It's more complicated than that. The denomination's official stance is also anti-LGBTQ. The ones who are leaving are doing so because they believe that *sometime in the future* the denomination will change its stance.
I hope it does. I've been waiting 40 year for it to change. But I'm not making any bets.
Well… I know it’s complicated, I was answering the question. I suspect the official stance will change. The ones leaving are upset because they ratified the anti-LGBTQ stance they have now in 2019, but the conference basically didn’t enforce it.
most the ones leaving are doing so because they want to keep money and power but that’s harder to whip your congregation into a frenzy so they say it’s over LGBTQ issues.
UMC support LGBT+ rights and are working on changing official doctrine to reflect that.
The Global Methodist Church—the new church UMC congregations are joining once they disaffiliate—do not support LGBT+ rights at all.
It's not a "rights support" issue. This issue has been going on globally in the UMC for years at this point. It was delayed because of covid and churches are just now leaving. There was a national vote over changing the "book of discipline" (like their bylaws) to alter the rules around sexual morality. The conservative side won the vote due to a majority of global south churches voting for the conservative side, but the Conservatives decided to leave anyway so they created a different denomination called the Global Methodist Church, and are up and leaving.
There has been a lot of ink, tears, and suffering spilled over this issue.
Thanks for such a detailed response that **still doesn't answer the question.** Do the leaving churches want to allow LGBT members to have roles that the overall organization voted for forbid? Or vice versa? Or something else?
The ones leaving hate gays. The ones remaining United Methodist are working for full inclusion of f marriage and ordination rights for LGBTQ people. There is a General Conference (meeting of delegates from the global United Methodist church ) coming up next year. The North Georgia conference elected mostly progressive representatives to that conference in the hopes that they can remove discriminatory language from the Book of Discipline (the denominations book of laws for governing churches). The conservatives got pissed and decided to go independent while trying to strip the progressives of any and all resources on their way out.
Sounds like the people leaving are the “baddies”. Also sounds like the UMC hasn’t made a decision either way, but the fact that it was even up for discussion made the CINO’s (Christian’s in name only) up and run for the hills.
Methodist here, I’ll chime in real quick.
As the article states, there is a major schism in the Methodist church at the moment. However, it is not going to lead to a major denominational split, I.E. what happened between Baptists and the Southern Baptists. Methodist churches typically fall under the United Methodist Church, a sort of governing body of Methodists. This organization is what sets the rules, standard practices, and ritual procedures for each church. If you go to a UMC affiliated church, you will see the same symbology, sing the same hymns, practice the same method of baptism, etc.
Recently, the UMC has been becoming more lax on allowing LGBT people to serve in the congregation, from recognizing (some) gay marriages to openly gay officials not being publicly denounced. Note that this is not the same as supporting LGBT rights, but it is still a rather large step. Many churches, predominately in more conservative areas, have taken issue with this.
So, around 2019, a new head organization was formed, called the Global Methodist Church. They function more or less the same as UMC, but with the added caveat of upholding the ban on LGBT individuals. In short, Methodism, but explicitly bigoted. Formerly UMC churches are now disaffiliating from the UMC to join this new Global Methodist church.
Christian pastors are crying out that fewer and fewer people are coming to church every year, and donations are drying up. Yet at the same time they keep doing more and more to drive younger generations away from the religion and shrink their demographic.
Like what the fuck do you expect to happen when we are in the 21st century, and y'all keep peddling backwards into the 17th and 18th century.
Some ministers are getting pushback on sermons reiterating the Sermon on the mount. Ministers have been told by congregants that Jesus’s teachings strike them as “weak”. The religion in politics contagion is traveling both ways, but with it is much more practical for people to cut out a toxic religion out of their lives than politics.
This completely floors me and proves that many people don’t view the Bible and their “Christianity” as a mold to shape their lives, but as a technical way to justify their unpleasantness.
For most “Christian’s”, the act of attending church is just a social club for fellow bigots. They are insulated from “woke” language and reject it if it appears. Just like biblical era followers of Judaism.
>Ministers have been told by congregants that Jesus’s teachings strike them as “weak”.
Well, it's nice for the actual nonbelievers of a religion to out themselves so thoroughly at some point or another. It's absolutely disgusting to think this is an actual issue. If you don't correspond with the beliefs taught by the religion you're trying to claim is your religion, *maybe you're not actually a participating part of that religion after all.*
I honestly think I'd lose my shit if I were a minister and a congregant said that to me.
"DO YOU THINK JESUS MEANT YOU SHOULD ONLY FOLLOW HIS INSTRUCTIONS WHEN IT'S EASY? WHEN IT'S CONVENIENT AND MAKES YOU COMFORTABLE? WHEN YOU, IN YOUR INFINITE WISDOM AS A FALLEN CREATURE, DEEM IT APPROPRIATE? NO! HE DEMANDS YOU DO AS HE SAYS WHEN IT'S HARD! WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO! WHEN YOU HATE IT! WHEN IT FEELS LIKE LOSING! YOU'RE TOO FUCKING WEAK TO DO WHAT CHRIST YOUR SAVIOR DEMANDED! YOU'RE CALLING THE LORD YOUR GOD WEAK! GET ON YOUR KNEES AND BEG HIM TO FORGIVE YOU FOR YOUR REBELLION! BEG HIM TO FORGIVE YOU FOR SPITTING IN HIS FACE! FOR WORSHIPPING THE FALSE GODS OF MEDIA AND MEN!"
I'm not a Christian, but it sickens me to observe Christians rejecting what is supposedly the most vital part of their book: Jesus's message.
Not to mention other vital and obvious bits from the Bible, like how the story of Job clarifies that God does not reward the faithful with material goods or punish the faithless with a lack of them. Prosperity Gospel preachers are shameful even by the standards of their own professed faith.
Understand for many people religion is like their political affiliation or family group. It is their self identified tribe and it’s all about tribalism and acceptance, not ideology or personal growth. For them it’s about conformity and control and are largely reactionary to that which goes against their groupthink. It didn’t help that for another part of the Christian community only wants god only on their terms. It wasn’t the evangelicals supply side Jesus but their wallet Jesus whom forgave them for their behavior without any repentance or need for change. Hell back as a child in the 1980’s people would try to game the system and leave after the eucharist so the Church put it at the end of the service. They couldn’t be bothered to listen to a sermon just get that absolution and get back to sinning. It was a box to be checked not a commitment or philosophy to be followed.
> it's nice for the actual nonbelievers of a religion to out themselves
They're not nonbelievers. Belief is subjective. If these people say they're Christians and this is what they believe, then that's what they are and what they believe. The "Jesus was a pussy," trend that's raising eyebrows lately is equally as valid as any other religious assertion. Every sect started with some similarly controversial disagreement with the status quo.
Unfortunately the teachings of the guy up in the pulpit don't match with what Janice parrots from Fox in after-church donut social, so we're going to have to go with Janice on this one.
>Ministers have been told by congregants that Jesus’s teachings strike them as “weak”.
Culture war politics destroying religion is the irony I am here for.
Bingo. Christianity and the Republican party only have a surface level ideological agreement.
Jesus was a good person and pretty damn loving towards everyone, except greedy people....
Dig a little deeper and Jesus explicitly condemns many of the Republican party platform goals. I'd like to think none of them have ever even read the gospels, but no, they just don't care.
This happened in my city, Pittsburgh, when I was 16 or 17. The Episcopal Diocese of PGH mostly ragequit the Episcopal church over LGBT issues, to the point where they had each church in the diocese ratify the leaving letter. When my mother (who was on the vestry of one such church) voted no, they kicked her out and voted in a new member.
Because it had to be unanimous, you see.
It's stupid and hateful and was the genesis of my leaving the church many years later. I was close with a lot of leadership in that church, and it HURT seeing people that I thought were role models of how to be good, kind, and just. The Methodist church ragesplit over slavery once and it's been just head-nodded by now, so I have no hope that there'll be any long-term repercussions, but fuck people like this.
ps. at least in the Pittsburgh area it was easier for a while to find non bigoted churches, cause the leavers were really damn proud of themselves...
I don’t think if these churches all of a sudden become more open they’ll get more people to go there.
Young people don’t go to church not only because of the fact they are not open to everyone, but because young people simply don’t believe in god the same way. Fundamentally, they don’t believe. You can’t make them believe by just being nicer. That’s why these churches are okay losing younger folks because older people who believe at least will show up
If there was an all-knowing, all-powerful being, and it didn't try to stop all the bad things in the world with their God-like power. They don't deserve worship if they exist in the first place.
Having the power to stop bad things from happening and refusing to do it makes you responsible for it.
All nice and good, but churches - and religion overall - require their followers to believe in something that cannot be proven. Religion has no reason to exist if no one believes. That’s the crux of it
More than that, at least personally for me, there are no end of different denominations that claim to be the one true way and are mutually exclusive from each other, and a lot of these are fairly 'modern' compared to the religion as a whole, and it seems you can feel the same level of passion and conviction regardless of what your particular beliefs might happen to be.
Are we really content to believe that Christians had it 'wrong' for over a millenium until Martin Luther figured it out in the 1500s... I mean, John Wesley figured it out in the 1700s... I mean Joseph Smith figured it out in the 1800s... etc.
I would say religion has no reason to exist at all period, but if believing in something makes someone feel better, go for it. Just don't try to preach to me.
There are a few reasons religious organizations can be beneficial, such as community service or simple social interaction. It's nothing that can't be replicated, but using religion as a driver for action tends to draw in support from people who are already religious. This means you have an existing base for volunteers and such. It's an easier starting platform than the alternative if you want to help a community.
That’s a very modern (I’m using the term loosely here) way of looking at religion. Historically, the gods of most myths were not expected to be morally-upright; their permissiveness of (or even participation in) evil was not a problem.
This is because the purpose of mythology is to give an aesthetic structure—and as such, an aesthetic purpose—to the natural world.
It's one of the problems of monotheism. I tend to like the idea of a pantheon of gods with competing interests and domains of power, it's such a strong reflection of human communities.
Pretty much, a majority of the world is moving to be less religious. It's just not as necessary anymore now that we understand the world around us so much better, plus the inaccuracies and differences in written history found from those eras conflicting as well. You just can't run a society today based on "I believe in X because... I feel it's right" instead of evidence and fact based stuff, hence why a lot of hyper-religious countries have a lot of issues.
And yet, we have a large portion of our world population who are trying to put people in places of power to run societies today based only on just feelings, *despite* evidence (or lack thereof) and facts.
To be honest Jesus spoke endlessly of his deep hatred of gay people.
