A year after the United Methodist Church underwent a major upheaval, the church made another major change on Wednesday by approving the ordination of openly gay ministers.
At the church’s General Conference in Charlotte, Methodists voted overwhelmingly to remove a 40-year-old prohibition on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” serving as clergy, CNN reported.
At the same time, the vote removed a decades-old prohibition on United Methodist ministers performing same-sex weddings.
The motion to allow gay clergy passed the conference overwhelmingly, by a vote of 692-51. But the move comes after a series of events in recent years that saw many of the denomination’s more conservative congregations leave the UMC to either become independent churches or join competing Methodist denominations. Churches in South Carolina have not been immune to those shifts.
“I know that some of you are celebrating, some are mourning, and some are uncertain and frightened about what the future holds – for the denomination, for your local church, and perhaps even for yourselves as followers of Jesus Christ,” Bishop Jonathan Holston of the S.C. United Methodist Conference said in a statement after Wednesday’s vote.
But “the mission of The United Methodist Church has not changed,” Holston said. “The mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor, seeking the fulfillment of God’s reign and realm in the world.”
“Today, I am asking you to remember that we are still one church, one Body of Christ,” Holston said.
Last June, the state conference of South Carolina United Methodists voted to accept the “closure” of 113 churches in the Palmetto State, allowing those congregations that had voted for it to leave the denomination over doctrinal and administrative differences, including perceived moves to make the church more welcoming to LGBTQ+ people. The departing churches represented about 12% of South Carolina UMC churches at the time.
Even before this week’s votes by the national governing conference of the denomination, more conservative Methodists said church leaders were moving away from traditional interpretations of the Bible’s teachings on sexuality. United Methodist churches elsewhere had already chosen openly gay pastors, including a bishop in one jurisdiction, and made other moves to accommodate LGBTQ+ worshipers even with the former prohibitions in the church rulebook.
“We believe in celibacy in singleness and fidelity in marriage, with marriage being defined between a man and woman,” Lexington’s Mt. Horeb Church said in a 2023 separation guide posted to its website, ahead of a congregation vote on leaving the UMC. “Mt. Horeb relies on the Scriptures and what orthodox Christians have always believed about God to guide all matters of human relations, including sexual ethics.”
Mt. Horeb, which was one of the largest United Methodist churches in the state and which counts former Gov. Nikki Haley among its 5,000 members, ultimately voted overwhelmingly to leave the UMC and joined the Global Methodist Church in August.
Wednesday’s vote follows the departure of more than 7,600 American congregations — one-quarter of all UMC congregations in the U.S., the Associated Press reports.
Others have stuck with the United Methodists through all the changes. The Rev. Tiffany Knowlin Boykin is pastor of Wesley Church on Gervais Street in Columbia. She stressed that Wednesday’s decision still leaves local churches and pastors with the final say on how they want to handle clergy and weddings in their own sanctuaries.
“There is still a lot of diversity in our church,” Knowlin Boykin said. “This vote is very progressive, but not everybody who stayed is progressive. There are a lot of moderate people and a lot of more traditional people who stayed in the church.
“The majority even in my church would be grateful that this harmful language has been removed, but I can’t say they’re all ready for a same-sex ceremony,” she said. “I’m grateful people can evolve and change and mature, and I’m grateful we now have the option.”
The split within the UMC is similar to those in other major Protestant churches in recent years that have faced internal struggles over whether and how to welcome LGBTQ+ people into the church. As some churches have named openly LGBTQ+ clergy or blessed same-sex marriages, other believers have peeled away from established denominations they feel no longer share their values.
The United Methodist Church started a years-long process of conscious separation in 2019, allowing individual congregations to debate and vote on their affiliation with the church and then allowing them to disaffiliate following a settling of accounts with the denomination.
Those departures, however, cleared the way for the remaining United Methodist churches to move in a more progressive direction on sexual orientation and identity at this week’s general conference.
The Rev. Susan Leonard pastors Bethel United Methodist Church in Charleston. She said the previous policy had only served to limit the circle of people who could come to worship in the Methodist church.
“Today’s vote, made by a delegation of worldwide United Methodists, which passed by 93%, moved to widen the circle. That is good news to me and to many in the church,” Leonard said.
“That does not mean in every local United Methodist church, everyone believes the same way or sees life the same way or experiences life the same way. But the centerpoint of Christ allows us to hold our differing points of view,” she said. “We already hold differing perspectives on many social issues, and we still stand together to sing (the hymn) ‘Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.’”
The move does not explicitly affirm LGBTQ+ clergy moving forward, and many UMC denominations outside the United States, including in more conservative areas, will have their own discretion in naming clergy. But Wednesday’s move still marks a monumental shift in relations between mainline American Christianity and the LGBTQ+ community.
The circle is so wide, said Knowlin Boykin, that the General Conference also approved a method for departing churches to one day rejoin the United Methodists if they see more advantages and kinship with the larger denomination.
“That’s a hopeful thing,” the pastor said.