UNITED METHODISTS REMOVE BAN ON LGBTQ CLERGY

The United Methodist Church General Conference, meeting in Charlotte NC, today voted overwhelmingly to removal all bans on the ordinations and ministerial postings of open homosexual persons. The vote was 692 to 51. The delegates also voted to allow same-sex weddings in the local churches.

Read the AP article on this HERE .

The interface of homosexuality and the church has been an ongoing issue in the Methodist world in the past few years. Indeed, a quarter of all UMC churches in the United States have seceded from the denomination primarily over this issue..

There is an interesting contrast in the ways the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church dealt with the issue of homosexuality in the past few decades. TEC removed barriers to the ordinations of homosexual persons by vote of General Convention thirty years ago. After this was put into practice, with the 2003 vote to approve of an open and partnered gay man as a bishop, the most conservative dioceses began voting to leave TEC. This initiated sixteen years (2008-2023) of bitter warfare in the courts between TEC and the rebellious parties over ownership of the dioceses and of the local church properties. Five dioceses voted to leave TEC. The outcome of all the litigation was roughly fifty-fifty. It was that way in South Carolina where after Byzantine legal maneuvering over a decade, TEC wound up with the historic diocese and a minority of contested local parishes while the secessionists won the bulk of the local churches.

Several years ago, the United Methodists set up a process whereby local churches could leave the denomination under advantageous terms of property ownership. Over 7,000 local churches in America voted to disaffiliate with UMC. Now, as of today, the majority remaining in the UMC codified the institutional equality and inclusion of homosexual persons. The Methodist approach was the reverse of what TEC had done (secession to rights v. rights to secession). One can only wonder what impact the experience of TEC had on the subsequent actions of the UMC concerning homosexuality.

Nevertheless, today's votes in the UMC convention mark another landmark in the forward progress of human rights in the context of the mainline churches in America.