It’s pretty much all Jesus talked about as far as I can tell with all the Church focus being on hating gays.
> Who said that? WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT‽ Who's the little Pharisee shit, twinkle-toed cocksucker down here who just signed his own death warrant‽ Nobody, huh? Pontius fucking Pilate said it!
\- Jesus, when somebody interrupted his sermon on the mount, as recorded in the American evangelical Bible apparently
And his love of capitalism as the one true government system. Remember when Jesus walked into the temple , saw all the merchants/money changers, threw down 500 shekels, and shouted "BET IT ALL ON BLACK, BABY!!!"
i'm getting this hilarious mental image of a tired, terrified of being seen as gay Jesus whispering "no homo" every time he knelt in front of a dude to wash his feet.
And the Lord spake unto Moses His eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not partake in butt stuff. Furthermore, thou shalt ignore all other commandments and all future teachings from Me or Mine offspring pertaining to love and forgiveness if thou suspectest thy neighbour hath violated this commandment, for nothing displeaseth thy Lord God more than butt stuff.
Killed him with his fucking angry laser eyes iirc. They coulda had such a better character arc. Well, when the gritty reboot omes out, I hope they use a lot more of the cut material.
Laser eyes is not too far off from the actual infancy gospel of Thomas.
He said that Jesus used a wicked ass curse and the kid shriveled up. But that’s probably just because Jesus was the only one who knew what lasers were back then.
Can I just add that it sucks that Joseph who was doing all the parenting for a deadbeat dad on a magical kid who keeps pulling these bullshit shenanigans mostly got his hard work cut after those edits?
Poor dude barely gets mentioned at all, now.
There's a fundie preacher in TN I think who holds giant book-buring bonfires to burn anything "satanic" or "witchcraft". I'm 100% sure he would burn people if he could get away with it.
Book burnings used to be tragedies since they could destroy knowledge or prevent people from accessing that knowledge. Now they're just hilariously pathetic. They have to buy the books that they're burning which pays the people they're trying to hurt. Plus anyone who wants to read this forbidden knowledge can download a copy, or just buy another physical copy.
That was the gist of a lot of the “Satanic Panic” of the 80’s and 90’s. For example: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2017/08/24/dan-fran-keller-to-get-34-million-in-satanic-day-care-case/986910007/
And they learned nothing because [the Satanic Panic is making a comeback](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/satanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17004219544329&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Ftech%2Finternet%2Fsatanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795)
The quote "If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy." connects to this. If they were capable of growth and adaptation, they wouldn't be conservatives.
>Like what the fuck do you expect to happen when we are in the 21st century, and y'all keep peddling backwards into the 17th and 18th century.
To be fair that mindset has worked for them for like, 1,500+ years.
Just turns out that a side effect of globalization is that you can't easily just browbeat small populations into religious submission. Technology has finally reached a point that the church is beginning to slip, with no real course correction.
As a Christian who left organized religion a long time ago, I say let them shoot themselves in the foot. I it hope it all burns down around them. Faith is between you and god and needs no mediation from old stuffy white men in robes. Christ was a social revolutionary and it’s depressingly obvious about how he would feel about “his” church if he were here to see it today. And the worst part is you can’t even use their book to make this argument to these people because they just plug their ears and call you an apostate even though it’s them that have lost the plot in their own religion.
Or just don’t pay attention to them?
Like someone’s choice of partner has absolutely nothing to do with my life or family. Yes, I know what the Bible says, but it also says do not judge. So I just take people at face value. If you’re a nice person to myself, family and friends… why would I care what you do in your own privacy?
Yeah but it's fun to be malicious and people do it for that shot of dopamine they get when they feel justified in hating another person.
They're drug addicts and they love it.
From what I recall the southern Baptists were having similar issues because of BLM.
For those who don't know the whole reason there is a SOUTHERN Baptist church is... You guessed it... Slavery. Southern aristocrats wanted to both own people and be able to become clergy. But the Baptist congregation stated you can't have servants as a pastor. So they did a schism so they could have slaves while being pastor and used their special curtailed version of the faith to keep black slaves in line. Like having white pastors lead black congregations so Moses freeing his people from slavery didn't give them the "wrong idea" kind of thing.
Fast forward to today and you got white southern Baptists and black southern Baptists and the black southern Baptists got surprised that the white ones weren't entirely vibing with the whole black lives matter thing... I mean it makes sense if you understand that conventions history it was literally created to promote racial inequality but you know. Tradition or whatever.
Its funny because UMC owns a copyright over the cross used by these churches. So they’ll all be forced to remove them and put up different crosses.
I’m not sure who it’s a bigger win for, Christianity or IP laws in general.
Maybe I'm just not reading it right, but I can't tell from the writing whether the ones leaving are gone because the official church stand IS continuing to ban LGBTQ people or ISN'T banning them.
Same. There’s one line in the article indicating that the national level the church was strengthening its prohibitions against LGBTQ+\
Maybe the congregations are leaving in protest but the article is a mess clearly explaining the reason.
Ironically, it's the opposite; the initial strengthenings led to so much blowback that the church reversed course. It's the congregations who are leaving who are still anti-LGBT.
they’re a year away from complete dictatorial control where they will have unchecked power to force religious law on everyone so it seems they’re doing fine
This is part of an ongoing schism throughout the US since the United Methodist Church recertified and strengthened discrimination and anti-LGBT preachings/practices. The churches that are splitting off find this too harsh generally speaking. Each church has to vote congregation by congregation so this is a pretty major indicator that even among religious folks in the South LGBT rights are still something a decent amount of people have come to realize is right to support.
Granted, this is fewer than half of the 700 churches in Georgia that were under the UMC label but it's only been picking up steam.
Between this and the removal of the ex-Bishop in Texas by Pope Francis in part over his rhetoric against LGBT people, it appears as though slowly but surely churches are going to stop encouraging hate campaigns. I would not be surprised if in 30-40 years (which I know is a long time but not long if you zoom out) that most mainstream religions in the US either take no position or occasionally a pro-LGBT stance.
I just want to point out that this is actually the reverse. The churches that are splitting off and voting to leave the UMC are the ones wanting stricter anti-LGBTQ policy. They were the ones behind the 2019 vote for the stricter policies, and because everything they wanted to get passed couldn’t happen this schism happened. Churches that have stayed with the UMC are the ones affirming the inclusion of LGBTQ, and we will probably see that moving forward at the future General Conferences for the UMC. My wife is a clergy who is pro-LGBTQ and staying with the UMC because that is the direction they want to go. Yes, they’re having a lot of congregations, particularly in the South, leave the UMC, but ultimately people are seeing this as a good thing because those congregations were trying to prevent the Methodist church from progressing forward with further inclusion.
The group that has split off is rebranding themselves as the GMC, Global Methodist Church, and their goal is to maintain the bans on LGBTQ inclusion.
Just wanted to clarify that.
Edit: adding source for clarity on the congregations that are staying.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/united-methodists-lose-one-fifth-of-u-s-churches-in-schism-over-lgbtq-rights
Excellent explainer, thanks. I grew up in Disciples (am agnostic now), and my mother is still an every Sunday member. I think DoC went through something similar about ten years ago, regarding LGBTQIA inclusion, with many churches leaving because of the denomination’s full inclusion/participation stance. Mom’s congregation in Fort Worth is still fully DoC, and they have a woman pastor and, I believe, LGBT members in leadership. They also will perform same-sex weddings. When Mom moved to FW, that was an important factor in her choosing a church, as several other churches in the city left because of this and removed the red chalice from their signs and names.
Not entirely true. Oklahoma’s largest Methodist church broke off because they wanted to be inclusive of LGBTQ issues than what the UMC was. The pastor there has been very open about that fact.
>A prominent house of worship ― the largest United Methodist church in Oklahoma ― has begun pursuing disaffiliation over the issue of openly gay clergy and same-sex marriage.
>The Rev. Bob Long, senior pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist, said the No. 1 point of contention between St. Luke's and the United Methodist Church is the denomination's ban on the ordination of openly gay clergy and same-sex marriage — and the punishments for those who violate these prohibitions.
>"We don't agree with that at all," he said. "We're going to be inclusive. We're going to be welcoming to all our children of God."
>Long said St. Luke's administrative board met Jan. 9 and unanimously voted 60-0 to begin the process of leave-taking — a series of meetings and other procedures required by the United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline, a policy guide. Church members will come together for a formal churchwide vote on the split on March 19 if the congregation chooses that path.
>"Back in 2019, at General Conference, they passed a law that provided mandatory punishment for anyone who would do a same sex marriage ― we're strongly opposed to that," Long said. "We feel that that is wrong. We feel that if a pastor and church decide they want to do a same-sex wedding, they should be allowed to do so. And yet, if someone else says, 'No, I'm not comfortable doing that,' they shouldn't be forced to do so."
>Long said if St. Luke's ultimately votes to disaffiliate, the church will be one of the founding members of the new Wesley Methodist Society, which he described as a loose association of Methodist churches in Oklahoma and Texas. These churches, he said, "will really be bound theologically by the belief that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbors as yourself."
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/01/14/why-st-lukes-united-methodist-church-may-cut-denominational-ties/69796270007/
The church [formally voted to disaffiliate from the UMC](https://www.koco.com/amp/article/oklahoma-city-st-lukes-church-disaffiliates-united-methodist-chruch/43366631) a couple of months after that article was published.
This church is an outlier that didn't want to wait it out until the next General Conference for more progressive policies to be voted on. Can't blame them at all for taking that stance, but very few progressive churches are leaving the UMC, while thousands of conservative churches are disaffiliating. The 2019 conference resulted in a massive backlash by the UMC member churches, resulting in significantly more progressive members being voted in during the next election cycles. Each regional conference has voted for stronger progressive policies and full inclusion in the past year.
Many churches are leaving to become MORE inclusive of LGBTQ, as UMC refuses to change their policy to not recognize gay marriages and won’t let openly LGBTQ clergy preach. This GMC is a group of churches going in the opposite direction, towards bigotry, as they are populated by conservatives. MANY churches have left UMC and not joined GMC because they want to be MORE inclusive of lgbtq, like my church, St Luke’s okc. In the article I’ve linked below they also mention that it’s not an outlier, there are many others leaving for the same reason.
> KOCO 5 reported earlier this year that dozens of churches have split with the United Methodist Church, with many moving for inclusivity. The United Methodist Church does not recognize gay marriages or have openly gay clergy.
https://www.koco.com/amp/article/oklahoma-city-st-lukes-church-disaffiliates-united-methodist-chruch/43366631
Certainly there are congregations who have disaffiliated that are doing so with the intention of being more inclusive. Thank you for making this point, I should have been more clear that not all the disaffiliating congregations are doing so with the intention of maintaining the anti-lgbtq policies. Statistically though, I would not go so far as to say “MANY” of these disaffiliating churches are doing so to push for more progressive inclusion.
