#global methodist church

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Laura Bullard at Vox:

Last week, hundreds of United Methodist Church (UMC) delegates from around the world sat down to vote on whether or not to reverse a longstanding ban on the ordination of LGBTQ clergy. The decision would also determine whether or not to strike a rule that prohibited clergy from presiding over “homosexual unions.” The room was uncharacteristically hushed as delegates logged their votes. They’d gathered to participate in a quadrennial General Conference, where an elected group of clergy and laypeople review and edit the rules and social stances of the church on a variety of subjects. When the results were announced, the room erupted in loud sobs and cheering. With this vote — and several others — over 50 years of church law, doctrine, and social stances aimed at restricting the full inclusion of LGBTQ methodists were reversed. In a dramatic deviation from the staid (remarkably congressional) proceedings, the Methodists began to sing. Church historian Ashley Boggan told Today, Explained’s Noel King that the UMC’s schism should matter to Methodists and non-Methodists alike. “If you look at Methodist history within the United States, it’s a great lens for looking at American history,” she said.

How did we get here?

For the last five years, the United Methodist Church has been fighting over its stance on LGBTQ members. In a one-off special session in 2019, the UMC had voted to tighten its prohibitions on LGBTQ members — a decision that nearly half of all UMC congregations across the country went on to publicly reject in the following years. So, in 2022, a splinter denomination was born: the Global Methodist Church. Traditionalist congregations had seen the writing on the wall: Change was coming, and they didn’t want to be part of it. Conservative churches began leaving the denomination in droves, and by the time the General Conference convened this year, a quarter of US congregations had jumped ship. It was this newly slimmed-down UMC that voted to reverse the church’s anti-LGBTQ positions earlier this month.

This Vox article on the United Methodist Church’s recent split over LGBTQ+ issues represents the microcosm of America.

[adventurechristianity]

United Methodissed

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.Ephesians 4:31 If this were a playground bully I was facing, would I stand up and punch them in the nose? I sort of did that, once, on the playground. The guy reached behind me and grabbed my neck. I instinctively grabbed his arm and flipped him over my shoulders. He stood up, embarrassed,…

[junebugwriter]

I made a new substack to write my more official-ish, less personal posts! Here is my first, on the Global Methodist Church and their theology:

[matthewmiller49]

Sermon by Pastor Ray Sherwood on 01.08.23 at the Bowman Methodist Church, a Global Methodist Church congregation. https://www.facebook.com/bowmanumchurch

[christian-confessions]

Disaffiliation

I am disappointed that you’re considering it. Your hatred of God’s children should not be strong enough to drive you to abandon them.

[reverendchrismullis-blog]

(Pastor Chris Mullis)Yesterday, we rededicated our church as holy ground committed to the glory of God in the Global Methodist Church.  It was a powerful time of celebration and anointing.  Watch, listen, or read the message here: Watch - https://youtu.be/qjQGTElk0OI Listen - https://on.soundcloud.com/vVikZ9KgVp8w1vYF9 Read - https://www.pastorchrismullis.com/2024/08/the-church-sermon-on-ephesians-219-22.html

[danielgriswold]

First Steps: Pastor Dan Griswold on Officially Launching "The Lowcountry Church Plant"

A lot of folks have been wondering about my next steps as a Church Planter and after deep prayer we've set out a pattern for what Amanda and I think God is doing. Read this blog and consider joining me on this journey as we step into our next adventure.

“And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.’” -Luke 14:23 Some Background and Heart for Church Planting in the Lowcountry of SC Only 8 years ago I was sent to serve as pastor to three rural churches in Ridgeville, SC. A leader of Mount Tabor, Wallace Muckenfuss, drove me through pine forests and told me that…

[ex-furry]

ALSO there's a global methodist church in pigeon forge. crazy

[adelesbian]

ew the global Methodist church symbol is so ugly 🤢

[thedreadvampy]

I find Americans talking about religion fascinating because they think the weird pentecostal/evangelical eschatology cults are Normal Christianity and not like. a really specific thing.

and that is by no means to say Christianity elsewhere is less fucked up but it's different.

