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More than 30 congregations based in North Carolina have threatened legal action so they can leave the United Methodist Church, claiming that the disaffiliation process is unfair to them. The Wesleyan Covenant Association, a theologically conservative network, announced earlier this month that over 40 churches in the Western North Carolina Conference are overseeing "pre-suit negotiation requests." The announcement comes as scores of theologically conservative congregations nationwide have left the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States amid ongoing debate over the UMC's longstanding opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. According to WCA, the Western North Carolina Conference "sent a legal...

A doctor in Texas is suing the health care institution that suspended her for allegedly purveying “dangerous misinformation.” Dr. Mary Bowden, who now runs her own clinic, is seeking $25 million from Houston Methodist for alleged defamation. Bowden became concerned that the COVID-19 vaccines were not preventing contraction of the virus that causes COVID-19, and spoke out against vaccine mandates and, later, the vaccines themselves, according to the 19-page lawsuit, which was slated to be filed in Harris County District Court. After Bowden began sharing her opinions on social media, Houston Methodist and its CEO, Dr. Marc Boom, “retaliated” against...

More than 100 churches have gone to court, suing the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) because they want to leave the denomination immediately.The main reason involves disagreements over United Methodist clergy performing marriages for LGBTQ couples and ordaining LGBTQ people as clergy in the church.One hundred and six Florida churches want to leave the denomination, and take their property with them.The lawsuit says the church leadership is not abiding by the church's Book of Discipline, which deals with Christian doctrine, the denomination's beliefs, and the ownership of church buildings and properties. The Tallahassee Democrat reports the lead...

Iliff School of Theology is an official theological school and approved seminary of the United Methodist Church ... *** Tom Wolfe, the president of Iliff, who has been an ordained Methodist elder for over forty years, said in 2020 that the school’s focus is “engaging the moral discourse in the context of multiple cultural constructions of human meaning.” *** The school employs as an admissions representative a Norse Heathen named Alexandra Ravenscroft, who is the head clergy, or Gudellri, of her pagan organization, Forn Sidr of America. Ravenscroft joined Iliff in 2021. In her job at Iliff, she recruits and...

Last year, the United Methodist Church accepted Isaac Simmons, who regularly preaches dressed as a drag queen under the name Ms. Penny Cost, as a candidate for ordination. Since that time, Simmons, who serves as an associate pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Illinois, has challenged basic theological concepts, projecting a worldview where divinity rests not in God but in queerness. In a church preparing to split over LGBTQ issues, the drag queen pastor, who embraces queer theology while barely attempting to plaster on the basic tenets of Christian theology, has become a lightning rod. Conservatives argue that...

A report from Hope Rawlson at the blog for the Institute on Religion & Democracy has documented that students at Duke Divinity School, which is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, have held a “Pride” worship service to pray to the “Great Queer One.”She revealed, “Divinity Pride, a student group affirming the ‘dignity, faithfulness, and strength of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and gender/sexuality non-conforming Christians,'” held the event.The posting explained, “Criticizing the church, Justis Mitchell, a first-year M.Div student, stated, ‘In the pews we listen to the pastor who preaches about commandments, condemning those who disobey, predicating...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Rev. Craig Duke has been a Methodist minister for three decades, building a reputation as a staunch advocate of LGBTQ inclusion. His pastoral duties have now been terminated — the result of a bitter rift surfacing in his Indiana church after he sought to demonstrate solidarity by appearing in drag alongside prominent drag queens in the HBO reality series “We’re Here.” Duke, 62, said he thought most of his 400-member congregation at Newburgh United Methodist Church shared his inclusive views, and he was taken aback when a prominent congregation member, soon backed by other churchgoers,...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Rev. Craig Duke has been a Methodist minister for three decades, building a reputation as a staunch advocate of LGBTQ inclusion. His pastoral duties have now been terminated — the result of a bitter rift surfacing in his Indiana church after he sought to demonstrate solidarity by appearing in drag alongside prominent drag queens in the HBO reality series “We’re Here.” Duke, 62, said he thought most of his 400-member congregation at Newburgh United Methodist Church shared his inclusive views, and he was taken aback when a prominent congregation member, soon backed by other churchgoers,...

She stands 'accused' of prescribing medication (Ivermectin) which the FDA has not deemed effective. She learned her hospital privileges were removed via the media reporter who contacted her. The hospital is also the first to require staff be vaccinated.Video is 22 minutes long. I posted the computer-generated video transcript to FR here. Houston Methodist doctor who resigned following suspension over controversial COVID-19 tweets sp... - YouTube

A United Methodist Church leader is promoting the notion that killing an unborn baby in an abortion is okay as long as the mother makes a “thoughtful and prayerful” decision first. Pastor Robert Vaughn Jr., director of the General Board of Church and Society for the UMC, told Baptist News Global that the denomination takes a “reluctant pro-choice” stance on abortion. And his board is in charge of supporting that position. “Terminating a pregnancy isn’t just a medical decision; it requires advanced pastoral care so that a person can look at the whole picture,” the Herndon, Virginia pastor said. “The...

