Methodists may split on gay clergy
Local leaders find hope as UMC unveils proposal to divide denomination
After years of division over same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy, a proposal announced Friday to split the United Methodist Church gave hope to both conservative and progressive Methodist leaders in Houston.
“It looks like the conclusion of 47 years of disagreement and dysfunction, we’re going to set each other free,” said Rob Renfroe, an evangelical pastor at The Woodlands UMC and president of Good News, a national organization that fights for traditional values in the Methodist Church.
At the other end of the theological spectrum, minister Diane McGehee of Bering United Methodist, a heavily LGBTQ congregation, agreed: “This is reason for hope.”
The devil, per usual, will be in the details. At the denomination’s worldwide conference this May, the proposal — the “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation” — will be discussed, most likely amended and voted upon.
“It absolutely won’t go through without hiccups,” said Jan Lawrence, one of the proposal’s 13 signers and executive director of the Chicago-based group Reconciling Ministries Network, which fights for LGBTQ people’s full inclusion in the United Methodist Church.
“But I’m extremely hopeful,” Lawrence continued. “More hopeful than I have been at any moment before this.”
With 13 million members worldwide, the United Methodist Church is second only to the Catholic Church in its global reach and includes a strong presence in culturally conservative places such as Africa and the Philippines.
Last February, at a heated meeting in St. Louis, 53 percent of church delegates voted to tighten sanctions against same-sex marriage and to preserve the denomination’s official statement that “the practice of homosexuality is in
compatible with Christian teaching.”
But it was clear that vote might lead to a widespread clerical disobedience in the U.S., which is far more accepting of same-sex marriage and where there’s even an official United Methodist Queer Clergy Caucus.
Meeting of all sides
In July, UMC bishop John Yambasu, of Sierra Leone, invited representatives of progressive, centrist and conservative points of view to discuss resolution of the denomination’s passionate disagreement. Those discussions led to a three-day meeting at the Washington, D.C., offices of mediation guru Kenneth Feinberg.
The proposal hashed out at this summit would create a new “traditionalist Methodist” denomination that split from the UMC and would continue to ban same-sex marriage and the ordination of lesbian and gay ministers. It also included a $25 million pledge from the UMC to the “traditionalist” group.
In the U.S., regional clusters of churches, called “annual conferences,” would remain with the more progressive UMC by default but could vote to join the new traditionalist denomination.
Individual churches would
stay with their annual conferences by default but could vote to leave the annual conference and join either the other denomination or a new one. No matter the congregation’s choice, the church would keep its property.
Local impact
It’s not clear what that would mean for the cluster that includes Houston and East Texas. Confusingly named the Texas Annual Conference — there are four other annual conferences in the state — it includes roughly 700 congregations with almost 300,000 members and widely divergent views.
Texas’ annual conferences are more conservative than many in the U.S. Some churches — including the primarily African American megachurch Windsor Village, in southwest Houston — have already threatened to leave the UMC if it accepts same-sex clergy and weddings.
Other churches have made equally firm statements of their desire for inclusiveness. In November, well over 75 percent of Westbury UMC’s congregation voted to become a Reconciling Congregation.
“The church wasn’t all in agreement about the Bible,” pastor Danny Yang said of his diverse congregation. “But even conservative members didn’t appreciate the punitive language being used. And even if we don’t all agree, we respect the people in the pews next to us. We respect their marriages.”
Scott Jones, the bishop who oversees the Texas Annual Conference, is carefully neutral on this proposal, like others that have come before the General Conference. In an official statement, he cautioned that though he’s hopeful the protocol can lead to a peaceful solution, it’s just a proposal, and that “a statement by 16 leaders does not necessarily mean that its provisions will be adopted.”