like Americans will say stuff like "like most Christians, this cult believes we're in the end times and have to reclaim Zion to bring about Revelations, but what's weird about their beliefs is..." and it's like???? WHAT DO YOU MEAN LIKE MOST CHRISTIANS?????

like Scotland's still a pretty Christian country. some of the biggest sociopolitical divides are Christian sectarianism. we got Presbyterians we got Catholics we got Episcopalians we got Quakers (hi) we got Baptists and Methodists and Jehovah's Witnesses and so on. half of the population are Christian. but I don't think I have ever met more than a handful of people whose Christian belief is focused on Revelations and the end times. that's weird stuff my guys.

my outside appraisal of American Christianity is that it looks really very samey. there doesn't seem to be a lot of significant theological difference, or tbh aesthetic difference, between a good number of the major churches. worship practise, structure, and the focus on sin, evangelism and apocalypse seem to be way more common threads there than in Europe. and I feel like people grow up in that and think that means all Christianity is the same as that. which like. it isn't.

A lot of folks I know who've been to American Quaker communities, for example, have been really surprised at how much some Meetings in the US are cramming into the same episcpentamethodbaptitradcathevangelist church model - fire and brimstone preachers, our god is a great big god songs, focus on end times prophecy - and it just doesn't. line up with the degree of diversity in practise and focus for different Christian sects in most other parts of the world. where like. those types of churches also exist (the evangelical born-again rapture and damnation churches) but they're one approach among many.

and again that's not cause like. Christianity is only bad in the US and not bad anywhere else. Christianity does a lot of social good and a looooooot of social harm everywhere. but it's wild what Americans, Christian or otherwise, seem to take as the baseline beliefs of global Christianity. like I went to a Church of England school and I don't believe I was ever taught about Revelations, let alone the rapture or young earth ideology or biblical literalist creationism, except, eventually, as a thing some other people believe and it's weird. when the young earth creationists came into my secondary school to prostyletize it was a bloodbath cause every 14 year old in that room was like "what r u talking about m8 that's cult shit".

what I'm saying is: there's not a huge amount of universal Christian beliefs across all sectors except like "God is there. There's some Bible which contains some amount of spiritual value for some amount of literal interpretation. Jesus? Pretty great and important guy. Probably the son of God or actually God or some secret third thing." and everything else there's some dissent on. but of the things that are broadly though not fully universal - maybe like heaven, hell, sin, redemption through faith or deed, the resurrection, a physical/spiritual divide, prayer, some key holidays etc - I don't think that 'weirdly intense eschatology involving reclaiming Zion, global warfare, the Antichrist, decades of torturous end times, physical rapture etc' is in that mix. that's your country's weird thing that it's since exported through cultural colonialism, just like Christianity itself was largely exported through European cultural colonialism.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

The United Methodist Church opened its General Conference Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C., and one of the key issues delegates are expected to vote on is whether to reverse anti-LGBTQ+ positions the denomination has taken over the years — and which many congregations are ignoring and church leaders are largely not enforcing.

Why have LGBTQ+ issues become a focus of the meeting?

Supporters of LGBTQ+ equality have been trying for years to get the church to rescind its homophobic policies, without success. Since 1972, the church’s Book of Discipline has included this language: “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” It was added as the gay rights movement gathered steam. The church also does not officially condone same-sex marriages or ordain out LGBTQ+ clergy members — but such marriages have taken place in United Methodist congregations, and there are numerous LGBTQ+ people among Methodist ministers. Some LGBTQ+ clergy have been expelled when they came out, but many remain. The denomination failed to formally lift the anti-LGBTQ+ policies at its previous General Conference, held in 2016, at any earlier ones, or at a special conference called in 2019 specifically to address LGBTQ+ issues. The General Conference is usually held every four years, but the 2020 event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving it to the 2024 conference to deal with these matters.

[...]

What is the likelihood that these changes will be approved?

