United Methodist Church plans for special session involving LGBTQ+ inclusion

By Zoe Travers
Journalism Intern

The United Methodist Conference is meeting for a special session Feb. 23-26 in St. Louis to vote on a plan regarding same-sex marriage and the acceptance of LGBTQ+ clergy.

According to an article from the OCU Campus newspaper by Emily Wollenberg, the session follows a letter from the United Methodist Council of Bishops apologizing to the LGBTQ+ community, after discussions at the February Conference.

“Demeaning and dehumanizing comments and attacks on LGBTQ+ persons in conversations related to the upcoming February Conference are a great tragedy and do violence to hearts, minds, and spirits,” the letter reads. “When you suffer, the whole body of Christ suffers. Together, we need to work to resist hate, violence, and oppression of persons.”

Trina Bose North, an elder of the United Methodist Church and pastor at Crown Heights United Methodist Church, said she feels like she’s serving a church that doesn’t represent her beliefs and isn’t comfortable with the idea of the United Methodist Church not treating people equally.

“In our discipline, we have language that is problematic, saying that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, and then also in the discipline, it prohibits United Methodist clergy to marry gay couples, and it prohibits conferences to ordain gay people,” Bose North said. “Many people in the denomination are ready to change it.”

Bose North, although not a delegate, will attend the conference with Reconciling Ministries, a United Methodist organization focused on inclusion.

She described the conference as a representative democracy with somewhere between 800 to 1,000 delegates, and a quarter of the delegates come from Africa. Because there are so many people involved, Bose North said, the conference is split, but, no matter what the church chooses, it’s a historical decision.

She said a session like this has only happened one other time in the history of the United Methodist Church when there was a merger between two denominations.

There are three proposed plans, which the United Methodist Church will discuss - the One Church Plan, the Traditional Plan, and the Connectional Conference plan.

The One Church plan allows churches and pastors to make decisions based on their specific congregations, which means Methodist pastors would be allowed, but not required, to perform same-sex marriages. This would also allow conferences to ordain openly LGBTQ+ pastors, but they would not be forced to.

The Traditional Plan would enforce prohibitions on same-sex marriages and the origination of LGBTQ+ clergy and would allow for conferences and churches to leave the denomination.

The Connectional Conference Plan would create three new conferences holding traditional, moderate, or progressive beliefs. This plan would require multiple amendments to the United Methodist Constitution

Bose North said she favors the One Church Plan, as it gives pastors the ability to marry gay couples. While realizing the Methodist Church is not of one mind, Bose North said this seems like the best compromise. She said it’s hard to say what will come of the general conference, but she hopes the United Methodist Church will find a way to move forward, as a denomination.  

Copyright The Gayly 2/4/2019 6:03 p.m. CST