United Methodists meeting for his or her top legislative assembly Wednesday overwhelmingly overturned a measure that barred gay clergy from ordination within the denomination, a historic step for the nation’s second-largest Protestant body.
With a straightforward vote call and without debate, delegates to the General Conference removed the ban on the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals”—a prohibition that dates to 1984.
With that vote, the worldwide denomination of some 11 million members joins nearly all of liberal Protestant denominations comparable to the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United Church of Christ, which also ordain LGBTQ clergy.
“We’ve singled out one group for discrimination for 52 years,” said Ken Carter, bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference. “And we’ve done that on an understanding of homosexuality whose origins got here when it was understood to be a disease and a disorder.”
That, he said, has now modified. “Increasingly,” he said, “people see that God’s spirit is in gay and lesbian people.”
The morning vote on the motion was part of a bigger series of calendar items voted on in bulk. They also included a motion barring superintendents, or overseers, from punishing clergy for performing a same-sex wedding or prohibiting a church from holding a same-sex wedding, though the actual ban on same-sex weddings in churches has yet to be voted on.
The vote on the calendar items was 692–51, or about 93 percent in favor.
After the vote, LGBTQ delegates and their allies gathered on the ground of the Charlotte Convention Center to sing, hug, cheer, and shed tears. As they sang liberation songs, “Child of God” and “Draw the Circle Wide,” they were joined by Tracy S. Malone, president of the denomination’s Council of Bishops.
The votes reverse prohibitive policies toward LGBTQ people taken on on the denomination’s 2019 General Convention, when delegates doubled down and tightened bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. Most of those 2019 measures have now been reversed.
After the 2019 General Convention, some 7,600 traditionalist churches across the United States—about 25 percent of the whole variety of US churches—left the denomination, fearing that the tightening of the bans wouldn’t hold.
The absence of delegates from churches that left the denomination accounted for the short reversal of the policies.
Wednesday’s vote follows several others approved Tuesday that removed mandatory minimum penalties for clergy who officiate same-sex weddings in addition to a ban on funding for LGBTQ causes that “promote acceptance of homosexuality.”
Tom Lambrecht, vp and general manager of Good News Magazine, a theologically conservative advocacy group, said the votes were expected.
“It indicates a consensus within the United Methodist Church that it desires to go in a rather more liberal pathway,” said Lambrecht, who previously served as a United Methodist pastor.
Lambrecht, who’s observing the conference together with some members from the Wesleyan Covenant Association, one other dissenting group, desired to reopen the time period churches may leave the United Methodist Church with their properties. That exit window closed at the top of 2023.
The General Conference as an alternative voted to eliminate the pathway to disaffiliation that was created in 2019. In one other motion, it directed annual conferences to develop policies for inviting disaffiliated churches to return to the fold, in the event that they wish.
Still to be voted on is a bigger measure to remove from the rule book, called the Book of Discipline, a 1972 addition that claims homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The Book of Discipline also defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Those are expected to be debated as a part of a revision to the denomination’s social principles on Thursday.
US Methodists are hoping that a radical realignment of the worldwide church would give different regions of the church greater equity to tailor church life to their very own customs and traditions, including on issues related to sexuality. That so-called “regionalization” plan passed the General Conference but must still be ratified by individual conferences over the course of the following yr.
The essential group opposing the changes in policy toward LGBTQ were some African delegates, lots of whom live in countries where homosexuality is prohibited. The United Methodist Church is a worldwide denomination and its footprint outside the US is best in Africa.
“We see homosexuality as a sin,” said Forbes Matonga, the pastor of a church in West Zimbabwe. “So to us, it is a fundamental theological difference where we predict others not regard the authority of Scripture.”
