United Methodists Not So United After All—Breakup Inevitable Over LGBT
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There’s at least one area of agreement among conservative, centrist, and liberal leaders in the United Methodist Church: America’s largest mainline Protestant denomination is on a path toward likely breakup over differences on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBT pastors, the AP reports.
The differences have simmered for years, and came to a head in February at a conference in St. Louis where delegates voted 438-384 for a proposal called the Traditional Plan, which strengthens bans on LGBT-inclusive practices.
A majority of US-based delegates opposed that plan and favored LGBT-friendly options, but they were outvoted by US conservatives teamed with most of the delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines.
Many believe the vote will prompt an exodus from the church by liberal congregations that are already expressing their dissatisfaction over the move. Some churches have raised rainbow flags in a show of LGBT solidarity. Some pastors have vowed to defy the strict rules and continue to allow gay weddings in Methodist churches.
Churches are withholding dues payments to the main office in protest, and the UMC’s receipts were down 20% in March, according to financial reports posted online.
“It’s time for some kind of separation, some kind of amicable divorce,” said James Howell, pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, who posted a video assailing the proposal for its “real meanness.”
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This is merely a quibble between those who claim that dancing in not sex in a standing position which is the only things that separates Methodists from Baptists.
LOL! That’s about it.
I’d like to see them all breakup. World will be a better place.
Fuck them. Let them eat themselves from the inside out and disappear. I saw some survey or another the other day that said no religion has taken over talibangelical in numbers here in the good ole yooo esss of a.
Despite trying to frame Christianity as a wellspring of humanist morality, it isn’t and never was. Our modern concepts of justice, decency and even Democracy are simply not compatible with what has been a religion based on authoritarianism and hostile to that basic freedom which has been called “heresy” at least since it became a Roman religion. It cannot change. To admit that things they’ve persecuted since the beginning is to admit failure and that would end the religion. To admit that either God’s laws are morally wrong or that their interpretation has been wrong and Christianity is too fallible to rely on – which is fatal to the whole concept of a religion and faith and religious certainty.
I have to ask what part of Christian humanism is not simply humanism and whether it wouldn’t remain so if one accepts that god is either absent or an artifact originating from instinct and the greed of priests and shamans.
In 2019 the Jesus Freaks are still arguing over LGBT issues. Why does this not surprise me?