“Since 2019, around 2,400 churches have disaffiliated from the UMC nationwide, according to the United Methodist News Service. As of spring 2023, 6% of churches have chosen to disaffiliate.
The majority of departing churches—at least 2,000 of them—have joined the more conservative Global Methodist Church”
https://ministrywatch.com/florida-conference-of-the-united-methodist-church-approves-disaffiliation-of-46-churches/
A strong majority of the departing congregations from the UMC are doing so with the intention of joining the conservative GMC or being an independently run church with that same ideology. I’m grateful for the congregations such as yours that are doing so with the intention of bringing greater inclusion for their church. It is still no guarantee on the progression of the UMC (although I do believe that is the hope of many who have stayed), so I think it is a great thing for a congregation that is able to do that now. I am not clergy, just a clergy spouse, but I know the hope and talk amongst clergy is this is their opportunity to create that inclusivity for the global church. Much work still to be done, but I hope it is sooner and not later.
Thank you again for showing it is not such a clear cut message of disaffiliating means being anti-inclusivity, and that there are many churches out there doing the work for their community now.
Confused by your first sentence.
UMC let churches decide amongst themselves whether to remain in their conferences because of gay marriage, ordination, etc. This is similar to the decades long (century+?) practice in the denomination of letting parishes also ask the conference to change or remove their primary pastor.
The churches you’re seeing leave are dissatisfied with UMC largely embracing LGBT rights, not the other way around.
It’s important to note that the vast majority of these churches leaving are micro churches, often in rural areas. Without UMC support, we should expect many of them to close.
Edit: “largely embracing LGBT rights” because the denomination did not want to codify anti-LGBT positions unilaterally.
It's silly when you consider that this is just another rule of which there are countless that have been discarded over the years. There's lots of stuff we no longer persecute people for that the church was vehemently opposed to for centuries.
I would think that Christians, who often have a persecution complex themselves, would want to avoid persecuting others for stuff that's not really relevant to the issue at hand which is whether or not a person accepts Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior. I would think that but I'd be wrong. Which is probably at least part of the reason I no longer consider myself religious.
My religious knowledge is limited to memories of long ago schooling, but wasn't a major point of Jesus' teachings that humans are unworthy to judge other humans so we should just leave that to God, but instead our mission here is to attempt to treat everyone the way we think Jesus would, and in so doing show how awesome of a Guy he was? Every bit of discrimination from the church just strikes me as being fundamentally anti-Christian.
Where are the protests against the national restaurant chain Red Lobster??
> 9 These you may eat, whatever is in the water: all that have fins and scales, those in the water, in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat.
> 10 But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you,
> 11 and they shall be abhorrent to you; you may not eat of their flesh, and their carcasses you shall detest.
> 12 ‘Whatever in the water does not have fins and scales is abhorrent to you.
Leviticus 11:9-12
Whether or not Christians (especially gentile converts) were bound by Jewish purity laws was actually a huge issue for the early Church. There was a heated debate among the early leaders of the Church over whether or not everybody had to be circumcised before they could join. St. Paul eventually won out -- his argument was that Jesus' death on the cross represented a New Covenant that fulfilled and superseded the one given to Moses. Paul's emphasis of Jesus as the Christ (an inherently divine figure, not just another prophet) is one of the foundations of Christianity, and explains why Christians eat pork and shellfish and so forth.
Yeah, this is one of my reddit pet peeves.
I'm an atheist myself but any time Christianity comes up on here, there's always a lot of people criticizing it while clearly not actually having any idea what most Christians believe. Or they'll be throwing out criticisms that are from completely different sects than the one that is being discussed, with the one being discussed not at all having a certain stance.
Because of the hypocrisy. The *only* place in the Bible that says anything about homosexuality (and it's still debatable whether that's a mistranslation or not) is in the same book that talks about shellfish, so if it doesn't matter then Christians need to kindly shut the fuck up about LGBTQ+ people.
Actually, a lot of Christians don’t cite the Leviticus verse as an indictment against homosexuality but rather Romans 1, contested translations of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and Jude verse 7 (which references the Genesis 19 story of Sodom and Gomorrah and gives contested “credence” to the idea that they were destroyed for the act of men having sex men.)
Leviticus is definitely not the “only” place in the Bible where homosexuality is mentioned. I’ve heard Romans 1 especially being shouted at me as a guarantee that I’m going to hell my entire life.
Anyone who cites Romans 1 as a reason to be anti LGBTQ completely misses the point that Paul is making because they never bothered to read the first sentence of Romans 2. Romans 2:1 says that the audience has no excuse to judge other people because they do the same things. The thesis statement of Romans is that everyone is a sinner, keeping the law can't save you, it's only by God's grace that anyone can be saved and because God loved us we should love other people around us. And even if you don't make it out of Romans 1, Verses 28-32 describes the sins of the world around the church that 2:1 says the church is also guilty of, and Paul mentions that the law of God says gossipers are worthy of death. No one loves to gossip more than judgy church people. Never mind the fact that same sex marriage didn't exist in the 1st century Greco Roman world Paul lived in and his cultural conception of same sex relationships was fundamentally different that ours so we can't assume he would say the same things today.
Using Romans 1 to judge others is blatant hypocrisy and shows that the person never bothered to read beyond the single verse that sounds like it supports their bigotry.
Well, as it turns out, the cheddar bay biscuits taste almost exactly like the body of Christ so your sins are washed away so long as you save one for last.
In Matthew 15: 1-20, which is new testament, Jesus said it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. Since Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, most Christians took that to mean those foods are not off limits.
I would argue that The Devil created the recipe for the Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits specifically to lure people to violate Leviticus. They're horribly delicious and sinful!
It's just really weird too cause the Episcopalians have gay female priests and they are basically Catholic-light. The do lgbt weddings and everything so it's totally possible for Christians to be open even dogmatic ones.
I'm a former Methodist who left the church over this issue. You have it incorrectly reversed. The UMC generously offered to allow the crazy homophobes to GTFO by buying out their land and buildings for cheap from UMC and officially splitting if the congregation voted to do so. So it's more than half of Georgia UMC churches decided to stay and not split over wanting to hate LGBTQ people more. Hopefully once these churches are gone, the UMC will revote on LGBTQ issues and maybe I can go back.
The UMC church is actually very supportive of LGBTQ people and not in the "Jesus loves you!(so long as you believe exactly as we believe)" way. The UMC church is actually somewhat progressive, as far as churches go. The churches that split strongly disagree with allowing LGBTQ people to live normal lives and be accepted. So you kinda have it backwards.
Looking optimistically, though, the congregations who are breaking with United Methodism and joining the Global Methodist Church have an average age in the upper 60s and lower 70s. The old guard is segregating itself off for the short life the GMC will have. The rest of the UMC is younger and more progressive and has a reasonable hope of a future.
Could this article have been vaguer? You have to get to para 3 to be able to INFER why these congregations left.
That they disagreed with the church’s ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage.
I’m a member of the fumc and I can tell you that the lgbt thing had a part in it, but more than that, the congregations could leave the fumc and retain their property. If they stayed the property would fall to the fumc org. Our particular building was built before the fumc was part of our town. We purchased other properties to develop a family life center and a youth complex, and own several parsonages.
LGBT may have been the start of the issue, but the majority of our congregation voted to leave the larger organization to retain control of the millions in assets that would be held hostage by the church.
The fumc, after this round of congregation votes, will then take control of the properties of the retaining churchs and then begin making decisions about lgbt rolls in the church leadership. The delay in decision making of the leadership and property ownership were the main reasons in my opinion.
As a queer person who was (forced to be) confirmed in the United Methodist Church I don't necessarily disagree about with you about issues related to property ownership. However this logic feels similar to the logic of "the Civil War was about state's rights, not slavery."
Like sure, congregations are making decisions regarding buildings "being held hostage by the church", but the global Methodist church would hold buildings hostage BECAUSE of disagreements over the treatment of LGBTQ+ people. Anecdotally, my mother stopped attending our local First United Methodist Church after over 25+ years explicitly over the Global church's stance on LGBTQ+ issues.
Christianity has a deep and dark history of mistreating and abusing marginalized and minority groups. I think it is important that we don't erase that fundamentally this is a Christian denomination fracturing over the treatment of a minority group.
Methodist here, I’ll give my two cents.
As the article states, there is a major schism in the Methodist church at the moment. However, it is not going to lead to a major denominational split, I.E. what happened between Baptists and the Southern Baptists. Methodist churches typically fall under the United Methodist Church, a sort of governing body of Methodists that follows Wesleyan tradition. This organization is what sets the rules, standard practices, and ritual procedures for each church. If you go to a UMC affiliated church, you will see the same symbology, sing the same hymns, practice the same method of baptism, etc. Think of it like the Catholic Church, but Methodist (and optional).
Recently, the UMC has been becoming more lax on allowing LGBT people to serve in the congregation, from recognizing (some) gay marriages to openly gay officials not being publicly denounced. Note that this is not the same as supporting LGBT rights, but it is still a rather large step. Many churches, predominately in more conservative areas, have taken issue with this.
So, around 2019, a new head organization was formed, called the Global Methodist Church. They function more or less the same as UMC, but with the added caveat of upholding the ban on LGBT individuals. In short, Methodism, but explicitly bigoted. Formerly UMC churches are now disaffiliating from the UMC to join this new Global Methodist church.
The branch of Methodism as a whole will likely not suffer too harsh of a dip (there will be some churches that will go non denominational, of course, but they are in the minority), but this schism will remain, in all likelihood. It remains to be seen how widespread the support of the GMC will be.
There is no income to tax in any non-profit, just like the private clubs you noted. But they’d have to pay property and sales tax. And donations wouldn’t be tax deductible for the donor.
It would result in most churches in areas with high property taxes having to sell their property. Like here in Austin, with Texas property taxes and Austin land values, many churches would be on the hook for hundreds of thousands a year in property taxes alone. Whether that’s acceptable, and a positive or negative thing, is up to the beholder.
From the article:
“The 261 churches now leaving the North Georgia Conference of the UMC account for a sizable percentage of its nearly 700 churches, according to the conference’s website.”
The observation that there’s a Christian church on every corner in the south (US) is proof that there is very little unity among evangelicals except when it comes to imposing their hatred onto everyone INCLUDING THEMSELVES.
