At the United Methodist General Conference, delegates voted overwhelmingly to repeal the church's ban on LGBTQ clergy, marking a significant policy shift.
United Methodist delegates repealed their church’s longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy with no debate on Wednesday, removing a rule forbidding 'self-avowed practicing homosexuals' from being ordained or appointed as ministers. Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference — the first such legislative gathering in five years. That overwhelming margin contrasts sharply with the decades of controversy around the issue.
The change doesn’t mandate or even explicitly affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them. It’s possible that the change will mainly apply to U.S. churches, since United Methodist bodies in other countries, such as in Africa, have the right to impose the rules for their own regions. The measure takes effect immediately upon the conclusion of General Conference, scheduled for Friday.
Delegates are also expected to vote as soon as today on whether to replace their existing official Social Principles with a new document that no longer calls the 'practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching' and that now defines marriage as between 'two people of faith' rather than between a man and a woman.
The conference last week also approved the departure of a small group of conservative churches in the former Soviet Union. The church's 1972 General Conference approved a statement in its non-binding Social Principles that homosexuality is 'incompatible with Christian teaching' — a phrase omitted in a revision to the Social Principles that is also headed for a conference vote this week.
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