In February, a global conference of Methodists voted to keep its traditional marriage stance. This included disallowing the ordination of openly gay clergy and not officiating same-sex weddings.
While the international Methodists voted to affirm traditional marriage, most American Methodists and clergy hold to progressive views on LGBT issues.
A Methodist Church in North Carolina is protesting the recent vote within their denomination which kept traditional marriage the official policy of the UMC denomination. In response, Calvary United Methodist Church hosted “drag me to church,” which the church described as “a family friendly drag performance.”
Calvary pastor Chris Agoranos said, “It brings such good and positive energy, which is really what we wanted this to be about,”
This is blasphemy.
In February, the United Methodist Church (UMC) voted to keep its traditional marriage stance. Last week, the UMC judicial council affirmed several of the measures which had been approved. The judicial council is the high court of the UMC. From their website, it says that they determine “the constitutionality of acts or proposed acts of the General, Jurisdictional, Central, and Annual Conferences.”
The result of the February vote was that the UMC would not ordain openly LGBT clergy, nor would they perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. This is something which some regions within the UMC were allowing as the American Methodist churches became more progressive.
The United Methodist Church (UMC) had a four day international conference in St. Louis this week revolving around around LGBT issues, specifically: the ordination of openly LGBT clergy and whether or not the denomination should officiate same-sex weddings.
The UMC is the third largest faith group in America, and an international denomination with over 43,000 congregations worldwide (40 percent of their members are outside the United States). There is widespread support within American Methodism for affirming LGBT pastors and weddings.
Josh Benner 