United Methodists Eliminate Anti-LGBTQ Policies

Decades of battle, schism, heartache, and a win for inclusion within the church

Foreground: Rev. David Meredith, an openly gay UMC minister who has faced church trials and so-called traditionalists’ efforts to purge the denomination of queer clergy, looks on as votes for inclusion are totaled. PHOTO CREDIT: Reconciling Ministries Network

Last week, United Methodist Church (UMC) delegates voted to repeal the denomination’s prohibition against LGBTQ clergy, the ban on clergy performing same-sex weddings, and removed 52-year-old language that called “the practice of homosexuality… incompatible with Christian teaching.”

As Reconciling Ministries Network, an organization seeking inclusion for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities within UMC, wrote in an email, the votes were “earth-shaking. History-making. The answer to innumerable prayers. The arc of justice has been long — bending sometimes imperceptibly. But… our Church made the right choice.”

It has indeed, been a long, long road for United Methodists fighting for inclusion. It has entailed clergy losing their credentials for celebrating marriages — theirs or their congregants’. It’s included threats of schism and then the real deal, with roughly 6,000 churches disaffiliating when some American UMC conferences pledged not to enforce bans against LGBTQ clergy and same-sex weddings. Nearly a quarter of US UMC churches left the denomination, forming the Global Methodist Church or striking out on their own.