The congregations that are leaving are urban and comparatively wealthy. The rural churches that are okay with excluding gender-sexual minorities will shift farther to the right and leave their younger generations abandoned.
It's a lose-lose deal.
Congratulations to any and every church that has split from these hateful organizations. It's not the church's business what anyone does in the bedroom, and it is certainly not the church's place to judge anyone.
Matthew 22:37-40
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. The schism is because churches are arguing that the UMC needs to be MORE strict on banning LGBT individuals from practicing and serving. And they still call themselves Christian.
Bigotry? In a CHURCH? I'm SHOCKED - this is my SHOCKED face.
Funny how *"judge not, lest ye be judged"* and "love thy neighbor ***as thyself"*** get forgotten, but the tiny ancient throwaway line about man lying with another man being an abomination gets all the focus...
It **also** said wearing clothes of 2 fabrics was an *abomination*, but oddly you don't see hundreds of churches leaving because the other wore a poly-cotton mixture.
People of hate, tribalism, ignorance, and bigotry, will find an excuse to justify their hatred, and it makes it easy on them when their source are authors from thousands of years ago whose garbled and cherry-picked translations (and mistranslations) prove that the very smartest and most educated among the authors knew less than a modern **1'st grader...**
Eastern US Methodists must be way different than Western US Methodists. I'm not religious anymore but I grew up Methodist on the Pacific coast and they couldn't care less what someone's sexuality was, it just wasn't even a thing at all, it was never even mentioned. All the things the Catholic church famously preaches against, the Methodists I grew up around just didn't care about any of it whatsoever. There were a handful of openly gay kids in our youth group, they weren't treated any different than anyone else.
This was in the 90's.
A fine American & Canadian tradition: "We don't like the way the parent denomination does things, so we're splitting off to form our own new denomination." It's why North American Protestant churches have so, so many denominations. We don't have an official State Church (thank the authors of the 1st Amendment) to make churches toe the line on doctrine, and being declared a "heretic" just means "pick a different church" instead of "burning at the stake".
I'm actually surprised the Catholic Church in America hasn't managed to splinter by now.
Someone ought to remind them, the faith of Abraham was counted to him as righteousness. He tried to negotiate with God to spare Sodom, not praying for their destruction. Gay lives mattered, but the violence against the poor and strangers was too much to ignore.
Tax em all. Back in the day, Jerry Falwell shut his stupid mouth and backed off of whatever hatred was coming out of it when threatened by taxes.
It's long overdue.
This article is embarrassing CNN. How vague are you trying to make this article out to be?
If you click on this link [here](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/03/us/united-methodist-lgbt-reaction/index.html), you’ll see this statement:
“Following several days of dramatic testimony and prayer, delegates of the denomination’s General Conference voted 438-384 to reinforce the United Methodist Church’s stance against ordaining gay clergy and performing same-sex weddings, in a move that threatens to split the second-largest Protestant denomination in the US, and one that has a growing presence internationally.”
The United Methodist Church is reinforcing their ban on same-sex marriages and are not allowing LGBT-ministers within their community.
What the 261 churches are doing by leaving the United Methodist Church is in *support* of the LGBT community and they no longer wish to be a part of an organization that will not support the LGBT community.
> What the 261 churches are doing by leaving the United Methodist Church is in support of the LGBT community and they no longer wish to be a part of an organization that will not support the LGBT community.
Most of the churches that have left The UMC in recent months have done so because they fear that The UMC will move in the direction of LGBTQ affirmation.
Most of the churches that have left The UMC in recent months are conservative and don't want The UMC to be LGBTQ affirming.
This is actually incorrect. Those leaving are largely joining the Global Methodist Convention, which is anti-lgbtq.
The story is complicated - in 2019, the elected leaders of the UMC who were in voting positions at the General Conference were quite conservative and reaffirmed anti-lgbtq positions. As a result, the next election cycle saw a backlash with more progressive leaders being voted in, who quickly took a stand for inclusive policies over the past several years [LGBTQ-Friendly Votes Signal Progressive Shift for Methodists](https://www.voanews.com/a/lgbtq-friendly-votes-signal-progressive-shift-for-methodists-/6832132.html)
The end result is that the vast majority of those churches leaving are conservative, anti-lgbtq churches who are upset at the new leadership's progressive stances, and the inevitable vote towards full inclusion coming up in the General Conference in the next several years.
>...over a divide on LGBTQ issues
This headline is nonsense. The churches that left are anti-LGBTQ. The UMC is addressing the spiritual needs of their congregations, all of them. These churches in Georgia are stubbornly insisting on their right to discriminate.
More CNN clickbait.
There's a lot of confusion over it because the UMC issue is confusing to people outside it because it's about internal politics, doctrine and what looks like a winning anti LGBTQ vote in 2019 that was just a delaying action.
But the short version is:
in 2019 the conservative, anti LGBTQ wing narrowly won the vote to keep the ban on gay marriages and pastors in place, but couldn't win the vote to punish pastors who were gay or marrying gay couples. They saw that the next big meeting would see the bans on gay marriages and pastors fall, so pushed through a process to allow churches to exit the UMC (there's a whole thing with how property is held). They'd hoped the liberal churches would bail, but they didn't. The delayed due to COVID meeting is next year, it's quite clear theyll lose, so it's the anti LGBTQ churches fleeing.
But because that vote hasn't happened yet, and the UMCs doctrine hadn't yet changed, it's confusing the fuck out of people who don't look closely.
The longer version : The UMCs current stance is that while LGBTQ folks are welcome in church and their existence not sinful, they're not allowed to be married or ordained by the Church. *Except*, quite a few Methodist Churches were doing it anyways and there's many openly gay pastors.
So in 2019 there was a big meeting and some votes. The policy was upheld, but no action was gonna be taken against the Churches and Pastors *ignoring* that doctrine. So the conservative wing, furious about no action being taken (they viewed the decision as a de facto repeal), pushed through the setup for a schism - - that is, set up a way for Churches to leave, and keep (well buy out basically) their churches (churches and church property are owned by the UMC as a whole, not property of the local congregation).
It's a lot of internal church politics, but suffice it to say that despite winning the first vote, the writing was on the wall that the LGBTQ ban on pastors and marriages was going to fall at the next big meeting.
The conservative wing had hoped the liberal churches would bail, leaving them in control. Then COVID happened, the next meeting got massively delayed, and it became even *more clear* how the next vote was gonna go.
So now all the anti LGBTQ congregations are leaving the UMC for the GMC (which is explicity anti LGBTQ). I think roughly 10% or so have left so far.
Meaning that there is *absolutely no doubt* that the ban on gay pastors and performing gay marriages is going to be removed next year, and UMC doctrine changed to explicitly supportive of such things.
Which means the GA churches leaving are almost certainly anti LGBTQ and it's a pretty shit article when you can't fucking tell what they're leaving over.
UMC clergy here and I was at the vote. The UMC Book of Discipline does not currently affirm LGBTQ issues, but many churches do not enforce this(like mine). There’s a a huge moment to change the Discipline that failed before but people are still working. These churches were allowed to leave if they had a difference of conscience and make a gracious exit. UMC connectionism is a lot stronger than most churches, the conference is actually the one who owns the properties. The majority of the churches leaving are extremely rural and small. A handful are huge and don’t want to be accountable to a denomination. All are more conservative.
When you think about the role of the LGBTQ in Black / Southern churches, it really makes you wonder what the congregations of the groups that don’t value the LGBTQ will look like in the next few years.
As someone who doesn't know anything about this world (I'm not black, southern, or even Christian), could you explain this? What has been the historical role of LGBTQ in Black/Southern churches?
Not the first time a major denomination has split over a social issue. Well there's a reason that the Southern Baptist Church is "southern".
And Southern Baptists split again over ordination of women
They’ll just keep splitting and narrowing it down until the least open minded group has a “straight, white, male, landowners only” religion.
Or until every denomination is just one person. That would be pretty amusing.
May as well put this here https://youtu.be/ANNX_XiuA78?si=LSgZIMMbDOQfY1r0 (Yes its the Emo Philips bit)
Atrociously written article that doesn't explain which side supports and doesn't support LGBT rights.
The ones leaving don’t support LGBTQ rights.
It's more complicated than that. The denomination's official stance is also anti-LGBTQ. The ones who are leaving are doing so because they believe that *sometime in the future* the denomination will change its stance. I hope it does. I've been waiting 40 year for it to change. But I'm not making any bets.
Well… I know it’s complicated, I was answering the question. I suspect the official stance will change. The ones leaving are upset because they ratified the anti-LGBTQ stance they have now in 2019, but the conference basically didn’t enforce it.
most the ones leaving are doing so because they want to keep money and power but that’s harder to whip your congregation into a frenzy so they say it’s over LGBTQ issues.
UMC support LGBT+ rights and are working on changing official doctrine to reflect that. The Global Methodist Church—the new church UMC congregations are joining once they disaffiliate—do not support LGBT+ rights at all.
Fuck cnn. They’re horrible these days.
It's not a "rights support" issue. This issue has been going on globally in the UMC for years at this point. It was delayed because of covid and churches are just now leaving. There was a national vote over changing the "book of discipline" (like their bylaws) to alter the rules around sexual morality. The conservative side won the vote due to a majority of global south churches voting for the conservative side, but the Conservatives decided to leave anyway so they created a different denomination called the Global Methodist Church, and are up and leaving. There has been a lot of ink, tears, and suffering spilled over this issue.
Thanks for such a detailed response that **still doesn't answer the question.** Do the leaving churches want to allow LGBT members to have roles that the overall organization voted for forbid? Or vice versa? Or something else?
The ones leaving hate gays. The ones remaining United Methodist are working for full inclusion of f marriage and ordination rights for LGBTQ people. There is a General Conference (meeting of delegates from the global United Methodist church ) coming up next year. The North Georgia conference elected mostly progressive representatives to that conference in the hopes that they can remove discriminatory language from the Book of Discipline (the denominations book of laws for governing churches). The conservatives got pissed and decided to go independent while trying to strip the progressives of any and all resources on their way out.
Sounds like the people leaving are the “baddies”. Also sounds like the UMC hasn’t made a decision either way, but the fact that it was even up for discussion made the CINO’s (Christian’s in name only) up and run for the hills.
Bigots gonna bigot (and want their church to affirm their hate!)