United Methodist Women are “praying” that Texas and other states will allow mothers to abort their unborn babies and stop trying to ban abortions. An organization of the United Methodist Church, the United Methodist Women recently issued a statement criticizing the Texas heartbeat law and defending abortions. State pro-life leaders said the law, which prohibits abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, has saved about 3,000 babies’ lives since it went into effect Sept. 1. But the supposedly Christian women’s organization portrayed the law as oppressive, arguing that “women and families need access to the full range of reproductive...

Two congregations in Georgia have left the United Methodist Church over the denomination’s opposition to homosexuality and merged into one church. Asbury Memorial Church and Wesley Oak Church, both based in Savannah, recently voted to disaffiliate from the UMC South Georgia Conference. Asbury, which averaged 387 attendees in weekly worship in 2019, finalized its process of disaffiliation last fall. Meanwhile, Wesley Oak, which averaged 29 attendees, finalized disaffiliation earlier this month. Asbury Memorial Pastor Rev. William Hester told The Christian Post on Monday that the decision to leave came soon after the 2019 special session of the UMC General Conference....

Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church of Marietta, Georgia. In April 2021, the church voted to begin a profess of disaffiliation from the UMC A regional body of the United Methodist Church has seized control of the assets of a Georgia megachurch trying to leave the mainline Protestant denomination. The leadership of the UMC North Georgia Conference unanimously voted to approve the seizure of assets belonging to Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church, a Marietta-based congregation with approximately 10,000 members. In April, Mt. Bethel voted to begin a process of discernment for leaving the UMC due to the conference’s decision to...

The Methodist Church of the United Kingdom has passed two resolutions, one officially approving the blessing of same-sex unions and the other recognizing cohabiting couples. According to The Christian Post, in a statement on Wednesday, the Methodist Conference announced that it had passed the resolutions at this gathering in Birmingham, England. "A report on marriage and relationships, 'God in Love Unites Us,' was received by the Conference in 2019, and the local District Synods were asked to consider the provisional resolutions and report back to this year's Conference," the statement reads. "The Conference received a report on the results of...

One of the largest churches in Boise, Idaho, apologized for participating in "white supremacy" and announced it is removing the likeness of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a stained-glass window. In a statement, the pastors and staff at the Cathedral of the Rockies began by "acknowledging our own sin with a stained glass window," which also features presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. "The recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor brought long-overdue urgency to our discernment process," the church board wrote in a statement to members. "We are reminded of our privilege. We have waited...

Most leaders in Judaeo-Christian faiths believe scripture teaches that all human lives are valuable and deserving of protection. But there are some who stray from the teaching and promote abortion. A group of New York state clergy members recently advocated for abortion at the state capital, Christian News Network reports. Together, abortion activists who identify as Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Unitarian and Jewish urged New York state lawmakers to support abortion and Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in the United States, according to the report. “As pastors, we believe in New Yorkers’ ability to get the health care...

United Methodism is increasingly likely to divide into separate traditional and liberal denominations. But even absent this division, the church was already heading towards sharp drops in funding for denominational structures, reflecting United Methodism’s ongoing drop in membership and resources. A recent memo from the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) outlined this reality. GCFA is submitting to General Conference 2020 a quadrennial budget for United Methodism’s structures of $494 million, an 18% reduction from the 2017-2020 budget. These cuts include 35% for United Methodist Communications (UMCOM), 20% for General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) and General Board of...

An increasing number of individuals who identify as “gender non-binary” have emerged among the clerical ranks in mainline Protestant denominations. Following the ordination of transgender clergy in the United States, non-binary clergy appear to be the next wave of sex and gender revisionism. While clergy already ministering within Christian communities have come out to their churches as non-binary, a number of non-binary identifying individuals have made headlines as the first to be ordained openly within their denomination. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, non-binary is relating to or being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is...

Rev. Anna Blaedel, an openly gay United Methodist chaplain at the University of Iowa and “theologian-in-residence” with Enfleshed, gave the invocation in the Iowa Senate chambers on Thursday morning. She was invited to give the opening prayer by Senate Minority Leader Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, and to call her prayer controversial would be an understatement. Caffeinated Thoughts readers may remember that Blaedel was required to take unpaid leave over a settlement with the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church after being accused of violating church doctrine by being a “self-avowed, practicing homosexual.”

If the reports are true, then “a tentative plan” has been put in place “to split the [Methodist] church over differences on same-sex marriage and the inclusion of gay clergy.” In 2019, “The division, which has been brewing for years, came to an impasse last May when delegates in St. Louis voted 438-384 to ban gay marriage and the inclusion of gay clergy.“A majority of U.S.-based churches opposed the ‘Traditional Plan’ but were outvoted by conservatives in the U.S., Africa and the Philippines.”Assuming that this split actually takes place, what will happen to these two branches, one conservative and the...