The United Methodist Church voted Wednesday to cast off decades-old restrictions on the ordination of LGBTQ individuals as ministers while effectively allowing overseas church regions to ignore the move by adopting a “regionalization” governing process for church territories outside the U.S.
A separate vote overturning the current ban on same-sex weddings or blessings in United Methodist congregations is likely to get a vote on Thursday.
That question and a vote on a “Revised Social Principles” document that redefines marriage as a union between two people, not a man and a woman, would complete a shift by one of America’s oldest Protestant denominations away from what critics called traditional biblical values.
But in a series of votes at the group’s 2024 General Conference business session in Charlotte, North Carolina, UMC delegates first voted to drop the 1984 ban on the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.”
During the Wednesday afternoon session, delegates finalized plans to allow different overseas church regions greater autonomy in interpreting and implementing various issues, including questions regarding LGBTQ inclusivity.
Overseas regions — such as those in Africa, the Philippines and Europe — could then decide for themselves whether to align with an anticipated U.S. church adoption of such steps.
The governance changes must now be ratified by local church “annual conferences,” the equivalent of a diocese. The church said that two-thirds of the conferences must approve the changes to implement them.
The ordination change was one of 22 measures passed in a single “consent calendar” vote — 659 in favor and 67 opposed.
The global UMC General Conference opened last week, months after one-quarter of the church’s U.S. congregations had left the denomination.
Most of the departed congregations were conservative-leaning, leaving the remaining liberal-leaning Methodists to approve the changes, which brought the church in sync with most U.S. mainline Protestants.
“Draw the circle, draw it wider still,” a group of delegates sang after Wednesday’s initial vote, as others cried or cheered.
Retired Bishop Hope Morgan Ward prayed “for healing from the memory of our journeys” after the floor vote and asked that God would “use us as peacemakers and servants in the healing of your world and in the welcoming of all people into the embrace of God.”
But Mark D. Tooley, a United Methodist and president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, has said the “self-congratulatory nature” of the meeting may obscure the future for the denomination, which has 5.4 million U.S. members and 9.9 million worldwide.
UMC delegates rejected a move to extend rules permitting dissenting congregations to leave and retain their church property.
Mr. Tooley said in anticipation of Wednesday’s and Thursday’s votes that the large number of church departures over sexuality issues heralds an imminent decline in the UMC’s financial stability.
“The clergy who are age 55 or in their early 50s, they’ll be able to survive till retirement,” he said.
“But if you’re a clergy in your 30s or 40s, you should be very troubled because the money is going to run out and the number of churches available to host a pastor, to be able to afford a full-time pastor, are going to dramatically reduce,” he warned.
The issue of LGBTQ inclusion in the Methodist Church has been simmering for decades.
More than 100 clergy and ordination candidates publicly identified themselves as gay in 2016.
Progressive members and clergy said they would “disrupt systemic injustice” with their declaration, according to a report at the time by UM News, the official church news service.
In 2019, a special legislative session reaffirmed the policies that are being changed this week, with supporters hoping to forestall a schism.
But the split happened anyway.
Mr. Tooley said the remaining liberal-dominated denomination is “very joyful that with conservatives gone, the progressive agenda is flying through by very, very large margins.”
“They’ve waited decades for this to happen, but mostly they’re not acknowledging what the impact is going to be,” he said. “It’s a very celebratory General Conference that I think not fully prepared for what’s about to happen.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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