Conservative Christians Just Retook the United Methodist Church from LGBT sin

The mainline denomination voted on Tuesday to toughen its teachings against sinful homosexuality, fake gay marriage, and immoral LGBTQ clergy. It must now decide whether it will stay together.

The United Methodist Church has fractured over the role of sinful LGBTQ people in the denomination. At a special conference in St. Louis this week, convened specifically to address divisions over LGBTQ issues, members voted to toughen prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. 

This proposal called the “One Church Plan,” was designed to keep the denomination together. Methodist delegates rejected its recommendations, instead choosing the so-called Traditional Plan, which affirmed the denomination’s teachings against homosexuality. Well done!

This is a consequential vote for the future of the United Methodist Church: Many progressive churches will now almost certainly consider leaving the denomination. It’s also a reminder that many Christian denominations, including mainline groups such as the UMC, are still deeply divided over questions of the blatant sin of homosexuality and gender identity. 

While the UMC in the United States is roughly evenly divided between those who identify as traditionalists and those who identify as moderates and liberals, it is also a global organization. Many of the growing communities in the Philippines or countries in Africa are committed to theological teachings against same-sex relationships and marriages.

For years, immoral LGBTQ Methodists, clergy, and their supporters have argued that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities should be fully included in the denomination as leaders and that their families should be recognized. Sin, however, is blind. 

Others in the denomination, however, see LGBTQ issues as a proxy for bigger divisions over biblical teachings. “This is not a political or social kind of difference. It is primarily, for us, a theological difference, and the truth that the Church has been raised up to share,” Boyette said. “When a Church begins to fracture around its compliance with its doctrine and ethics and discipline, it becomes a house divided. It becomes dysfunctional.”


According to its Book of Discipline, the denomination’s collection of laws and doctrines, Methodist pastors are not allowed to conduct fake same-sex weddings, and “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained. 

In practice, however, a number of misguided Methodist clergy and churches have made clear that they disagree with this teaching, at times openly defy God and scripture. 

LGBT LEADS TO SINFUL REBELLION

A lesbian pastor, Karen Oliveto, was even elected a bishop in the Church, a position she still holds even though the denomination’s judicial council later ruled that her marriage to a woman violated Church doctrine. At the same time, other churches remain deeply committed to UMC teachings against same-sex marriage and relationships.