The General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) voted last week to lift its bans on clergy performing weddings for same-sex couples or being openly gay or lesbian.
The policy change comes after some 7,600 U.S. congregations left the UMC because, while their church officially held that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching" and prohibited same-sex weddings and homosexual clergy, church leaders had indefinitely delayed implementing a 2019 vote to defrock an married lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto. Their departure from the UMC was facilitated by an agreement allowing congregations to take their church properties with them. (In the UMC and many other denominations, it is the national church that owns a member church's real estate, not the individual congregation itself.)
UMC General Conferences convene every four years. The 2019 conference was extraordinary, called specifically to address the Mountain Sky Conference's election of Bishop Oliveto. The regularly scheduled 2020 conference was cancelled just as the whole world was shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UMC's new policy does not, of course, require member clergy to perform same-sex weddings; the 447 to 233 vote indicates that their will continue to be some dissenters. The change will be more forcibly protested by Methodist clergy in Africa, many of whom apparently failed to attend this year's General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. They could stay within the UMC, but most likely will be afraid that gay cooties will keep them out of heaven if they do.
Will the United Methodist Church end up becoming the Divided Methodist Church?
And whose side will get to run the DMC?
No comments:
Post a Comment