Disunited Methodists

I'm not a member if a United Methodist Church, but my family does have multiple ties to the UMC denomination. UMCs vary widely from place to place. For example, my wife grew up in a UMC in California, and she doesn't recall ever hearing presentation or explanation of the core Gospel until she was attending a university and went to a Christian event with a classmate. She was a bit embarrassed that she'd grown up in a church and yet has missed the central point of Christianity: a proper relationship with Jesus Christ.

The LGBTQQAICDEFGHJKMNOPRSUVWXYZ activists within the denomination are trying to move the organization away from applying what has traditionally been understood as the Biblical teachings of there being men and women, marriage uniting a man and a woman, and reserving sex for marriage.

Remember when the activists said that marriage neutering wouldn't have any effect on churches?

There was a conference in February that address this. If you want the bottom line, skip down to my comments at the end.

Here's what Katherine Jackson reported for Reuters, as I found at Yahoo News (which really got crappy after the most recent corporate acquisition).

The United Methodist Church voted on Tuesday to uphold and strengthen its ban on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy in a move likely to alienate large numbers of followers who had pushed for reform.

Ban. Ban is loaded language. We're not talking about secular law here. This is a supposedly Christian organization. There's no more a van on "same-sex marriage" than a ban on squared circles or kosher shrimp.

Also, as we'll see, there is no ban on LGBT clergy.

By a vote of 438-384, delegates from around the world attending the church's General Conference in St. Louis reinforced a United Methodist Church policy established in 1972 stating that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching."

That's all. It doesn't call for interrogations and expulsions. It doesn't call for criminalization. It is a factual statement.

Known as the Traditional Plan, the new policy includes penalties for breaking its rules and asks those who will not obey it to find another church.

It's funny, though, many of the activists won't find another church, because they think of the UMC as "their" church. But is either Christ's or it isn't a Christian church. But they should have no doctrinal or theological reason to feel they must stay in the UMC. But they want to force the UMC to change.

The Traditional Plan is designed to serve as a coherent United Methodist Church policy on LGBT clergy and their marriage practices after years of inconsistency among individual United Methodist churches, with some churches denouncing homosexuality as a sin and others embracing gay and lesbian clergy members.

This is a false dichotomy. It isn't that some churches are embracing people. It is that they are refusing to apply Biblical standards. I don't know of a UMC that wouldn't welcome anyone, as long as those people don't unrepentantly and publicly undermine the standards of the faith. Clergy are especially called to promote following Christ, not their own desires. 

Before opting for the Traditional Plan, delegates rejected an alternative known as the One Church Plan, which would have allowed individual churches to decide whether to perform same-sex marriages and welcome gay and lesbian clergy members. Under that plan, the statement that homosexuality is at odds with Christianity would have been eliminated.

Did you notice the sleight of hand there? She dropped "the practice of" before "homosexuality".

"This is devastating," Lucy Berrier said on Twitter. "Above all, the United Methodist Church is supposed to be a place of grace and service, not this bigotry and hate."

Bigotry and hate? Sexual morals are bigotry and hate? Among other things, churches are supposed to be places where people are aided in following Christ.

"Some churches will begin to do what they desire. They will test this new legislation by performing marriages and some conferences will ordain gay clergy," he said in an interview after the final vote.

So they don't follow denominational hierarchy? What other rules can the churches actively go against?

A 2014 Pew survey found that 60 percent of U.S. Methodists said homosexuality should be accepted by society. About half of U.S. Methodists said they supported same-sex marriage.

How often did Jesus take surveys during His visible ministry? A Christian organization can vote democratically about things for which there isn't clear Biblical instruction, but not about everything.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, remains strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. But a growing number of U.S. Protestant denominations allow gay marriage and clergy, including the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Of course is a "growing" number. When you go from zero to two, that's "growing", right? It is growing because all of them were previously of the same belief. That is why you had things like "Metropolitan" churches.

Of course David Crary and Jim Salter had the Associated Press take.

Unsurprisingly, the "ban" wording was used.

The Rev. Allen Ewing-Merrill, a pastor from Portland, Maine, pledged defiance of the Traditional Plan, tweeting: "I will not participate in your bigotry, sin, and violence."

Perfectly reasonable reaction. It's violence to affirm holy matrimony, apparently.

Of course the Pink Transgender Lady covered the story. And of course they used the "ban" wording.