There has been resistance from conservative congregations, to the point that United Methodist leaders decided the differences were irreconcilable. In 2020, the church hierarchy unveiled a plan for disaffiliation from the denomination, and more than 7,600 of the church’s congregations around the world have left, either becoming independent or affiliating with the conservative Global Methodist Church. They represent about one-quarter of the church’s total. Given that many conservative congregations have left the denomination, it's likely that the church will move in a pro-LGBTQ+ direction is strong. But some observers warn that resistance remains. The Religion and Social Change Lab at Duke University in North Carolina recently surveyed clergy and congregations in the state and found that one-fourth of the remaining clergy did not want to allow LGBTQ+ ministers and a third were against same-sex marriage, NPR reports. “I’d also been left with the impression that this split would make the United Methodist Church a more progressive denomination, and in some ways, amongst the clergy, that has happened,” David Eagle, who runs the lab, told NPR. “But amongst congregations, congregations still remain very evenly divided both theologically and politically.”

[...]

Another possibility is that delegates will simply agree to disagree on LGBTQ+ issues. That “would essentially codify what’s already happening within the church: more liberal conferences such as those in southern California would continue to ordain LGBTQ clergy and allow ministers to perform same-sex weddings while more conservative conferences such as those in the southern U.S. or parts of Africa would not allow such ordinations or weddings,” according to NPR. Conference delegates took a step in this direction Thursday. They approved five of eight proposals to change the structure of the church, giving regional bodies greater control over policies. "The most critical of those five petitions was a constitutional amendment that effectively creates an entirely new system of regional authority worldwide, thereby putting regional bodies in both the U.S. and in other countries on equal footing," The Tennessean reports. U.S. regional bodies have usually had more power than those overseas. In this new structure, more progressive regions would likely be LGBTQ-affirming, while those in conservative areas would keep restrictions in place. Conservative delegates, however, tended to oppose regionalization largely because it would pave the way for greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

The United Methodist Church has been facing a schism in recent years, and LGBTQ+ issues are the key driver. A sizable amount of the more conservative churches disaffiliated from the UMC in favor of either going independent or join the Global Methodist Church.

The General Conference is likely to repeal the denomination's anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

[lboogie1906]

Ambassador Charles R. Stith (August 29, 1949) is a businessman, diplomat, former educator, author, and politician. He is the Chairman of The Pula Group, LLC. He is the non-executive Chairman of the African Presidential Leadership Center. He established and directed Boston University’s African Presidential Center. He presented his Letter of Credence as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the US to the United Republic of Tanzania. He served as the Ambassador during the traumatic period after the bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam.

He received an appointment to the Faculty of the Boston University Department of International Relations and taught a course on Africa and Globalization. He retired from Boston University. He was on the Advisory Committee of the Office of the US Trade Representative and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American Ambassadors. He is the author of For Such a Time as This: African Leadership Challenges and Political Religion. He is the Senior Editor of the annual African Leaders State of Africa Report and author of many articles, which have appeared in such publications as the African Business Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Chicago Sun-Times.

He is a graduate of Baker University, the Gammon Theological Seminary, and Harvard University Divinity School (Th.M). He is the founder and former National President of the Organization for a New Equality.

He was one of the architects of the regulations redefining the Community Reinvestment Act.

Before heading ONE, he was the Senior Minister of the historic Union United Methodist Church in Boston. He was an appointee to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. He has served on the National Advisory Boards of FannieMae and Fleet InCity Bank, the editorial board of WCVB-TV, and the boards of West Insurance, Inc. and the Wang Center for Performing Arts, among others. He is the recipient of several honorary doctorates. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #omegapsiphi

[sarkos]

