Proposal would split Methodist church over LGBT issues
New groupings could repeal current bans
The United Methodist Church would split into separate denominations with different policies toward same-sex marriage and ordaining LGBT persons under a proposal from an ideologically diverse group of leaders of the worldwide church, which includes the second-largest body of Protestants in the United States.
The plan calls for traditionalist congregations, which support the church’s current bans on gay marriage and ordaining gay persons, to form a new denomination, keeping its local church properties and receiving $25 million in denominational funds.
The remaining United Methodist Church would then call a special conference to repeal the bans and form regional groupings “with flexibility to adapt church policies, including on LGBTQ inclusion,” according to United Methodist News Service.
The proposal was created by a 16-member group, whose proposals would need approval later this year from the church General Conference. The diverse group includes leaders of interest groups that have clashed strongly over the policies, and their buy-in would help ensure buy-in from conference delegates.
The protocols were reached with the help of mediator Kenneth Feinberg, best known for overseeing the distribution of large funds to victims of disasters or of organizational misconduct. His firm is currently overseeing the distribution of funds compensating victims of sexual abuse by priests in several Roman Catholic dioceses, including Pittsburgh’s.
Pittsburgh Area Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi issued a lengthy statement on the website of the Western Pennsylvania Conference that she oversees, urging Methodists to study the proposed separation carefully.
“I urge all United Methodists in Western Pennsylvania to read the document with a prayerful spirit,” wrote Bishop MooreKoikoi, who was not part of the group that negotiated the proposal. “We will offer opportunities for you to ask questions about the document and will provide as many answers as we can.”
She said while there are individual parts she would not have chosen, it represents as a whole “a real hope that we can, through mutual respect for our diversity, find a way toward reconciliation so that we can move forward and focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ so that the world might be transformed.”
United Methodists have long
had sharp disagreements over theology, but the differences have come to a head over whom the church can ordain or marry. Theirs is the last major so-called mainline denomination still to be debating such issues. Others, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Episcopal Church, went through years of fierce debate before moving toward ordaining gay persons and blessing their marriages or unions and in the process losing significant numbers of conservative congregations to new denominations.
In a special legislative conference in 2019, Methodist delegates rejected a localoption plan recommended by their bishops, instead upholding the current bans with stiffer penalties for violations. Helping to uphold that stance were many delegates from the church’s international membership, particularly the fast-growing and conservative churches of Africa. But it met with fierce resistance from many U.S. churches, with bishops in the Western United States declaring their region a “safe harbor” for LGBT clergy.
New York Conference Bishop Thomas Bickerton — who was part of the group and was formerly the Pittsburgh Area Bishop overseeing the Western Pennsylvania Conference — said the 2019 vote illustrated the need for separation.
“It became clear that the line in the sand had turned into a canyon,” Bishop Bickerton told United Methodist News Service. “The impasse is such that we have come to the realization that we just can’t stay that way any longer.”
United Methodists, with 6.8 million members in the United States and nearly that many in other countries, have the second-largest American Protestant population, behind Southern Baptists.