Posted on 11/15/2014 5:01:00 AM PST by massmike
A gay couple at Green Street United Methodist Church has filed a complaint with their bishop charging that their pastor violated church discipline by refusing to preside at a marriage ceremony for them — despite the denomination’s rules that forbid same-sex marriages.
The church made headlines in 2013 when it announced that it would not conduct marriages for heterosexual couples until the denomination allows pastors to conduct same-sex marriages.
According to the church, Green Street members Kenny Barner and Scott Chappell, describing themselves as a gay couple who have been together for nine years, filed the complaint against their pastor, the Rev. Kelly P. Carpenter.
The complaint was filed with Bishop Larry Goodpaster, who leads the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, of which Green Street is a member.
The two men are charging Carpenter with violating a church discipline that calls on pastors to “be in ministry with all people,” and also are complaining against what they are calling “gender discrimination.”
Carpenter said recently that he believes gay couples should be able to get married in the United Methodist Church, but went on to say that Goodpaster had “made it clear he will enforce the discipline” against same-sex marriage in the church.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfox8.com ...
Ping.
Ping.
Just another step in advancing the agenda to force churches to celebrate abomination. They picked an easy target in hopes of creating a precedent upon which to build toward their goal.
Follows the pattern of most European countries.
Get over it freaks old story with no one caring..I will say this one more time GOD meant for man and woman to marry and reproduce not dumb and dumber getting married..
There will be no "moving on" in this evil age. The 1st Amendment is as good as dead thanks to "public accommodation" laws. EVERYTHING can be deemed a "public accommodation" in this new age of "enlightenment."
If the homos are offended by something, that is enough to get government to coerce action that will un-offend them.
Churches need to start factoring in the costs of having to pay taxes. It will happen that churches that take any stand different from the government or the prevailing pagan culture will be declared non-churches and taxed.
Man, did you hit the nail squarely! The United Methodists will put up only a tepid, token defense against the State's coming attacks, and this State victory will be applied to all the other denominations. It's coming a lot quicker than I could have ever imagined.
The GAYSTAPO at it again.
All manner of denominations will get buffeted about like this. United Methodists are all over the map about this. Some are more fundamental, some are worldly. The ones in the South are often more fundamental. Except for Arminian theology, you might think you have visited a Southern Baptist church, to visit a United Methodist congregation there.
Anyhow, there is nothing in secret that will not get shouted from the rooftops. God will make it plain what a lousy idea this rot of “Gay Marriage” was.
Not all Methodists are of one mind on the issue. It could split the denomination. But there will be a defiant remnant if it does.
I'm speaking of the entire UMC as a whole, which is, IN PRACTICE if not official doctrine, amenable to sodomite "marriage." It's as plain as day. A minister who conducted such a ceremony was just reinstated, for crying out loud!!!
Why even be a part of this apostate group if you are a biblical Methodist? Isn't fellowship the same as agreement?
once those who want us legally to be called homophobic if we say that it is sinful for a man to put his organ into another man and unhealthy get this speech outlawed churches will be punished by the removal of tax exemption but also fined and then preachers will be imprisoned for hate crimes
Church discipline? I don’t remember God creating man and man or Jesus marrying Steve and Rick.
The plethora of denominations has made it easier to go somewhere else if he one where you are is involved in wickedness.
The devil will always test. He is hoping for failure. God is cheering that the subject will stand the test and even come out smelling like a rose.
I think it is silly to talk about the salvation of a denomination. Denominations never were saved. Only believers.
Well yeah... discipline, like “don’t do wicked things.”
Wicked things were problems in early church congregations too.
Oh, it goes far beyond public accommodation laws; in 1919 the US Supreme Court heard a case and made a ruling that the Congress was not bound by the first amendment. This ruling, Schenck v. United States, was about a particular circular printed and mailed by the Socialist Party denouncing and protesting the WWI draft, encouraging non-compliance with the involuntary service and petitioning Congress to repeal it. — In short, this was the exact sort of political speech the First Amendment was put in place to protect, but the Supreme Court said this:
We admit that, in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.IOW, the court admits that the speech
would normally be protectedbut somehow isn't in a time of war despite the absolutist nature of the First Amendment — it's the same
exigent circumstancesthat the Judiciary uses to justify violations of the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement for search and seizure.
As a grasp of God becomes tenuous, this kind of thing is more likely. The dominion of mere force, calling it emergency or special circumstance. I hadn’t even heard of circulars like this in an age like that. I’d have thought this would get the Socialist Party hounded unmercifully and it would have been better to let them air their smelly views so the world could see who they were.
Anyhow, it is well to remember that the Lord is primary, the institutions on earth secondary. We can’t get away with putting constitutional law and the Lord in a common pantheon. The Lord is jealous and will continue to insist on being distinct.
That's true, but not my point — my point was that the government has been eating away at or outright ignoring the first amendment for nearly a hundred years. IOW, I was speaking about the legal sphere, the one in which the Constitution is supposed to supreme law.
As a grasp of God becomes tenuous, this kind of thing is more likely. The dominion of mere force, calling it emergency or special circumstance. I hadn’t even heard of circulars like this in an age like that. I’d have thought this would get the Socialist Party hounded unmercifully and it would have been better to let them air their smelly views so the world could see who they were.
I agree — But doing that would require the government to admit it was wrong in its laws and there are some [many?] in government to which that is an anathema, as their god is the State.
All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
— Benito Mussolini
As the reverence of God diminishes, that’s going to happen because the state is such a convenient idol.
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