The global United Methodist Church began its once-every-four-years legislative meeting this week and the focus has been on whether to change or keep the denomination’s rejection of homosexuality. But a broader question is up for a vote: What do the 13 million Methodists from Africa to Asia to America have in common?
In a globalized, polarized time, it’s a question that could be asked of faith groups from Catholics and Jews to Muslims and Mormons. It will be put to the United Methodists, with hundreds of delegates from around the world hashing out more than 1,000 proposals on topics from abortion and whether to digitize hymnals to potentially divesting from businesses connected with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Disputes over human sexuality appear to many to be most pressing. This is in part because United Methodists have not changed their stance on homosexuality, whereas much of mainline Protestantism has in some way. The United Methodist Book of Discipline – the group’s book of law and doctrine – calls homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The church has also seen huge controversy in recent years as pastors have begun openly bucking the ban on officiating at same-gender weddings, and high-profile disciplinary trials have embarrassed many Methodists.
In a show of rebellion, 15 LGBT United Methodist clergy and clergy-in-training made a show of coming out recently, and a Cincinnati pastor married his longtime male partner in a ceremony marked with talk of the conference. Conservative Methodists have in recent years made an intense push to hold such clergy – even those who do it privately – accountable with trials.
Pennsylvania Pastor Frank Schaefer was tried in a conference center gym in 2013, convicted and stripped of his credentials for officiating privately at his son’s wedding years earlier. He was later reinstated after an appeal.
According to the United Methodist News Service, the conference will consider more than 100 pieces of legislation on human sexuality. Delegates from dozens of countries will consider the possibility of full inclusion of LGBT people, the “agree to disagree” option, whether gay people can be ordained, officiate at weddings, whether weddings can be held in Methodist churches and whether the current wording should remain.
United Methodists are wary of divisions within the church. And they are also cautious about change. But it is inevitable because of the way the church has spread.
While the denomination was formally created in the United States in 1968, its roots go much farther back to England.
This month, 30 percent of delegates come from Africa, where Methodists tend to be much more conservative on issues of homosexuality. About half of members in the denomination are from the United States.
The United Methodist News Service lists “church structure and powers” as the first of top, broad issues to be voted upon this month. The most broad is a measure asking if Methodists “can create a global Book of Discipline that says: ‘Here’s what we agree upon worldwide,’ and then one for each area of the world to help us deal with our own cultures,” said the Rev. Tom Berlin, a delegate from the Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia. “The issue is: What questions belong to the whole, and what questions belong to the parts?”
