So much for the welcoming, open arms of The United Methodist Church.

United Methodist delegates from around the world voted for a divorce because of irreconcilable difference on sexual orientation.
After decades of conflicts and dialogue and debate on top of more conflicts and more dialogue and debate on matters related to sexual orientation, my beloved United Methodist Church voted Monday for schism.
(Mind you …. UMC delegates are still in conference in St. Louis as of this writing, wrangling over whether and how to split the church. That global church meeting won’t be over until evening, but the essence of what I have to say in this post will undoubtedly be unchanged.)
This amounts to an ecclesiastical divorce between church progressives and conservatives. With the strong support of United Methodists in African nations where homosexuality is a crime, American conservatives “won” in the long theological conflict (in which nobody really wins), all because of irreconcilable differences over issues of sex and sexual orientation.
LORD, BLESS THIS SNAKE
As an ordained United Methodist deacon, I can come into your home and bless your pet snake and turtle and cat and dog. But I’m not allowed to so much as bless the union of a same-sex couple who love each other. In spite of gay marriage being legal, I sure as hell can’t preside at the wedding of that couple.
A THREAT TO TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE? REALLY???
Years ago, a fellow progressive United Methodist clergywoman, was anguished over her inability to do the wedding of two lesbians, one of whom was a lifelong friend she had been raised in the United Methodist Church with. In fact, both lesbians were raised — and baptized — in United Methodist churches.
In a horribly tragic twist, on the day after the couple’s wedding, they were killed in a car wreck involved multiple casualties while traveling on their honeymoon.
My clergy friend, who by United Methodist law was not allowed to marry the couple, was allowed to bury them. She did their funeral at the request of both families.
At the risk of sounding bitterly cynical, I have to say that conservative “church traditionalists” in my beloved UMC are fine with we who are ordained clergy doing funerals of married gay couples, because married gay couples who are dead no longer pose a threat to “traditional marriage.”
That’s a whole lot of the problem, according to conservatives — the “threat to traditional marriage” by LGBTQ folk.
I have to wonder how many American United Methodists who’ve succeeded in essentially sweeping us progressives out of the church are down with what I call “Trumpianity.”
(*For more on Trumpianity,” scroll down and follow the link.”
THE UMC’s LAW AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS IN MINISTRY
We progressives in the church have for decades opposed the ban on homosexuals serving in ministry or performing same-sex marriages. Here is the church rule banning the ordination of gays:
-
“While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. [My italics for emphasis.] Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.”
CONSERVATIVES DON”T DIVORCE, OF COURSE
The practice of many things, like divorce, are commonly “practiced” (being a good heterosexual takes no practice at all) by United Methodists around the world. Yet NOBODY IN the United Methodist Church has ever called for the exclusion of divorced folks (like me) from ministry or any kind of leadership in the church. (If you’re not familiar with teachings on my Lord Jesus Christ on divorce, trust me when I tell you he was radically conservative on the issue — according to the Bible.)
I’m heartsick not only for the pain of this impending, denominational divorce, but more so for friends like a fellow retired clergyman, who came “out of the closet” a few years ago and married a partner of many years.
My friend wrote this on his Facebook page Monday night after the vote to hand the keys of the church over to conservatives opposed to the church’s full inclusion of gays and leave us progressives without a church we can live in and with:
-
Right now I’m grieving, angry, and maybe in a bit of shock that the church that baptized me, raised me, ordained me has made it clear today (& will probably make it official by a vote tomorrow) that in the denomination’s eyes I’m a sinner in my very being in ways that straight people are not, that I never should have been ordained or should probably have been ousted by a witch hunt as a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” years ago, that my marriage is not blessed by God. All of these contentions are untrue. It pains me that, while I have many friends and colleagues who are allies … there are some whom I have known and worked beside, some I attended seminary with, including at least one bishop, who advocated for the traditional plan and my demonization. I don’t know where my spiritual home will be going forward; perhaps it will be something that grows out of the ashes as a better and more inclusive Methodism, maybe even the reborn and reforming form of a congregation that has to come out of its own “United” closet and become truer to itself. But … I know one thing. My days as a United Methodist as it was died today. Because that once beautiful thing has become ugly … and in fact was murdered today on the floor of the General Conference. Tomorrow will likely be the signing of the death warrant. But even if something unexpected happens, I fear the damage is done. The wounds inflicted today are almost sure to be mortal.
There is so much more I could say on all this, and I do believe with my friends that a new and more inclusive and welcoming church of people with open hearts, minds and spirits and arms will grow out of the ashes.
But right now I just need to try to process it and pray to God to help us all.
* For my definition of Trumpianity, go here.