CV NEWS FEED // The United Methodist Church voted on May 1 to lift its ban on LGBT-identifying clergy, going against decades of the denomination’s teaching that homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity.
AP News reported that Methodist delegates from around the world voted 692-51 at their General Conference, a legislative assembly that usually meets every four years. Past General Conferences have resisted all efforts to lift the ban on LGBT clergy, which was enacted in 1984.
The United Methodist Church, once the third largest religious denomination and one of the most influential in the country, met for its General Conference from April 23 to May 3, 2024, in Charlotte, NC.
The General Conference’s decision to lift the ban was met with relief and joy from much of the Methodist congregation in the United States, according to AP News. United Methodist bodies in other countries can choose to uphold or lift the ban in their own regions.
AP News added that the General Conference approved an additional measure allowing United Methodist ministers to either perform a same-sex wedding or decline to perform one without fear of penalty from district superintendents or regional administrators. Similarly, superintendents cannot prohibit a church from hosting a same-sex wedding or require it to.
Bishop Karen Oliveto, the first openly lesbian United Methodist bishop, welcomed the decision.
“It seemed like such a simple vote, but it carried so much weight and power, as 50 years of restricting the Holy Spirit’s call on people’s lives has been lifted,” she said, according to AP News.
AP News added that “Delegates are also expected to vote soon on whether to replace the denomination’s official Social Principles with a new document that no longer calls the ‘practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching’ and that now defines marriage as between ‘two people of faith’ rather than between a man and a woman.”
The United Methodist Church had previously allowed churches that disaffiliated inside a temporary window from 2019 to 2023 to retain their properties, according to AP News. However, the General Conference additionally voted to rescind that ability, despite pushback from conservative Methodists who wanted the window open longer.
Dixie Brewster, a delegate from the Great Plains Conference in Kansas and Nebraska, said that she and other conservative Methodists now only want a way to disaffiliate without causing more disruption.
“We want a place to go peacefully,” she said, according to AP News. “We will not be disruptive. I do love all, I love my homosexual friends. I just view the Scriptures a different way.”
Rev. Jerry Kulah, a delegate from Liberia, told AP News that the decision to lift the ban is “a serious drift away from the truth.”
“The church is now buying into culture,” he said. “The Bible has not changed, but the church has changed.”
CatholicVote reported in December that even prior to the ban’s repeal, conservative Methodists have steadily split from the United Methodist Church over the last four years. Currently, more than 7,600 churches—or one-fourth of the denomination’s 30,000 congregations—have disaffiliated due to disagreements on sexual morality.
