With the exodus of many of its most conservative congregations, the United Methodist Church (UMC) has now fractured over the issue of LGBTQ+ inclusion, as did mainline Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches before them. The UMC fracture, however, occurred in reverse order: whereas conservative congregations departed the other denominations when they voted to ordain gays…
Category: United Methodist LGBTQ Policy
Today’s Samaritans
Most of us think of Samaritans favorably. We know that word as part of the phrase “good Samaritan, ” as in laws that offer legal protection to people who have rendered aid to someone in trouble. The idea, of course, is from the parable in Luke 10:30-37, in which a man is robbed, beaten, and…
Stuck
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is being drained of life by two things that have long been its strengths: theological diversity and institutional connection. Since its earliest days, Methodism has made decisions through delegated bodies, and the General Conference (GC) is the sole entity that can set policy and speak for the UMC. This process…
Out of Africa
As noted in my last post, the Commission on a Way Forward (COWF) has completed its work, offering three options for how the United Methodist Church (UMC) may resolve its long-standing division over inclusion of gays and lesbians. Even as the Commission’s report was emerging, conservative United Methodists were already discrediting the process and claiming…
Looking Forward, Looking Back
June is annual conference season, and many conference conversations this year, both formal and informal, address the work of the Commission on a Way Forward (COWF). After wrapping up its work this spring, the Commission submitted to the Council of Bishops three possible plans for addressing the place of gays and lesbians in the United…
Gender Roles
The 1956 General Conference (GC) of the Methodist Church approved full clergy rights for women, 76 years after women first petitioned to be ordained. But it was not female GC delegates that swayed the vote, because men far out-numbered them. As Methodist theologian Georgia Harkness explained, the voice and vote of male delegates carried the…
The Verdict
Last month’s United Methodist Church’s (UMC) Judicial Council decision that Karen Oliveto’s consecration as bishop was a violation of church law left people on both sides of the issue disappointed, to some respect. To conservatives, the ruling did not go far enough, since it failed to remove Oliveto from office for being legally married to…