To this day, these churches still draw from the spiritual legacies of Christian missions and receive funding from off-reservation congregations under that definition. Global Ministries of the United Methodist church spent over $11m in 2022 for missionary services. Wels spent $661,018 just for the Apache missions and over $23.5m for all missions, as laid out in its most recent report, from 2023. Wels first came to Arizona in 1892, five years after the Dawes Act. When it was clear that exterminating the Apache people would not be possible, the federal government engaged Christian denominations working with the military to force the assimilation of the Indigenous people. RH Pratt, the superintendent of the first “industrial” boarding school under this policy, coined the term that embodied the philosophy behind these institutions: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” pews and stained glass Federal boarding school policy allowed the military to forcibly remove Apache children from their families and send them to industrial schools in an attempt to militarize and alter their identities. They were forbidden to practice their religion or speak their language, and reports of physical and sexual abuse were common. Many children never returned home. If an Indigenous child was found outside during school hours, Indigenous police were appointed to snatch the child and deliver them to a school under the US military’s jurisdiction. If a parent sought to hide their child, they could be imprisoned or cut off from food and other necessary daily supplies. Apache children were kidnapped and taken as far as Pennsylvania, where they were forced to fully assimilate into Anglo-Christian society. Their clothes were burned, their language forgotten. Many children died of disease, neglect or abuse. And while the number of deaths is not yet known, it is believed that Apache children comprise a quarter of the graves at Carlisle Indian Industrial school. To think that 1800s attitudes towards Apache children have changed would be a mistake. Outside of the Wels mission, volunteers of other denominations drive around in colorful buses and still pick children up throughout the reservation, whether on the side of the road or other public areas. They take them to play games and learn about their version of Jesus and then drop the kids off again where they found them hours before. Parents are not always told or asked permission.

They took part in Apache ceremonies. Their schools expelled them for satanic activities | Native Americans | The Guardian

Great-Grandad survived Carlisle. In his words, “It was a hell of a way to meet Jim Thorpe“

All of this is why my reaction to someone telling me they’re Christian is the same as “Would you like to hold this blue-ringed octopus?”

[clivemwilliams]

Tobago 2024

Saturday 27th April

Early start today as we were picked up from our apartment at 7 :00 am by Newton who we later discovered is Tobago’s answer to David Attenborough and is the island bird expect. Most years he goes to Leicestershire for the annual global Birdfair!

Newton took us up into the rainforest which was 500 meters above sea level and noticeably cooler – that is slightly below 30c compared to slightly above 30c. It’s the oldest protected rainforest in the Western Hemisphere dating from 1776 – established by the French. Once again we saw some amazing and different birds and I managed to take a few photos (well over 500 actually).

The highlight was a pair of manakins performing a courtship dance which involved a lot of jumping up and down !

After lunch we went down to the beach and fortunately we were not attacked by sharks – my cunning plan of using Judith as a decoy was not needed on this occasion.

We also discovered a mini supermarket which we didn’t previously know about as well as a few shops selling local crafts.

In the evening we went to a local bar for a BBQ and a steelpan instrumentalist who was pretty amazing.

We also discovered the local Castara Methodist Church but it’s quite a climb up a steep hill and we can’t find out the times of the Sunday services so we won’t be going on Sunday- I also note from Facebook that their last service lasted over 2 hours so that also influenced our decision !

We now have a quiet few days with no bird tours arranged so going to spend it on the beach and in the local bars and cafes whilst I plan the best spot for some good sunset photos !

We’ve also acquired a new friend called Harry (followers of Death in Paradise will know why!) see last photo.

[fierceawakening]

"By reorganizing the United Methodist Church in this way, it's far more likely that its ban on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ clergy could be lifted in the U.S while allowing churches elsewhere to make their own rules."

I am very thrilled that my denomination is doing this!

But I am a little uncomfortable with this explanation:

"Yes, it decenters the U.S., but it also dismantles colonialism, giving us sense of agency, a sense of autonomy while still keeping us connected missionally," she said. Rev. Emmanuel Sinzohagera of the United Methodist Church's Burundi Conference said he is pleased with this reorganization plan. "What matters in Africa may not necessarily matters to you, to the U.S. church, and what matters to you as church may not necessarily matter to the African Church," he said.

Saying that allowing the African Church to continue to be homophobic "resists colonialization" stretches words to their breaking point when it was very often colonizers who taught the peoples they colonized that homosexuality was an affront to God in the first place.

I'm okay with this compromise because I've been following this issue long enough to know that if we didn't do this, the answer would still be no globally, because the African churches would insist on it.

But calling this compromise "anti-colonialist" is a bit much for my gay ass.

[terrainofheartfelt]

this week the global united methodist church is having the four years delayed conference where they are finally going to make a decision about whether gay people are real & deserving of rights and I know it’s an important thing but the gay preachers’ kid side of me is just like yesssss burn it all downnnnnn