I’m a United Methodist and former clergy, and the last 5 years have been whiplash.
We’ve spent 50 years trying to make the denomination more inclusive and accepting towards homosexuals, but for some organizational reasons (primarily a heavy-African vote in the worldwide governing body of the church) it’s been difficult, and the more “traditional” wing of the church has been dragging us backwards.
We have our global conference (basically the legislative session of the church) every 4 years. In 2012 it got very heated. In 2016 the debate got downright nasty to the point where they had to calm a special session just to debate homosexuality in 2019 simply so the church could move on with the rest of the conference.
2019 was really, really bad. The traditionalists got their way on every issue.
The biggest blow was changing how church trials worked. As it was, “practicing” homosexuals were barred from the clergy, and officiating over a gay marriage was a de-frockable offense under church law. But that wasn’t that bad in reality, because Methodist Clergy are very educated and overwhelmingly disagreed with the rules, so when it came to a church trial the jury (made up of other clergy) refused to punish. In 2019, they changed the rule to remove clergy’s option to not punish.
The only ray of hope was the recommendation of a path to allow individual churches to leave the church but keep their land. It was basically the admission that the church was going to go through a schism. It looked for all the world that those who wanted to be more inclusive would have to start a new denomination.
But then the weirdest thing happened.
The ultra-conservatives were still mad even though they’d won. They were so mad, in fact, that they wanted to get rid of those who had opposed them. But there was no way to kick out churches who weren’t controlled by Fox News. So they huffed and puffed and got so angry they decided to start their own super-bigoted Republican church anyway. They called it the Global Methodist Church since they figured the rest of the world would follow them and they left the denomination starting in 2021 when the path for disaffiliation opened up. In all, they got about a quarter of the US churches - mostly small rural churches that depended heavily on funding from the larger organization they were leaving…
A few weeks ago the 2024 conference was held. Due to Vivid it was the first real conference we’d had since 2016.
Gay marriage, gay clergy, and accepting homosexuality as being a-OK all passed with over 90% support. Everyone who had voted against it before had either left the denomination or been so repulsed by the fringe actors who had that they changed their position.
I’m a United Methodist and former clergy, and the last 5 years have been whiplash.
We’ve spent 50 years trying to make the denomination more inclusive and accepting towards homosexuals, but for some organizational reasons (primarily a heavy-African vote in the worldwide governing body of the church) it’s been difficult, and the more “traditional” wing of the church has been dragging us backwards.
We have our global conference (basically the legislative session of the church) every 4 years. In 2012 it got very heated. In 2016 the debate got downright nasty to the point where they had to calm a special session just to debate homosexuality in 2019 simply so the church could move on with the rest of the conference.
2019 was really, really bad. The traditionalists got their way on every issue.
The biggest blow was changing how church trials worked. As it was, “practicing” homosexuals were barred from the clergy, and officiating over a gay marriage was a de-frockable offense under church law. But that wasn’t that bad in reality, because Methodist Clergy are very educated and overwhelmingly disagreed with the rules, so when it came to a church trial the jury (made up of other clergy) refused to punish. In 2019, they changed the rule to remove clergy’s option to not punish.
The only ray of hope was the recommendation of a path to allow individual churches to leave the church but keep their land. It was basically the admission that the church was going to go through a schism. It looked for all the world that those who wanted to be more inclusive would have to start a new denomination.
But then the weirdest thing happened.
The ultra-conservatives were still mad even though they’d won. They were so mad, in fact, that they wanted to get rid of those who had opposed them. But there was no way to kick out churches who weren’t controlled by Fox News. So they huffed and puffed and got so angry they decided to start their own super-bigoted Republican church anyway. They called it the Global Methodist Church since they figured the rest of the world would follow them and they left the denomination starting in 2021 when the path for disaffiliation opened up. In all, they got about a quarter of the US churches - mostly small rural churches that depended heavily on funding from the larger organization they were leaving…
A few weeks ago the 2024 conference was held. Due to Vivid it was the first real conference we’d had since 2016.
Gay marriage, gay clergy, and accepting homosexuality as being a-OK all passed with over 90% support. Everyone who had voted against it before had either left the denomination or been so repulsed by the fringe actors who had that they changed their position.
It’s been a ride.