If association with sinners makes one guilty, then the Church is in an awful state. I have heard the confessions of the people in my pews. I know their stories. We’re just people. The humankind.”
Epstein’s name has dominated the headlines over the past year amid the DOJ’s release of the Epstein Files, which include flight logs, names of individuals and entities connected to the late billionaire, legal information and details about his death. A search of the DOJ’s Epstein Library reveals that Remington’s name appears over 1,863 times.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