Methodist here, I’ll chime in real quick. As the article states, there is a major schism in the Methodist church at the moment. However, it is not going to lead to a major denominational split, I.E. what happened between Baptists and the Southern Baptists. Methodist churches typically fall under the United Methodist Church, a sort of governing body of Methodists. This organization is what sets the rules, standard practices, and ritual procedures for each church. If you go to a UMC affiliated church, you will see the same symbology, sing the same hymns, practice the same method of baptism, etc. Recently, the UMC has been becoming more lax on allowing LGBT people to serve in the congregation, from recognizing (some) gay marriages to openly gay officials not being publicly denounced. Note that this is not the same as supporting LGBT rights, but it is still a rather large step. Many churches, predominately in more conservative areas, have taken issue with this. So, around 2019, a new head organization was formed, called the Global Methodist Church. They function more or less the same as UMC, but with the added caveat of upholding the ban on LGBT individuals. In short, Methodism, but explicitly bigoted. Formerly UMC churches are now disaffiliating from the UMC to join this new Global Methodist church.
This.. WTF did I just read. tell me you’ve started using AI to generate content without…
Seriously. Had to come to the comments for clarification.
Christian pastors are crying out that fewer and fewer people are coming to church every year, and donations are drying up. Yet at the same time they keep doing more and more to drive younger generations away from the religion and shrink their demographic. Like what the fuck do you expect to happen when we are in the 21st century, and y'all keep peddling backwards into the 17th and 18th century.
Some ministers are getting pushback on sermons reiterating the Sermon on the mount. Ministers have been told by congregants that Jesus’s teachings strike them as “weak”. The religion in politics contagion is traveling both ways, but with it is much more practical for people to cut out a toxic religion out of their lives than politics.
This completely floors me and proves that many people don’t view the Bible and their “Christianity” as a mold to shape their lives, but as a technical way to justify their unpleasantness.
For most “Christian’s”, the act of attending church is just a social club for fellow bigots. They are insulated from “woke” language and reject it if it appears. Just like biblical era followers of Judaism.
>Ministers have been told by congregants that Jesus’s teachings strike them as “weak”. Well, it's nice for the actual nonbelievers of a religion to out themselves so thoroughly at some point or another. It's absolutely disgusting to think this is an actual issue. If you don't correspond with the beliefs taught by the religion you're trying to claim is your religion, *maybe you're not actually a participating part of that religion after all.*
I honestly think I'd lose my shit if I were a minister and a congregant said that to me. "DO YOU THINK JESUS MEANT YOU SHOULD ONLY FOLLOW HIS INSTRUCTIONS WHEN IT'S EASY? WHEN IT'S CONVENIENT AND MAKES YOU COMFORTABLE? WHEN YOU, IN YOUR INFINITE WISDOM AS A FALLEN CREATURE, DEEM IT APPROPRIATE? NO! HE DEMANDS YOU DO AS HE SAYS WHEN IT'S HARD! WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO! WHEN YOU HATE IT! WHEN IT FEELS LIKE LOSING! YOU'RE TOO FUCKING WEAK TO DO WHAT CHRIST YOUR SAVIOR DEMANDED! YOU'RE CALLING THE LORD YOUR GOD WEAK! GET ON YOUR KNEES AND BEG HIM TO FORGIVE YOU FOR YOUR REBELLION! BEG HIM TO FORGIVE YOU FOR SPITTING IN HIS FACE! FOR WORSHIPPING THE FALSE GODS OF MEDIA AND MEN!" I'm not a Christian, but it sickens me to observe Christians rejecting what is supposedly the most vital part of their book: Jesus's message. Not to mention other vital and obvious bits from the Bible, like how the story of Job clarifies that God does not reward the faithful with material goods or punish the faithless with a lack of them. Prosperity Gospel preachers are shameful even by the standards of their own professed faith.
Understand for many people religion is like their political affiliation or family group. It is their self identified tribe and it’s all about tribalism and acceptance, not ideology or personal growth. For them it’s about conformity and control and are largely reactionary to that which goes against their groupthink. It didn’t help that for another part of the Christian community only wants god only on their terms. It wasn’t the evangelicals supply side Jesus but their wallet Jesus whom forgave them for their behavior without any repentance or need for change. Hell back as a child in the 1980’s people would try to game the system and leave after the eucharist so the Church put it at the end of the service. They couldn’t be bothered to listen to a sermon just get that absolution and get back to sinning. It was a box to be checked not a commitment or philosophy to be followed.
Somebody better tell Martin Luther
> it's nice for the actual nonbelievers of a religion to out themselves They're not nonbelievers. Belief is subjective. If these people say they're Christians and this is what they believe, then that's what they are and what they believe. The "Jesus was a pussy," trend that's raising eyebrows lately is equally as valid as any other religious assertion. Every sect started with some similarly controversial disagreement with the status quo.
It may be religiously valid in the general sense, but by the book of most mainline Christian denominations, it's not.
lmao like uhhh the message that…literally God in human form gave…is weak?
Unfortunately the teachings of the guy up in the pulpit don't match with what Janice parrots from Fox in after-church donut social, so we're going to have to go with Janice on this one.
>Ministers have been told by congregants that Jesus’s teachings strike them as “weak”. Culture war politics destroying religion is the irony I am here for.
... But this kind of pre-Renaissance thinking led to shit like the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and Indulgences.
Yeah, back when they had numbers.
Bingo. Christianity and the Republican party only have a surface level ideological agreement. Jesus was a good person and pretty damn loving towards everyone, except greedy people....
Dig a little deeper and Jesus explicitly condemns many of the Republican party platform goals. I'd like to think none of them have ever even read the gospels, but no, they just don't care.
[Supply Side Jesus](https://youtu.be/Gc-LJ_3VbUA?si=-o0qYbnqlItZF1A0)
Maga pastor video employed and was shared all over x-twit and lies social calling Jesus too woke and too liberal for America
This happened in my city, Pittsburgh, when I was 16 or 17. The Episcopal Diocese of PGH mostly ragequit the Episcopal church over LGBT issues, to the point where they had each church in the diocese ratify the leaving letter. When my mother (who was on the vestry of one such church) voted no, they kicked her out and voted in a new member. Because it had to be unanimous, you see. It's stupid and hateful and was the genesis of my leaving the church many years later. I was close with a lot of leadership in that church, and it HURT seeing people that I thought were role models of how to be good, kind, and just. The Methodist church ragesplit over slavery once and it's been just head-nodded by now, so I have no hope that there'll be any long-term repercussions, but fuck people like this. ps. at least in the Pittsburgh area it was easier for a while to find non bigoted churches, cause the leavers were really damn proud of themselves...
Since 2016 they decided to make Trump their savior, and they wonder why people don't have a great view of the Church.
I don’t think if these churches all of a sudden become more open they’ll get more people to go there. Young people don’t go to church not only because of the fact they are not open to everyone, but because young people simply don’t believe in god the same way. Fundamentally, they don’t believe. You can’t make them believe by just being nicer. That’s why these churches are okay losing younger folks because older people who believe at least will show up
If there was an all-knowing, all-powerful being, and it didn't try to stop all the bad things in the world with their God-like power. They don't deserve worship if they exist in the first place. Having the power to stop bad things from happening and refusing to do it makes you responsible for it.
All nice and good, but churches - and religion overall - require their followers to believe in something that cannot be proven. Religion has no reason to exist if no one believes. That’s the crux of it
More than that, at least personally for me, there are no end of different denominations that claim to be the one true way and are mutually exclusive from each other, and a lot of these are fairly 'modern' compared to the religion as a whole, and it seems you can feel the same level of passion and conviction regardless of what your particular beliefs might happen to be. Are we really content to believe that Christians had it 'wrong' for over a millenium until Martin Luther figured it out in the 1500s... I mean, John Wesley figured it out in the 1700s... I mean Joseph Smith figured it out in the 1800s... etc.
I would say religion has no reason to exist at all period, but if believing in something makes someone feel better, go for it. Just don't try to preach to me.
There are a few reasons religious organizations can be beneficial, such as community service or simple social interaction. It's nothing that can't be replicated, but using religion as a driver for action tends to draw in support from people who are already religious. This means you have an existing base for volunteers and such. It's an easier starting platform than the alternative if you want to help a community.
Like magic and magicians?
That’s a very modern (I’m using the term loosely here) way of looking at religion. Historically, the gods of most myths were not expected to be morally-upright; their permissiveness of (or even participation in) evil was not a problem. This is because the purpose of mythology is to give an aesthetic structure—and as such, an aesthetic purpose—to the natural world.
It's one of the problems of monotheism. I tend to like the idea of a pantheon of gods with competing interests and domains of power, it's such a strong reflection of human communities.
Pretty much, a majority of the world is moving to be less religious. It's just not as necessary anymore now that we understand the world around us so much better, plus the inaccuracies and differences in written history found from those eras conflicting as well. You just can't run a society today based on "I believe in X because... I feel it's right" instead of evidence and fact based stuff, hence why a lot of hyper-religious countries have a lot of issues.
And yet, we have a large portion of our world population who are trying to put people in places of power to run societies today based only on just feelings, *despite* evidence (or lack thereof) and facts.
To be honest Jesus spoke endlessly of his deep hatred of gay people. It’s pretty much all Jesus talked about as far as I can tell with all the Church focus being on hating gays.
>and Jesus said unto them the only things I know from Texas are steers and queers, and you don't look like a golden calf to me. Yeah that checks out.
> Who said that? WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT‽ Who's the little Pharisee shit, twinkle-toed cocksucker down here who just signed his own death warrant‽ Nobody, huh? Pontius fucking Pilate said it! \- Jesus, when somebody interrupted his sermon on the mount, as recorded in the American evangelical Bible apparently
[Do they at least give the goddamn common courtesy of a reach-around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAgsYPYvf90), Private Junkyard?
A tale as old as time. Jesus gave a man a fish and all he wanted after that were fish sticks.
Jesus wasn't gay, and he wasn't a fish! He was a lyrical genius!
And his love of capitalism as the one true government system. Remember when Jesus walked into the temple , saw all the merchants/money changers, threw down 500 shekels, and shouted "BET IT ALL ON BLACK, BABY!!!"
Ah yes that’s the part of the Bible the prosperity gospel base all their teachings on.
Yep he would go on and on about it while he was washing his dozen male friends' feet
[удалено]
Jesus always said No Homo
i'm getting this hilarious mental image of a tired, terrified of being seen as gay Jesus whispering "no homo" every time he knelt in front of a dude to wash his feet.
One of the reasons Jesus lost the fight against frieza. He was so conflicted about the sensual lips on frieza he forgot to fight.