The primary alternative proposal, called the One Church Plan, was rebuffed in a separate preliminary vote, getting only 47% support. Backed by a majority of the church’s Council of Bishops in hopes of avoiding a schism, it would leave decisions about same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBT clergy up to regional bodies and would remove language from the church’s law book asserting that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

It would do that for now. How long before the Leftists would be compelling the Bible-following churches to comply with their agenda? Remember when it was "Oh, no... don't be ridiculous. Don't fear-monger. We're not asking for marriage! We just want domestic partnerships from our state! We just want union ceremonies in the church!" I remember that.

Among the outspoken supporters of the more permissive One Church Plan was the Rev. Adam Hamilton, a pastor in Leawood, Kan., who said it offered a way for Methodists “to live together — conservatives, centrists and progressives — despite our differences.”

Only until they gain control.

“For me it’s about who’s in God’s love, and nobody’s left out of that,” said Lois McCullen Parr, 60, a church elder from Albion, Mich., who identifies as bisexual and queer. “The Gospel I understand said Jesus is always widening the circle, expanding the circle, so that everyone’s included.”

Everyone is included. Everyone who puts Jesus ahead of their own desires.

NBC decided to follow up, with a headline calling the decision "anti-gay". This is from James Michael Nichols.

When the Rev. Mark Thompson resolved to come out of the closet more than a decade ago, he was 50 years old.

Thompson was a pastor of a United Methodist Church in Lansing, Michigan, with a wife and three adult children. But he had reached a spiritual impasse in which he could no longer deny his true identity. The year was 2008.

So he was born circa 1958, making him 18 in 1976 or so. People knew about "gay" people back then or the claim of gay identity. But he still got married and had three children. For all those years, unless he was cheating, he was living a heterosexual life. Impressive.

I don't call what he was dealing with a spiritual impasse. He wanted something different sexually, and he was no longer willing to deny himself. And I will say that, while he made a mistake in marrying if he really was not attracted to her, he should be commended for at least staying to raise the children. That couldn't have been easy.

In order to continue his ministry, he took a vow of celibacy to operate within the limitations of acceptable behavior dictated by the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline.

If he's really living by that, I don't understand what he personally gained or had eased by coming out. Was his wife too much to deal with? I can at least understand if he thought coming out was necessary to let younger people in the church know that there are others there with the same feelings. But then maybe by "celibacy" they're using the proper meaning (not marrying) rather than chastity (not having sex)?

“There is a message of love and grace within our tradition that transcends any rule made by General Conference,” said Oliveto, who hails from the church’s Western Jurisdiction.

What about the rules in the Bible?

Individual jurisdictions and church bodies must now decide how they will grapple with the “Traditional Plan,” parts of which have been declared unconstitutional by the church’s judicial counsel. The conversation as a whole raises questions as to the future of the larger church body, and the place of LGBTQ folks within it.

What percentage of active members are "LGBTQ", anyway? With all of this strife and focus you'd think it was something like 40%.

Alyss Swanson, a transgender woman who serves as a church deacon in Northern California and also works as a pastoral psychotherapist, sees this firsthand in her practice.

No comment necessary.

Make no mistake, even though tradition carried the day this time. the activists will keep trying. If the  United Methodist Church is going to change to remove language from the church's law book asserting that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching" then they (or any other supposedly Christian denomination doing something similar) also have to declare at least one of the following:

1) The Bible is wrong about sex and marriage.

2) The Bible has been misunderstood about sex and marriage for thousands of years by both Christians and just about everyone else.

3) We don't care what the Bible teaches about sex and marriage.

Pick at least one.If you're going to pick 1 and/or 3, why should anyone believe what the Bible says about continuing to gather and to financially support the church? Why should someone who wants to step out on their spouse take any Biblical counseling to do otherwise? If you pick 1, please do explain exactly what the Bible gets wrong, what the Bible gets right, and how you arrived at your conclusions.

If you're going to pick 2, please explain how so many great Bible scholars got it wrong for all of these years what the right understanding exactly is, and how you arrived at it. Put it down in writing, in detail, so that when you try to change it again, you'll have your own words on which to choke. What exactly DOES the Bible teach about sex and marriage? Spell it out for us, please.

Some try to sidestep these necessary questions by appealing to "love". But what does that mean? Is it loving to encourage people to engage in things that are harmful, whether spiritually or otherwise? Reading the Bible, it appears to me that Jesus had no hesitation in clarifying what the religious leaders of those days, or the people in general, got wrong or askew. Yet there's nothing other than apparently affirmation of the understanding that there are men and there are women, and that marriage unites a man and a woman, and that sex is for marriage. With all of the insinuation and outright claims that have been made that some of the known authors of the New Testament were LGBTQ, how did they miss the opportunity to clear things up?