Posted on 05/17/2016 9:40:18 AM PDT by xzins
The United Methodist Church is considering splitting over the full acceptance of gay members, according to reports by top clergy and advocacy groups. Church officials say the president of the Council of Bishops will address the rumor Tuesday in Portland, Ore., where the denomination is holding a major convention.
The rumors about the United States’ third-largest faith group began spreading on social media Monday night, when some prominent pastors reportedly told crowds in Portland that a plan is in the works. Details about what the plan entails and who was on board with it were unconfirmed.
United Methodist Church spokeswoman Diane Degnan said only that “there will be a response this morning from the president of the Council of Bishops.” The church-affiliated United Methodist News Service reported no other details. Some said the response could come late morning, Portland time.
The denomination has been increasingly divided in recent decades — like many other global faith communities — over social issues. The split has been especially marked between Western liberals and the fast-growing, more socially conservative segments of the church in Asia and Africa. Short answer was no. The far right and far left are entrenched in their theological understandings. The group also faced a reality that by 2020 and beyond our African United Methodist sisters and brothers would control the church so what this would mean practically is that the United Methodist Church would be on a trajectory to become ever more conservative on a whole host of issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What happened to the PCUSA will happen to the UMC. A conservative version will start up and churches will begin to cross over.
The whole Holsten Conference of the UMC may leave en masse. It is very conservative.
EVERY book in the NT, from Matthew to Revelation, contain warnings of false doctrine and teaching. Some of the warnings are specific (mention names) and others are generic. Some were mentioned by the Apostles while others by Christ Himself. It seems that God does not waste an opportunity to warn people about false doctrine and teaching.
Over 2000 years later, some in the church think that they are above this and those books in the NT were directed towards the early church and does not apply to them. They don’t see the Pharisee staring back at them in the mirror.
Now the major church denominations, who view themselves apparently as ‘Too Big to Fail’, tackle social issues, refusing to acknowledge that the inspired Word of God already addressed these issues, calling most of them SIN.
Hopefully so.
Prepare for the extended real property lawsuits. That will separate the real heart believers from the pocketbook believers, not the gay issue.
Isn’t Trump a Methodist?
Sure....them faggots are going to tell you exactly how it's going to be......
Good luck with that........
I haven’t followed closely but I believe there has been some headway in that direction.
My church owns two churches so we could sell one to fund the other.
The one near me has a big fag flag flying, nonetheless
“UMC has always been a hippy liberal type church.”
That may be true at the national office, but UMC is relatively decentralized and individual congregations are generally left alone to find their own identity within the bounds of the “Discipline.”
The Unite Methodist Church is itself a fusion of Evangelical United Brethren and the Methodist Episcopal Church.
It has not been a good marriage. Evangelicals have not always mixed well with the more formal descendants of the High Church in England, and many of the EUB felt pushed aside when the Methodists came storming in during 1968.
May the divorce be amicable. But the accusations that shall come flying back and forth may make that a distant dream.
“Prepare for the extended real property lawsuits.”
That’s going on now locally with the largest Presbyterian church in town.
[Isn’t Trump a Methodist?]
Presbyterian
Unfortunately, the proposal for a split is likely to separate the US United Methodist Church from the African United Methodist Church, with no provisions for allowing dissenting US congregations to go their separate ways. It has been the solid adherence to traditional Christianity and Biblical principles which has up to now prevented the United Methodists from formally endorsing every loony and wicked liberal idea.
A strong plurality of the Methodist laity still support a traditional interpretation of marriage. I saw a survey recently of US Methodists in Christianity Today that put the numbers at 46% for traditional marriage, 38% against. However, the US “leadership” leans heavily to the left. At the General Assembly last week, a procedural motion regarding changing the rules on same sex marriage failed on a 355-477 vote, but only because the African delegates voted overwhelmingly against it. Remove the African delegates and the votes on this and many other measures look quite different.
No different than the Ameican Baptist vs. Southern Baptist, Presbyterian Church USA vs. Presbyterian Church in America, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America vs. Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, with in all cases the liberal heretics in the former and the Biblically orthodox in the latter. The amazing thing is not that it is happening with the Methodists, but that it didn't happen 40 years ago, the same time Situation Ethics and Liberation Theology combined to bring heresy to the churches.
bookmark
I remember something possibly pertinent mentioned about the church in Laodicea somewhere...
Presbyterians have a bottom up governance system. In most instances, Presbyterian Church buildings are owned by the local congregations, which allows individual congregations to freely leave and affiliate with other denominations.
In the United Methodist Church, church buildings may be paid for by local congregations, but they are controlled by the Bishops, who are overwhelmingly left wing. Just like with the Episcopal and ECLA churches, if the UMC splits, expect traditional congregations who want to leave the church to be forced from their buildings by vengeful bishops, even if that leaves the UMC with empty buildings.
As a member of the Baltimore conference I resigned rather than face the wrath of a kangaroo court bent on the destruction of conservative ministry.
And of course both will now claim they are following the plain teachings of the Bible to the letter.
Good riddance. Let the false Christians take off their masks and go on their way. The hour is late and they won’t want to even pretend to be Christians at all in a short while.
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