Apparently we’ll soon discover how completely converged the Methodists are:
Karen Oliveto clutched a friend’s hand, closed her eyes and wept when she learned last year she had been elected a bishop of the United Methodist Church. Oliveto, who is married to another woman, had become the denomination’s first openly gay bishop.
Within minutes, a formal complaint was filed challenging her election as contrary to the church ban on clergy who are “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” – a petition that the highest Methodist judicial authorities agreed to consider. On Tuesday, the court will take up the closely watched case, the latest flashpoint over LGBT rights in a denomination splintering over the Bible and homosexuality.
“It highlights very greatly that we are two different churches and that the real difference is whether or not we’re going to live by the covenant that we each have agreed to,” said the Rev. Rob Renfroe, who leads Good News, a caucus of evangelical Methodists that has lobbied to uphold current teaching. Said Oliveto, “I’m in deep prayer, reminding myself of what God has called me to do.”
Oliveto, who is based in the Denver area, will attend the hearing in Newark, New Jersey, accompanied by fellow bishops from the church’s Western Jurisdiction, her wife, mother and childhood pastor. LGBT clergy and their supporters plan to pray outside and wear T-shirts listing the first names only of gay clergy who would risk losing their ministerial credentials by coming out.
The goal is to underscore the human cost of church policy, said the Rev. Lea Matthews of the LGBT advocacy group Methodists in New Directions. Prayer vigils are planned in the Methodist Mountain Sky Area region, which Oliveto leads, while others will join a prayer vigil online.
The court, or Judicial Council, is expected to issue a ruling a few days later.
The 12.8 million-member church, the third-largest in the U.S., was already in turmoil over same-sex relationships when Oliveto was elected. Methodists approved language in 1972 calling same-gender relationships “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The top church policy-making body, or General Conference, has upheld that policy ever since, even as LGBT rights gained acceptance and other mainline Protestants, including the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), approved same-sex marriage. In recent years, the Methodists have seen their greatest growth overseas, especially in Africa, among more theologically conservative people, who have been standing with U.S. evangelical Methodists against recognizing same-gender relationships.
Deeply frustrated, Methodist LGBT advocates have stepped up pressure for new policies, holding same-sex weddings in defiance of church prohibitions and coming out as gay and lesbian from the pulpit. Conservatives responded by intensifying demands for church discipline over such actions. In one high-profile case, the Rev. Frank Schaefer was tried by a church court and defrocked for presiding at the wedding of his son to another man. Schaefer was later reinstated as a minister on an appeal of the ruling.
This really isn’t that hard. Any acceptance of same-sex relationships is sufficient to not only defrock a minister or a deacon, much less a bishop, but merits immediate expulsion from the church. Any so-called “Christian” church that embraces formalized sin, of any kind, is clearly nothing of the sort. This is not even remotely debatable.
Conservatives need to understand that the infiltrators are not seeking acceptance, and that they are not misguided, but they are there to destroy the organization from within. It’s not as if Christians weren’t warned of these “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, after all.
And furthermore, from a practical standpoint alone, it should be obvious that every single church that accepts female ministers, in direct contradiction to Scripture, has set itself on the wide and easy path that leads to worldly approval, declining attendance, societal irrelevance, and eventual destruction.
If those who wish to formally embrace everything from same-sex relationships to gluttony wish to set up their own organizations to pretend to worship the gods in whom they obviously don’t believe, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. So, ask yourself this: why is it so very important to them that they not only be permitted to join existing churches, but assume leadership of them and change their long-standing policies?