United Methodist Church leaders are proposing a split into more than one denomination in a bid to resolve years of debate over LGBT clergy and same-sex weddings, according to the church's official news agency.
The historic schism would divide the third-largest religious denomination in the United States, a painful journey that began with the ordination of women in 1956.
Leaders of the church announced Friday they had agreed to spin off a “traditionalist Methodist” denomination, which would continue to oppose same-sex marriage and to refuse ordination to LGBT clergy, while allowing the remaining portion of the United Methodist Church to permit same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy for the first time in its history.
The plan would need to be approved in May at the denomination’s worldwide conference.
The writers of the plan called the division “the best means to resolve our differences, allowing each part of the Church to remain true to its theological understanding, while recognizing the dignity, equality, integrity, and respect of every person.”
The United Methodist Church is the United States’ largest mainline Protestant denomination and among the only remaining such churches that still does not perform same-sex marriages. The church has fought bitterly about LGBT inclusion for years, and leaders often feared the fight would lead to a schism.
Friday’s announcement came as new sanctions were set to go into effect in the church, which would have made punishments for United Methodist Church pastors who perform same-sex weddings much more severe: one year’s suspension without pay for the first wedding and removal from the clergy for any wedding after that.
Instead, leaders from liberal and conservative wings signed an agreement saying they will postpone those sanctions and instead vote to split at the worldwide church’s May general conference.
The agreement pledges $25 million to the new “traditionalist” denomination, which will break away from the United Methodist Church, a group that is likely to include most of the church’s congregations in Africa, as well as some in the United States. In exchange, Friday’s announcement said, the new denomination would drop any claim to United Methodist assets, such as church buildings.
Any local church that wants to join the new conservative denomination would have to conduct a vote within a specified time frame, the announcement said. A church would not need to vote to remain United Methodist.
Churches that vote to leave could take certain assets with them.
An additional $2 million would go to any other new denomination that wishes to split from the church.
In 2016, dozens of United Methodist clergy came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual defying the ban on "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" in ministry and essentially daring their supervisors to discipline them. This is similar to rebellious factions inside the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and their agitation of ordaining females to the gospel ministry.
In some parts of the United States, openly gay clergy serve with few if any restrictions. Conservatives argue that such policies threaten to fracture the church into small, self-governing branches.
For more than a decade, liberal United Methodists have sought to push the church to adopt more liberal provisions, without success.
Is the SDA Church headed in the same direction?
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“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).