The Missouri Conference of The United Methodist Church announced Thursday the suspension of an ordained clergy member after discovering she allegedly maintained a working relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, serving as his administrative assistant and later managing his private island during a period spanning 2018 and 2019.

Rev. Stephanie Remington will be suspended for 90 days pending a "supervisory response process," according to the conference. Her name appears more than 1,800 times in the millions of files released by the Department of Justice.

She knew exactly who she was working for.

The timeline tells the story

According to UM News, Remington worked as Epstein's administrative assistant between August and December 2018, then allegedly served as a temporary property manager of his private island from January to May 2019. She admitted she was aware Epstein was a registered sex offender when she accepted the job.

Epstein would not be charged with the sex trafficking of minors until July 2019. The following month, he was discovered dead in his jail cell. Officials ruled that he committed suicide. The Daily Caller reported.

During at least part of her time living on the island, Remington was also working a remote job for the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary as a research manager. She told UM News that she never saw any abuse while working for Epstein and eventually left her job to care for her father, who was diagnosed with cancer.

Here's the detail that makes this story something more than a strange footnote: Remington had previously helped craft an online curriculum on sexual boundaries training for churches. A clergy member who literally designed sexual boundaries training for the church chose to work for one of the most notorious sex offenders in American history.

Grace as a cover story

The revelation came after Rev. Elizabeth Glass Turner, who had been reviewing the millions of DOJ files, alerted the Missouri Conference and UM News to Remington's alleged past employment with Epstein.

Remington, for her part, has offered a theological defense. In a 2019 blog post written under the pseudonym Jerusha Moon, she framed her decision to work for Epstein as a matter of Christian grace:

"And I felt that if I withheld relationship from this man because of his past, then I would be turning my back on every message of hope I have ever preached, every invitation to God's unconditional love I have ever extended, and my calling to be a healing presence in the world for all people."

In statements to UM News, she leaned further into the comparison:

"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 went further still:

"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?"

There is a difference between extending grace and drawing a paycheck. Jesus dined with tax collectors. He did not manage their estates. The theological sleight of hand here is breathtaking: reframing paid employment on a convicted sex offender's private island as a ministry of radical love.

The politics she let slip

Remington also offered a revealing comment about Epstein's political connections. She told UM News:

"Half of America wants to tie him to the Clintons. The other half wants to tie him to Trump."

Then the kicker:

"Their hunch is correct. Jeffrey was very proud to have direct lines to all his presidents."

That casual admission, delivered as though it were a piece of cocktail party trivia, speaks to just how comfortable Remington became in Epstein's orbit. She's not horrified by this. She's narrating it like someone recounting a dinner anecdote about an interesting acquaintance.

A church that should be asking harder questions

Remington has not been accused of any crime. That matters, and it should be stated plainly. But a 90-day suspension from a denomination that ordained her feels remarkably gentle given the scope of what's been alleged.

This is a woman who:

• Knowingly accepted employment from a registered sex offender
• Managed property on his private island
• Wrote a pseudonymous blog post defending the arrangement in theological language
• Designed sexual boundaries training for churches before and after this period
• Casually relayed Epstein's boasts about his political access

She told UM News:

"Of course he didn't deserve a second chance. None of us do."

And then:

"But that's not how grace works."

Grace is not the issue. Judgment is. The institutional church has spent years reckoning with failures to protect the vulnerable from predators in positions of trust. Every denomination has grappled with the consequences of looking the other way, of mistaking proximity to evil for an opportunity to minister.

Remington offered one more defense to UM News:

"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 human kind."

The people in her pews were not running a private island for Jeffrey Epstein. The comparison insults them.

Ninety days. That's what the Missouri Conference decided this warrants. Three months for a clergy member whose name appears more than 1,800 times in the Epstein files. The DOJ released millions of documents so the public could finally see what happened. The church saw it. And its answer was a timeout.