The United Methodist Church (UMC) voted in late February to tighten restrictions on the church’s stance on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy.
While the church’s bishops asked for a resolution that would have allowed local congregations, conferences and clergy to make their own choices about same-sex marriages and LGBTQ clergy roles, UMC delegates at the church’s General Conference rejected the proposal. Delegates voted instead for the ‘Traditional Plan’, which affirmed the church’s teachings against homosexuality.
Religious experts and other church leaders speculated that the vote would cause a divide in the UMC. ‘This is not a political or social kind of difference,’ said Keith Boyette, the head of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and a main proponent of the Traditional Plan. ‘It is primarily, for us, a theological difference, and the truth that the church has been raised up to share. When a church begins to fracture around its compliance with its doctrine and ethics and discipline, it becomes a house divided. It becomes dysfunctional.’
LGBTQ supporters, however, say the move is a missed opportunity for the church. J. J. Warren, a senior at Sarah Lawrence College who wants to work as a Methodist pastor said: ‘We have brought people to Jesus. They did not know God could love them, because their churches said God didn’t. If we could be a church that brings Jesus to people who are told they can’t be loved, that’s what I want our church to be.’
