Nearly 7300 Churches Have Left the United Methodist Denomination Over Progressive LGBTQ Stance
(Juicy Ecumenism) As of Saturday, November 18, nearly 7,300 churches have exited United Methodism, more than 24 percent of total U.S. churches. But some churches, despite voting by the required two thirds of the congregation, have been petulantly denied exit, including four in the North Georgia Annual Conference on Saturday. Such churches are then punished and/or shattered.
Iowa approved 59 more exits, and Missouri approved 20 more. But the big vote was in North Georgia, which approved 261 more exits. Late last year, North Georgia’s departing bishop, on nearly her last day before moving to another conference, instituted a ban on further exits. But 186 churches litigated and won, forcing the conference, under a new bishop, to ratify more exits.
But the special North Georgia Annual Conference on Saturday refused exit for four churches. There was no justification but petulance. These churches had.. to continue reading click here.
This article was written by Mark Tooley and published at Juicy Ecumenism.
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I suppose it’s good they draw the line somewhere but the fact that the UMC was already a theologically liberal denomination makes me think that dissident chuches are taking a stand based off of their local cultural morality rather than Biblical convictions.
I’ll quote an article from Firebrand that talks about the UMC’s relationship with theological liberalism:
“…in the Spring 1969 issue of United Methodist Teacher I and II, United Methodist Sunday School teachers would have read these troubling words: ‘The drama of Jesus would be far stronger and make a far greater appeal to this post-Christian age without all this supernatural claptrap brought in at the end with a dead man suddenly brought back to life again.’ It went on to say, ‘Wouldn’t the story of Jesus of Nazareth be more powerful and truer to itself in being less self-centered, if his life had ended in death?’ Unbelievably, this was from the official denominational Teachers’ Manual!”
If that was tolerated in the UMC in the 1960’s, their stance on LGBTQ issues isn’t a problem, it’s a symptom of the problem.
Link to the Firebrand quote: https://firebrandmag.com/articles/theological-liberalism-and-united-methodist-decline
I attended a funeral in one of the wokest Methodist churches in the Midwest located in Lawrence, Kansas. It was depressing to be in this beautiful old church extensively decorated and adorned with Alphabet People imagery.