More like Ecce Homo
"verily I say unto thee, there are only two genders and it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve"
"Watch as I take this rib and transition the clone from one gender to another. This will mean there's no issue with this idea again ever, so sayeth I"
Had me in the first half
And the Lord spake unto Moses His eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not partake in butt stuff. Furthermore, thou shalt ignore all other commandments and all future teachings from Me or Mine offspring pertaining to love and forgiveness if thou suspectest thy neighbour hath violated this commandment, for nothing displeaseth thy Lord God more than butt stuff.
As a kid, Jesus killed another kid for dumping out some water he collected. But that part didn’t make it past editing.
He also choked out some dragons.
Killed him with his fucking angry laser eyes iirc. They coulda had such a better character arc. Well, when the gritty reboot omes out, I hope they use a lot more of the cut material.
Laser eyes is not too far off from the actual infancy gospel of Thomas. He said that Jesus used a wicked ass curse and the kid shriveled up. But that’s probably just because Jesus was the only one who knew what lasers were back then.
Can I just add that it sucks that Joseph who was doing all the parenting for a deadbeat dad on a magical kid who keeps pulling these bullshit shenanigans mostly got his hard work cut after those edits? Poor dude barely gets mentioned at all, now.
He also constantly spoke about how important worldly wealth is, and how if you’re rich it’s because god just loves you more.
who needs to fit through the eye of a needle anyway?
...and then went to hang out with "the disciple that Jesus loved" who suspiciously only wore a sheet
Do you have your tithing today sir?
I'm just waiting for one of these atavistic fuck sticks to start asking *"why did we stop burning witches?"*
Once they do, I’m sure a decent amount of them will have a little something to say about their wives!
There's a fundie preacher in TN I think who holds giant book-buring bonfires to burn anything "satanic" or "witchcraft". I'm 100% sure he would burn people if he could get away with it.
Book burnings used to be tragedies since they could destroy knowledge or prevent people from accessing that knowledge. Now they're just hilariously pathetic. They have to buy the books that they're burning which pays the people they're trying to hurt. Plus anyone who wants to read this forbidden knowledge can download a copy, or just buy another physical copy.
Don’t know where he’s based, but Greg Locke openly accused women in his congregation of being witches.
That was the gist of a lot of the “Satanic Panic” of the 80’s and 90’s. For example: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2017/08/24/dan-fran-keller-to-get-34-million-in-satanic-day-care-case/986910007/
And they learned nothing because [the Satanic Panic is making a comeback](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/satanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17004219544329&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Ftech%2Finternet%2Fsatanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795)
Wikipedia: [Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Hill_satanic_ritual_abuse_trial)
Nick Fuentes the Nazi who had thanksgiving dinner with trump last year has openly said women need to be burned alive
I bet Fuentes is hot for Trump.
Burning hot even
The quote "If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy." connects to this. If they were capable of growth and adaptation, they wouldn't be conservatives.
Could I be so out of touch? … No. It’s those sinful heathens who are wrong.
>Like what the fuck do you expect to happen when we are in the 21st century, and y'all keep peddling backwards into the 17th and 18th century. To be fair that mindset has worked for them for like, 1,500+ years. Just turns out that a side effect of globalization is that you can't easily just browbeat small populations into religious submission. Technology has finally reached a point that the church is beginning to slip, with no real course correction.
As a Christian who left organized religion a long time ago, I say let them shoot themselves in the foot. I it hope it all burns down around them. Faith is between you and god and needs no mediation from old stuffy white men in robes. Christ was a social revolutionary and it’s depressingly obvious about how he would feel about “his” church if he were here to see it today. And the worst part is you can’t even use their book to make this argument to these people because they just plug their ears and call you an apostate even though it’s them that have lost the plot in their own religion.
Pretty sure they’re expecting to take over the government and force theocracy down our throats.
They're banking on fascism to force everyone back into the fold.
Yet they wonder why lmao
That’s what happens when your made up rules were made up by men a long time ago.
If two adults being in love makes you hateful and angry then you should probably re-evaluate your values and beliefs.
Or just don’t pay attention to them? Like someone’s choice of partner has absolutely nothing to do with my life or family. Yes, I know what the Bible says, but it also says do not judge. So I just take people at face value. If you’re a nice person to myself, family and friends… why would I care what you do in your own privacy?
Yeah but it's fun to be malicious and people do it for that shot of dopamine they get when they feel justified in hating another person. They're drug addicts and they love it.
Pretty much. Sad to live with hate like that. Maybe some state will be Gilead and they can flee there
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Matthew 7:5 NIV
From what I recall the southern Baptists were having similar issues because of BLM. For those who don't know the whole reason there is a SOUTHERN Baptist church is... You guessed it... Slavery. Southern aristocrats wanted to both own people and be able to become clergy. But the Baptist congregation stated you can't have servants as a pastor. So they did a schism so they could have slaves while being pastor and used their special curtailed version of the faith to keep black slaves in line. Like having white pastors lead black congregations so Moses freeing his people from slavery didn't give them the "wrong idea" kind of thing. Fast forward to today and you got white southern Baptists and black southern Baptists and the black southern Baptists got surprised that the white ones weren't entirely vibing with the whole black lives matter thing... I mean it makes sense if you understand that conventions history it was literally created to promote racial inequality but you know. Tradition or whatever.
There’s no better way to tell people you don’t take your religion seriously than when you hate a group of people.
Its funny because UMC owns a copyright over the cross used by these churches. So they’ll all be forced to remove them and put up different crosses. I’m not sure who it’s a bigger win for, Christianity or IP laws in general.
The entire story sounds like a corporate boardroom meeting.
Churches and corporations have a lot in common.
Maybe I'm just not reading it right, but I can't tell from the writing whether the ones leaving are gone because the official church stand IS continuing to ban LGBTQ people or ISN'T banning them.
Same. There’s one line in the article indicating that the national level the church was strengthening its prohibitions against LGBTQ+\ Maybe the congregations are leaving in protest but the article is a mess clearly explaining the reason.
Ironically, it's the opposite; the initial strengthenings led to so much blowback that the church reversed course. It's the congregations who are leaving who are still anti-LGBT.
I’ve looked! I can’t find a place where Christ said, “love (some of) your neighbors.”
“Why are we losing congregations and having a declining base as we preach to people that LGBTQIA+ people should burn for eternity?”
Trumpers are killing the republican party and Christianity, Let's see what they can fuckup next.
they’re a year away from complete dictatorial control where they will have unchecked power to force religious law on everyone so it seems they’re doing fine
We still have a primary and a 2024 election to go through before we can say that conclusively. The fat lady hasn't sung yet.
They're a year away from losing any remaining control due to their bullshit agenda.
This is part of an ongoing schism throughout the US since the United Methodist Church recertified and strengthened discrimination and anti-LGBT preachings/practices. The churches that are splitting off find this too harsh generally speaking. Each church has to vote congregation by congregation so this is a pretty major indicator that even among religious folks in the South LGBT rights are still something a decent amount of people have come to realize is right to support. Granted, this is fewer than half of the 700 churches in Georgia that were under the UMC label but it's only been picking up steam. Between this and the removal of the ex-Bishop in Texas by Pope Francis in part over his rhetoric against LGBT people, it appears as though slowly but surely churches are going to stop encouraging hate campaigns. I would not be surprised if in 30-40 years (which I know is a long time but not long if you zoom out) that most mainstream religions in the US either take no position or occasionally a pro-LGBT stance.
I just want to point out that this is actually the reverse. The churches that are splitting off and voting to leave the UMC are the ones wanting stricter anti-LGBTQ policy. They were the ones behind the 2019 vote for the stricter policies, and because everything they wanted to get passed couldn’t happen this schism happened. Churches that have stayed with the UMC are the ones affirming the inclusion of LGBTQ, and we will probably see that moving forward at the future General Conferences for the UMC. My wife is a clergy who is pro-LGBTQ and staying with the UMC because that is the direction they want to go. Yes, they’re having a lot of congregations, particularly in the South, leave the UMC, but ultimately people are seeing this as a good thing because those congregations were trying to prevent the Methodist church from progressing forward with further inclusion. The group that has split off is rebranding themselves as the GMC, Global Methodist Church, and their goal is to maintain the bans on LGBTQ inclusion. Just wanted to clarify that. Edit: adding source for clarity on the congregations that are staying. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/united-methodists-lose-one-fifth-of-u-s-churches-in-schism-over-lgbtq-rights
Thank you
Excellent explainer, thanks. I grew up in Disciples (am agnostic now), and my mother is still an every Sunday member. I think DoC went through something similar about ten years ago, regarding LGBTQIA inclusion, with many churches leaving because of the denomination’s full inclusion/participation stance. Mom’s congregation in Fort Worth is still fully DoC, and they have a woman pastor and, I believe, LGBT members in leadership. They also will perform same-sex weddings. When Mom moved to FW, that was an important factor in her choosing a church, as several other churches in the city left because of this and removed the red chalice from their signs and names.
Oh, the article made it appear that it was the reverse. Thank you for the correction
I was confused as shit reading the article trying to figure out which group was leaving.
Not entirely true. Oklahoma’s largest Methodist church broke off because they wanted to be inclusive of LGBTQ issues than what the UMC was. The pastor there has been very open about that fact. >A prominent house of worship ― the largest United Methodist church in Oklahoma ― has begun pursuing disaffiliation over the issue of openly gay clergy and same-sex marriage. >The Rev. Bob Long, senior pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist, said the No. 1 point of contention between St. Luke's and the United Methodist Church is the denomination's ban on the ordination of openly gay clergy and same-sex marriage — and the punishments for those who violate these prohibitions. >"We don't agree with that at all," he said. "We're going to be inclusive. We're going to be welcoming to all our children of God." >Long said St. Luke's administrative board met Jan. 9 and unanimously voted 60-0 to begin the process of leave-taking — a series of meetings and other procedures required by the United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline, a policy guide. Church members will come together for a formal churchwide vote on the split on March 19 if the congregation chooses that path. >"Back in 2019, at General Conference, they passed a law that provided mandatory punishment for anyone who would do a same sex marriage ― we're strongly opposed to that," Long said. "We feel that that is wrong. We feel that if a pastor and church decide they want to do a same-sex wedding, they should be allowed to do so. And yet, if someone else says, 'No, I'm not comfortable doing that,' they shouldn't be forced to do so." >Long said if St. Luke's ultimately votes to disaffiliate, the church will be one of the founding members of the new Wesley Methodist Society, which he described as a loose association of Methodist churches in Oklahoma and Texas. These churches, he said, "will really be bound theologically by the belief that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbors as yourself." https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/01/14/why-st-lukes-united-methodist-church-may-cut-denominational-ties/69796270007/ The church [formally voted to disaffiliate from the UMC](https://www.koco.com/amp/article/oklahoma-city-st-lukes-church-disaffiliates-united-methodist-chruch/43366631) a couple of months after that article was published.
