The public policy arm of the United Methodist Church, which like the Catholic Church, runs hospitals and universities across the country, has applauded the mandate to cover contraception?
That doesn't mean there are no Christians in the UMC, but it does mean that their hierarchy is ultimately more corrupt than most.
There are several reasons this happened: Retirement Funds, Homosexuals, Abortionists. Property and casualty liability may well be part of the problem too.
There is no “public policy arm” of the United Methodist Church. What we have is a denomination that has a meeting every 4 years and ONLY that meeting speaks for the United Methodist Church. That meeting is called “General Conference”.
There is NO body that can address what the UMC “thinks” about any issue in the interim. Interestingly, this spring that 4 year General Conference will meet.
The denomination does, however, have a variety of boards and agencies that work during the 4 year intervals to implement the decisions of the GC.
One of those boards is the “Board of Church and Society”. It has a liberal named Jim Winkler at its head. Winkler enjoys stirring things with news releases of an extremely liberal bent.
I expect the GC to smack him down this spring. I’d love to see them replace him, but that is a different process, so I doubt it will happen, especially with so many liberal bishops.
As it stands, the GC this year will continue to disapprove of gay ministers and marriage; it will probably continue to walk toward a more pro-life position, hopefully (finally) reaching a RILOM (RapeIncestLifeofMother) position this year.
We still suffer from the 70’s when the church hierarchy was seized by liberals while the conservatives slept. With a meeting only every 4 years, changing the course of this denomination is extremely slow. However, will proportional delegate assignment based on size of membership in any geographic region, a more moderate voice is slowly emerging. Africa is conservative and the fastest growing. The southeast and southwest have some marked conservative growth. All the liberal areas are shrinking like crazy, and the midwest is stagnant to declining.