Methodist High Court Rejects First Openly Gay Bishop’s Consecration

The United Methodist Church’s highest court has ruled that the consecration of its first openly gay bishop violated church law, compounding a bitter rift over the sin of homosexuality that has brought the 13-million-member denomination to the brink of schism. This would be a good thing.

In a 6-to-3 vote made public on Friday, the church’s Judicial Council found that a married lesbian bishop and those who consecrated her were in violation of their “commitment to abide by and uphold the church’s definition of marriage and stance on homosexuality.”

Still, the court ruled that the bishop, Karen P. Oliveto of Denver, “remains in good standing” pending further proceedings, offering her supporters a glimmer of hope. But it also raised the prospect of a suspension or forced retirement.

HOMOSEXUAL LESBIAN BISHOP IS IN GOOD STANDING? THE DEFINITION OF GOOD IS NOT BIBLICAL AT ALL

“Under the longstanding principle of legality, no individual member or entity may violate, ignore or negate church law,” the council ruled. “It is not lawful for the College of Bishops of any jurisdictional or central conference to consecrate a self-avowed practicing homosexual bishop.”

The Judicial Council also decided, in separate rulings, that the New York and Illinois regions must ask candidates for the ministry about their sexuality and rule out those who are gay “or in any other way violating the church’s standards on marriage and sexuality.”

The boards of ordained ministry in those regions rebelled against the council, the Bible and God ....they announced last year that they would not discriminate against candidates based on sexuality or gender, but the Judicial Council ordered them to drop that practice. They would support immoral sin.

Here we see non-biblical defiant immoral behaviour by a pastor: 

“We won’t run back into the closet, and we won’t leave the church,” said the Rev. Alex da Silva Souto, who is openly gay and serves as senior pastor at New Milford United Methodist Church in Connecticut, part of the New York region. “The only way that I will leave this denomination is if I am dragged out.”

Bishop Oliveto was elected by the church’s Western Jurisdiction last summer and assigned to oversee about 400 congregations in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. Her election was immediately challenged by the church’s South Central Jurisdiction, which argued that the decision violated the church’s ban on ordaining gay people. Bishop Oliveto did not respond to a phone message requesting an interview.

Stephen Drachler, a spokesman for the Western Jurisdiction’s College of Bishops, called the Judicial Council’s decision a “mixed bag.” While it was “disappointing and disturbing” that Bishop Oliveto’s consecration was found to be in violation of church law, he said, “she remains a bishop of the church” for now.

How is that possible? A person who defies scripture is still a bishop? Is this a biblical church or is it a homosexual club?

The country’s third-largest religious denomination, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church adopted language in 1972 declaring that “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” may not be ordained because “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” Methodists have debated that language every four years at meetings of the church’s top decision-making body, the General Conference.

The denomination was deeply divided at the 2016 meeting of its General Conference, but averted fracture when bishops decided to appoint what they called a “Commission on a Way Forward” to propose a solution to the stalemate over issues of sexuality. The church announced this week that a special session of its General Conference, in St. Louis in February 2019, would be dedicated to resolving the church’s divisions over sexuality issues.

The Judicial Council heard arguments in Bishop Oliveto’s case on Tuesday at a hotel in Newark as more than 150 gay Methodist clergy and their supporters held a prayer vigil nearby and later celebrated communion in the hearing room. The question is to whom were they praying? Because it is not God but Satan dressed as an angel of light. 

It is now up to the College of Bishops in her own Western Jurisdiction — who have supported her until now — to decide her future by following the church’s due process.Bishop Bruce R. Ough, president of the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, said in an interview on Friday night that if the Western Jurisdiction decided to stand by Bishop Oliveto, its officials could be charged with violating church law. This ruling really does nothing to resolve the tension and impatience and anxiety in our system. It’s not clear-cut enough,” Bishop Ough said. “One of the tensions that will play out now within our denomination in the next few months is people will be watching carefully whether the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops will in fact follow through and do the due process, and do it well.”

Other Protestant denominations, including the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have decided to allow same-sex marriage and openly gay ministers. These churches can no longer be called churches but apostate groups following Satan's lead. 

But the United Methodist Church has moved in the other direction as its membership has grown in Africa and Asia, tipping the balance of delegates who vote in its General Conference toward a more conservative position.

A majority of delegates from the United States have favored either overturning the ban on ordaining gay people or finding a compromise to allow same-sex marriages and gay clergy, but they have been outnumbered by the combined forces of the African and Asian delegates and conservative Americans, who make up the church’s evangelical wing. 

The Methodist Church unhinged from its Biblical requirements will soon become an apostate group - no longer following Christ, the Bible or even common sense let alone God's biological design.

In recent years, more and more Methodist ministers have flouted the denomination’s restrictions and performed same-sex weddings. In addition, more than 150 have publicly come out as gay, risking their positions if there is a churchwide crackdown, according to the United Methodist Queer Clergy Caucus, an advocacy and support group. The caucus says it knows of another 30 Methodist clergy who are gay but have chosen for now not to reveal their sexual orientation.

Bishop Oliveto, a longtime leader in the church’s immoral gay advocacy groups, was the first woman to serve as senior pastor of one of the denomination’s 100 largest churches, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. She was also an associate dean at the Pacific School of Religion, an ecumenical seminary in Berkeley, Calif. Raised as a Methodist in Babylon, N.Y., she preached her first sermon at age 16. She married her partner, a nurse anesthetist and church deaconess, in 2014. This clearly shows the downward spiral of her life.

She was elected last July on the 17th ballot from a field of nine candidates, on a vote of 88 in favor, none opposed and 12 abstentions.

Her election was formally contested by the church’s South Central Jurisdiction, which includes eight states from Nebraska to Texas. The evangelical wing of the church saw her election as an open act of defiance.

“The Western Jurisdiction was basically giving the middle finger to the rest of the church,” said John S. A. Lomperis, the United Methodist director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative advocacy group.

At the Judicial Council’s hearing in Newark, the Rev. Keith Boyette, a pastor in Virginia and a lawyer who was representing the South Central Jurisdiction, argued that Bishop Oliveto’s election openly violated rules about homosexuality in the church’s Book of Discipline.

In an interview late Friday, shortly before the council’s ruling was made public, Mr. Boyette reviewed his reasoning. “The Western Jurisdiction’s decision to elect an openly gay bishop was contrary to the Discipline of the United Methodist Church, and therefore their act in electing that person was null, void and of no effect,” he said. “It was as if it had never occurred.”

Mr. Boyette was recently named the president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a new organization of congregations, clergy members and laypeople who represent the church’s orthodox, evangelical flank.

In a statement responding to the Judicial Council’s ruling, the association said, “There can be no sustainable future for the United Methodist Church, as currently structured, without accountability for all our clergy, including our episcopal leaders.

“We fear that this decision of the council will prompt many more individual members and churches to withhold funds or to seek an exit from our denomination. The council’s ruling adds to the growing list of bodies that have not taken action that they could have taken to restore integrity to our covenant.”