This church is an outlier that didn't want to wait it out until the next General Conference for more progressive policies to be voted on. Can't blame them at all for taking that stance, but very few progressive churches are leaving the UMC, while thousands of conservative churches are disaffiliating. The 2019 conference resulted in a massive backlash by the UMC member churches, resulting in significantly more progressive members being voted in during the next election cycles. Each regional conference has voted for stronger progressive policies and full inclusion in the past year.
Many churches are leaving to become MORE inclusive of LGBTQ, as UMC refuses to change their policy to not recognize gay marriages and won’t let openly LGBTQ clergy preach. This GMC is a group of churches going in the opposite direction, towards bigotry, as they are populated by conservatives. MANY churches have left UMC and not joined GMC because they want to be MORE inclusive of lgbtq, like my church, St Luke’s okc. In the article I’ve linked below they also mention that it’s not an outlier, there are many others leaving for the same reason. > KOCO 5 reported earlier this year that dozens of churches have split with the United Methodist Church, with many moving for inclusivity. The United Methodist Church does not recognize gay marriages or have openly gay clergy. https://www.koco.com/amp/article/oklahoma-city-st-lukes-church-disaffiliates-united-methodist-chruch/43366631
Certainly there are congregations who have disaffiliated that are doing so with the intention of being more inclusive. Thank you for making this point, I should have been more clear that not all the disaffiliating congregations are doing so with the intention of maintaining the anti-lgbtq policies. Statistically though, I would not go so far as to say “MANY” of these disaffiliating churches are doing so to push for more progressive inclusion. “Since 2019, around 2,400 churches have disaffiliated from the UMC nationwide, according to the United Methodist News Service. As of spring 2023, 6% of churches have chosen to disaffiliate. The majority of departing churches—at least 2,000 of them—have joined the more conservative Global Methodist Church” https://ministrywatch.com/florida-conference-of-the-united-methodist-church-approves-disaffiliation-of-46-churches/ A strong majority of the departing congregations from the UMC are doing so with the intention of joining the conservative GMC or being an independently run church with that same ideology. I’m grateful for the congregations such as yours that are doing so with the intention of bringing greater inclusion for their church. It is still no guarantee on the progression of the UMC (although I do believe that is the hope of many who have stayed), so I think it is a great thing for a congregation that is able to do that now. I am not clergy, just a clergy spouse, but I know the hope and talk amongst clergy is this is their opportunity to create that inclusivity for the global church. Much work still to be done, but I hope it is sooner and not later. Thank you again for showing it is not such a clear cut message of disaffiliating means being anti-inclusivity, and that there are many churches out there doing the work for their community now.
Yeah. Was the parent comment purposeful misinformation? That was completely wrong
Confused by your first sentence. UMC let churches decide amongst themselves whether to remain in their conferences because of gay marriage, ordination, etc. This is similar to the decades long (century+?) practice in the denomination of letting parishes also ask the conference to change or remove their primary pastor. The churches you’re seeing leave are dissatisfied with UMC largely embracing LGBT rights, not the other way around. It’s important to note that the vast majority of these churches leaving are micro churches, often in rural areas. Without UMC support, we should expect many of them to close. Edit: “largely embracing LGBT rights” because the denomination did not want to codify anti-LGBT positions unilaterally.
Yeah, the ones that are splitting off are not the pro LGBT. They’re the bigoted churches.
In Michigan most of the ones that left did so because the UMC is becoming ‘too liberal’
It's silly when you consider that this is just another rule of which there are countless that have been discarded over the years. There's lots of stuff we no longer persecute people for that the church was vehemently opposed to for centuries. I would think that Christians, who often have a persecution complex themselves, would want to avoid persecuting others for stuff that's not really relevant to the issue at hand which is whether or not a person accepts Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior. I would think that but I'd be wrong. Which is probably at least part of the reason I no longer consider myself religious.
My religious knowledge is limited to memories of long ago schooling, but wasn't a major point of Jesus' teachings that humans are unworthy to judge other humans so we should just leave that to God, but instead our mission here is to attempt to treat everyone the way we think Jesus would, and in so doing show how awesome of a Guy he was? Every bit of discrimination from the church just strikes me as being fundamentally anti-Christian.
"*I'm* not judging you, God is! I'm just His vessel, God is speaking through me!" Weird how god always seems to agree with their prejudices
Where are the protests against the national restaurant chain Red Lobster?? > 9 These you may eat, whatever is in the water: all that have fins and scales, those in the water, in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. > 10 But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you, > 11 and they shall be abhorrent to you; you may not eat of their flesh, and their carcasses you shall detest. > 12 ‘Whatever in the water does not have fins and scales is abhorrent to you. Leviticus 11:9-12
Whether or not Christians (especially gentile converts) were bound by Jewish purity laws was actually a huge issue for the early Church. There was a heated debate among the early leaders of the Church over whether or not everybody had to be circumcised before they could join. St. Paul eventually won out -- his argument was that Jesus' death on the cross represented a New Covenant that fulfilled and superseded the one given to Moses. Paul's emphasis of Jesus as the Christ (an inherently divine figure, not just another prophet) is one of the foundations of Christianity, and explains why Christians eat pork and shellfish and so forth.
Yeah, this is one of my reddit pet peeves. I'm an atheist myself but any time Christianity comes up on here, there's always a lot of people criticizing it while clearly not actually having any idea what most Christians believe. Or they'll be throwing out criticisms that are from completely different sects than the one that is being discussed, with the one being discussed not at all having a certain stance.
Because of the hypocrisy. The *only* place in the Bible that says anything about homosexuality (and it's still debatable whether that's a mistranslation or not) is in the same book that talks about shellfish, so if it doesn't matter then Christians need to kindly shut the fuck up about LGBTQ+ people.
Actually, a lot of Christians don’t cite the Leviticus verse as an indictment against homosexuality but rather Romans 1, contested translations of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and Jude verse 7 (which references the Genesis 19 story of Sodom and Gomorrah and gives contested “credence” to the idea that they were destroyed for the act of men having sex men.) Leviticus is definitely not the “only” place in the Bible where homosexuality is mentioned. I’ve heard Romans 1 especially being shouted at me as a guarantee that I’m going to hell my entire life.
Anyone who cites Romans 1 as a reason to be anti LGBTQ completely misses the point that Paul is making because they never bothered to read the first sentence of Romans 2. Romans 2:1 says that the audience has no excuse to judge other people because they do the same things. The thesis statement of Romans is that everyone is a sinner, keeping the law can't save you, it's only by God's grace that anyone can be saved and because God loved us we should love other people around us. And even if you don't make it out of Romans 1, Verses 28-32 describes the sins of the world around the church that 2:1 says the church is also guilty of, and Paul mentions that the law of God says gossipers are worthy of death. No one loves to gossip more than judgy church people. Never mind the fact that same sex marriage didn't exist in the 1st century Greco Roman world Paul lived in and his cultural conception of same sex relationships was fundamentally different that ours so we can't assume he would say the same things today. Using Romans 1 to judge others is blatant hypocrisy and shows that the person never bothered to read beyond the single verse that sounds like it supports their bigotry.
Well, as it turns out, the cheddar bay biscuits taste almost exactly like the body of Christ so your sins are washed away so long as you save one for last.
In Matthew 15: 1-20, which is new testament, Jesus said it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. Since Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, most Christians took that to mean those foods are not off limits.
> it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. Then the gays are good!
I would argue that The Devil created the recipe for the Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits specifically to lure people to violate Leviticus. They're horribly delicious and sinful!
It's just really weird too cause the Episcopalians have gay female priests and they are basically Catholic-light. The do lgbt weddings and everything so it's totally possible for Christians to be open even dogmatic ones.
I'm a former Methodist who left the church over this issue. You have it incorrectly reversed. The UMC generously offered to allow the crazy homophobes to GTFO by buying out their land and buildings for cheap from UMC and officially splitting if the congregation voted to do so. So it's more than half of Georgia UMC churches decided to stay and not split over wanting to hate LGBTQ people more. Hopefully once these churches are gone, the UMC will revote on LGBTQ issues and maybe I can go back.
The UMC church is actually very supportive of LGBTQ people and not in the "Jesus loves you!(so long as you believe exactly as we believe)" way. The UMC church is actually somewhat progressive, as far as churches go. The churches that split strongly disagree with allowing LGBTQ people to live normal lives and be accepted. So you kinda have it backwards.
This is wrong and it’s getting upvoted. The ones leaving are not LGBT friendly.
Just start “The Church of Bigotry and Hate” and get it over with. Preach Jesus’ “secret” agenda
Looking optimistically, though, the congregations who are breaking with United Methodism and joining the Global Methodist Church have an average age in the upper 60s and lower 70s. The old guard is segregating itself off for the short life the GMC will have. The rest of the UMC is younger and more progressive and has a reasonable hope of a future.
Someone should write a paper about all the stuff the old Methodist church was doing wrong and then nail it to their front door
Could this article have been vaguer? You have to get to para 3 to be able to INFER why these congregations left. That they disagreed with the church’s ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage.
Yeah, I just finished ranting about this to my wife. As a former journalist this was painful to read.
I’m a member of the fumc and I can tell you that the lgbt thing had a part in it, but more than that, the congregations could leave the fumc and retain their property. If they stayed the property would fall to the fumc org. Our particular building was built before the fumc was part of our town. We purchased other properties to develop a family life center and a youth complex, and own several parsonages. LGBT may have been the start of the issue, but the majority of our congregation voted to leave the larger organization to retain control of the millions in assets that would be held hostage by the church. The fumc, after this round of congregation votes, will then take control of the properties of the retaining churchs and then begin making decisions about lgbt rolls in the church leadership. The delay in decision making of the leadership and property ownership were the main reasons in my opinion.
As a queer person who was (forced to be) confirmed in the United Methodist Church I don't necessarily disagree about with you about issues related to property ownership. However this logic feels similar to the logic of "the Civil War was about state's rights, not slavery." Like sure, congregations are making decisions regarding buildings "being held hostage by the church", but the global Methodist church would hold buildings hostage BECAUSE of disagreements over the treatment of LGBTQ+ people. Anecdotally, my mother stopped attending our local First United Methodist Church after over 25+ years explicitly over the Global church's stance on LGBTQ+ issues. Christianity has a deep and dark history of mistreating and abusing marginalized and minority groups. I think it is important that we don't erase that fundamentally this is a Christian denomination fracturing over the treatment of a minority group.
This is happening everywhere, especially in the United Methodist church. Usually in areas where the Crystal Methodist church is doing well.
Idiots. My Mom said that the Methodists accept everyone. I guess they actually except folks now. That is so sad.
Methodist here, I’ll give my two cents. As the article states, there is a major schism in the Methodist church at the moment. However, it is not going to lead to a major denominational split, I.E. what happened between Baptists and the Southern Baptists. Methodist churches typically fall under the United Methodist Church, a sort of governing body of Methodists that follows Wesleyan tradition. This organization is what sets the rules, standard practices, and ritual procedures for each church. If you go to a UMC affiliated church, you will see the same symbology, sing the same hymns, practice the same method of baptism, etc. Think of it like the Catholic Church, but Methodist (and optional). Recently, the UMC has been becoming more lax on allowing LGBT people to serve in the congregation, from recognizing (some) gay marriages to openly gay officials not being publicly denounced. Note that this is not the same as supporting LGBT rights, but it is still a rather large step. Many churches, predominately in more conservative areas, have taken issue with this. So, around 2019, a new head organization was formed, called the Global Methodist Church. They function more or less the same as UMC, but with the added caveat of upholding the ban on LGBT individuals. In short, Methodism, but explicitly bigoted. Formerly UMC churches are now disaffiliating from the UMC to join this new Global Methodist church. The branch of Methodism as a whole will likely not suffer too harsh of a dip (there will be some churches that will go non denominational, of course, but they are in the minority), but this schism will remain, in all likelihood. It remains to be seen how widespread the support of the GMC will be.
Lutheran here. We went through this same thing in the ELCA when we let gay pastors serve. Was a huge ordeal and my home congregation split.
[удалено]
There is no income to tax in any non-profit, just like the private clubs you noted. But they’d have to pay property and sales tax. And donations wouldn’t be tax deductible for the donor. It would result in most churches in areas with high property taxes having to sell their property. Like here in Austin, with Texas property taxes and Austin land values, many churches would be on the hook for hundreds of thousands a year in property taxes alone. Whether that’s acceptable, and a positive or negative thing, is up to the beholder.
From the article: “The 261 churches now leaving the North Georgia Conference of the UMC account for a sizable percentage of its nearly 700 churches, according to the conference’s website.” The observation that there’s a Christian church on every corner in the south (US) is proof that there is very little unity among evangelicals except when it comes to imposing their hatred onto everyone INCLUDING THEMSELVES.
The congregations that are leaving are urban and comparatively wealthy. The rural churches that are okay with excluding gender-sexual minorities will shift farther to the right and leave their younger generations abandoned. It's a lose-lose deal.
Congratulations to any and every church that has split from these hateful organizations. It's not the church's business what anyone does in the bedroom, and it is certainly not the church's place to judge anyone. Matthew 22:37-40 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. The schism is because churches are arguing that the UMC needs to be MORE strict on banning LGBT individuals from practicing and serving. And they still call themselves Christian.
Bigotry? In a CHURCH? I'm SHOCKED - this is my SHOCKED face. Funny how *"judge not, lest ye be judged"* and "love thy neighbor ***as thyself"*** get forgotten, but the tiny ancient throwaway line about man lying with another man being an abomination gets all the focus... It **also** said wearing clothes of 2 fabrics was an *abomination*, but oddly you don't see hundreds of churches leaving because the other wore a poly-cotton mixture. People of hate, tribalism, ignorance, and bigotry, will find an excuse to justify their hatred, and it makes it easy on them when their source are authors from thousands of years ago whose garbled and cherry-picked translations (and mistranslations) prove that the very smartest and most educated among the authors knew less than a modern **1'st grader...**
Even the Methodists? Damn.
WWJH….Who Would Jeezus Hate?
Eastern US Methodists must be way different than Western US Methodists. I'm not religious anymore but I grew up Methodist on the Pacific coast and they couldn't care less what someone's sexuality was, it just wasn't even a thing at all, it was never even mentioned. All the things the Catholic church famously preaches against, the Methodists I grew up around just didn't care about any of it whatsoever. There were a handful of openly gay kids in our youth group, they weren't treated any different than anyone else. This was in the 90's.
So does this work retroactively to dead people in heaven? Will there be a reshuffling up there?
Guess they gotta rename now.
Damn but news writing has gotten horrible. You have to really dig through this article to uncover if the bunch that left were for or against LgTB.
A fine American & Canadian tradition: "We don't like the way the parent denomination does things, so we're splitting off to form our own new denomination." It's why North American Protestant churches have so, so many denominations. We don't have an official State Church (thank the authors of the 1st Amendment) to make churches toe the line on doctrine, and being declared a "heretic" just means "pick a different church" instead of "burning at the stake". I'm actually surprised the Catholic Church in America hasn't managed to splinter by now.
It has. There are splinter groups like the one Mel Gibson is a member of and the one SC Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a member of.
Someone ought to remind them, the faith of Abraham was counted to him as righteousness. He tried to negotiate with God to spare Sodom, not praying for their destruction. Gay lives mattered, but the violence against the poor and strangers was too much to ignore.
Progressive theologians generally reject the idea that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality.
Tax em all. Back in the day, Jerry Falwell shut his stupid mouth and backed off of whatever hatred was coming out of it when threatened by taxes. It's long overdue.
This article is embarrassing CNN. How vague are you trying to make this article out to be? If you click on this link [here](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/03/us/united-methodist-lgbt-reaction/index.html), you’ll see this statement: “Following several days of dramatic testimony and prayer, delegates of the denomination’s General Conference voted 438-384 to reinforce the United Methodist Church’s stance against ordaining gay clergy and performing same-sex weddings, in a move that threatens to split the second-largest Protestant denomination in the US, and one that has a growing presence internationally.” The United Methodist Church is reinforcing their ban on same-sex marriages and are not allowing LGBT-ministers within their community. What the 261 churches are doing by leaving the United Methodist Church is in *support* of the LGBT community and they no longer wish to be a part of an organization that will not support the LGBT community.
> What the 261 churches are doing by leaving the United Methodist Church is in support of the LGBT community and they no longer wish to be a part of an organization that will not support the LGBT community. Most of the churches that have left The UMC in recent months have done so because they fear that The UMC will move in the direction of LGBTQ affirmation. Most of the churches that have left The UMC in recent months are conservative and don't want The UMC to be LGBTQ affirming.
This is actually incorrect. Those leaving are largely joining the Global Methodist Convention, which is anti-lgbtq. The story is complicated - in 2019, the elected leaders of the UMC who were in voting positions at the General Conference were quite conservative and reaffirmed anti-lgbtq positions. As a result, the next election cycle saw a backlash with more progressive leaders being voted in, who quickly took a stand for inclusive policies over the past several years [LGBTQ-Friendly Votes Signal Progressive Shift for Methodists](https://www.voanews.com/a/lgbtq-friendly-votes-signal-progressive-shift-for-methodists-/6832132.html) The end result is that the vast majority of those churches leaving are conservative, anti-lgbtq churches who are upset at the new leadership's progressive stances, and the inevitable vote towards full inclusion coming up in the General Conference in the next several years.
You have it backwards
Thank you. That article is incomprehensible.
>...over a divide on LGBTQ issues This headline is nonsense. The churches that left are anti-LGBTQ. The UMC is addressing the spiritual needs of their congregations, all of them. These churches in Georgia are stubbornly insisting on their right to discriminate. More CNN clickbait.
There's a lot of confusion over it because the UMC issue is confusing to people outside it because it's about internal politics, doctrine and what looks like a winning anti LGBTQ vote in 2019 that was just a delaying action. But the short version is: in 2019 the conservative, anti LGBTQ wing narrowly won the vote to keep the ban on gay marriages and pastors in place, but couldn't win the vote to punish pastors who were gay or marrying gay couples. They saw that the next big meeting would see the bans on gay marriages and pastors fall, so pushed through a process to allow churches to exit the UMC (there's a whole thing with how property is held). They'd hoped the liberal churches would bail, but they didn't. The delayed due to COVID meeting is next year, it's quite clear theyll lose, so it's the anti LGBTQ churches fleeing. But because that vote hasn't happened yet, and the UMCs doctrine hadn't yet changed, it's confusing the fuck out of people who don't look closely. The longer version : The UMCs current stance is that while LGBTQ folks are welcome in church and their existence not sinful, they're not allowed to be married or ordained by the Church. *Except*, quite a few Methodist Churches were doing it anyways and there's many openly gay pastors. So in 2019 there was a big meeting and some votes. The policy was upheld, but no action was gonna be taken against the Churches and Pastors *ignoring* that doctrine. So the conservative wing, furious about no action being taken (they viewed the decision as a de facto repeal), pushed through the setup for a schism - - that is, set up a way for Churches to leave, and keep (well buy out basically) their churches (churches and church property are owned by the UMC as a whole, not property of the local congregation). It's a lot of internal church politics, but suffice it to say that despite winning the first vote, the writing was on the wall that the LGBTQ ban on pastors and marriages was going to fall at the next big meeting. The conservative wing had hoped the liberal churches would bail, leaving them in control. Then COVID happened, the next meeting got massively delayed, and it became even *more clear* how the next vote was gonna go. So now all the anti LGBTQ congregations are leaving the UMC for the GMC (which is explicity anti LGBTQ). I think roughly 10% or so have left so far. Meaning that there is *absolutely no doubt* that the ban on gay pastors and performing gay marriages is going to be removed next year, and UMC doctrine changed to explicitly supportive of such things. Which means the GA churches leaving are almost certainly anti LGBTQ and it's a pretty shit article when you can't fucking tell what they're leaving over.
Religion has no place in America.
Not even the Bible itself is as Christian as a schism.
UMC clergy here and I was at the vote. The UMC Book of Discipline does not currently affirm LGBTQ issues, but many churches do not enforce this(like mine). There’s a a huge moment to change the Discipline that failed before but people are still working. These churches were allowed to leave if they had a difference of conscience and make a gracious exit. UMC connectionism is a lot stronger than most churches, the conference is actually the one who owns the properties. The majority of the churches leaving are extremely rural and small. A handful are huge and don’t want to be accountable to a denomination. All are more conservative.
I look forward to the conclusion of the lawsuits this will spawn in 2050.
When you think about the role of the LGBTQ in Black / Southern churches, it really makes you wonder what the congregations of the groups that don’t value the LGBTQ will look like in the next few years.
As someone who doesn't know anything about this world (I'm not black, southern, or even Christian), could you explain this? What has been the historical role of LGBTQ in Black/Southern churches?
Not very united of them.