Posted on 06/20/2023 10:14:36 AM PDT by Twotone
Resistance to the LGBT agenda now spans legislatures, schools, and churches across the country and world, bringing division among Catholic and Anglican bishops, and now among Methodist pastors as well.
More than 5,000 congregations have left the United Methodist Church (UMC), the second-largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., over its pro-LGBT stance. The “disaffiliation” movement saw churches leaving in droves over the past several weeks, with UM News, the official news service of the UMC, reporting the disaffiliation of 5,458 churches just this year and 25,500 Methodist churches remaining.
According to reports, the mass exodus of Methodist churches comes after “liberal leaders in the UMC disregarded a 2019 vote upholding the church’s ban on ordaining LGBT clergy and officiating at or hosting same-sex weddings.”
In 2022, Fox News reported that “several conservative members of the Methodist clergy” stated that “far from settling the issue, however, the 2019 vote was disregarded by many liberal leaders within the UMC who decided to remain in the denomination while commissioning openly gay clergy and officiating same-sex weddings anyway.”
In 2019, the Methodist General Conference also “approved a church law allowing UMC churches to leave with their church property if two-thirds of their congregation and regional governor body approved,” paving the way for the current mass exodus over the open acceptance of the LGBT agenda.
The backlash confronting the attempt to normalize homosexuality and transgender ideology and practices within the Methodist church is being witnessed similarly in legislatures at home and abroad, as well as the commercial market and within the episcopal hierarchy of the Catholic and Anglican churches.
Numerous states have now banned to varying degrees the mutilation and chemical castration of children through so-called “transitional” surgeries and puberty blockers. The government of Uganda recently increased its criminal penalties for sodomy and homosexual child rape. The Anglican bishops of several African countries broke communion with the Anglican church of England for its approval of the blessing of same-sex unions.
And although several dissident Catholic U.S. bishops and cardinals openly support or silently allow the LGBT agenda, even celebrating so-called “Pride Masses” in the name of a heretical inclusion of those who do not accept Catholic teaching on sexual morality, the Catholic bishops of the U.S. have firmly condemned transgender ideology and the mutilation of children being aggressively pushed by the LGBT movement.
America and the world are waking up to the “woke culture” being pushed on them and are beginning in earnest to push back against the insanity. The fallout within the Methodist church is but the latest brick to fall from the collapsing dam and is perhaps a truly hopeful sign in the skies of the momentum to reclaim our culture and families while we still can.
A Methodist Church in our community has already been sold.
$1.59M for us. We’re the biggest church in our district.
It isn’t right. The Rainbow Methodists were the ones who strayed from the WORD.
No, it is not right. Unfortunately, it has become clear over the last 40 years that they’re not going to stop. So I think it was actually a godly thing to simply say, “OK, we will leave you to it. We cannot stay where God is not honored.“
Well.....why didn’t you PING HER, and, ask her, yourself?
It all started with the gay ordination and same sex marriage push and has steadily expanded to include all manner of perversions. It should be obvious to even the most disinterested observer that it was never about inclusion, but rather destruction of the church and the moral and ethical standards it promotes.
Can the apostate Catholic Church do the same? No?
It would be much more revealing to know the average sizes of the churches leaving versus the churches staying. I’d be willing to bet the congregations opting to leave are on an order of at lease 5 times the membership of those staying, A lot of the departing churches are mega-churches, which tend to be theologically sound and vibrant.
Of course, there will be shifting of members in congregations, but it will be toward the more conservative side as the liberal congregations get more and more unbelievably perverse.
I’ve taken the time to watch many publicly broadcast disaffiliation meetings and discussion townhalls of UMC churches over the past few years. Within the first few SECONDS of these recordings, you can tell the definite bent of the church holding the meeting. The polarization is uncanny.
The leftist ones are usually conducted by a feminist-looking female “pastor” with a hyphenated name. Prayer seeking divine guidance before the meeting is either completely absent or is a formal dead mention. When the Book of Discipline is mentioned, it is with contempt or with a sense of dismissal. The Bible is hardly mentioned all all. The LGBTPedo+ monster is front and center as is pure emotion carrying the entire meeting,
The completely opposite is the case with conservative, traditional congregations adhering to biblical precepts and official church doctrine.
Back when our conservative congregation was still affiliated with the UMC, I tried to look on the bright side, Rather than send missionaries to Honduras, we could send them to influence our own denomination. We could send them to our own Board of Global Ministries.
I was not sure how close the disaffiliation vote might be. After all, Truman Capote grew up here in Alabama. But the vote went 190 for disaffiliation verses five to remain.
Dear Sir, normally one does not return to threads for all the activity and exchanges on Free Republic going forward.
A comment to me this day, 11 July, caused me to return to this thread and your comment on it from 21 June.You asked the war cheerleader draped in Methodism to response to specific questions. She has not, in the last three weeks or so.
She is ignoring your query through bury with FR, as the daily Denys Davidov promotion continues. One may conclude she is either on the pro-UMC LGBT sides of things, and therefore not particularly conservative, or 2) unwilling to "testify" to her faith, through draped in it.
One observes that Hilary Clinton is, or posed as, a Methodist and we know Clinton's stance of LGBT ruling over her church.
But also observes that the public Methodist war monger never comments on articles about the UMC not related to her real passion. War, and specifically tallying the dead. Rather like the Leftists in the UMC who so support Planned Parenthood tallying up of another group of the dead via the Guttmacher Institute, wouldn't you say?
A UM Pastor acquaintance recently had his church vote on leaving the UM main body. They voted to leave. The Pastor is retirement age but strongly supporting leaving the UM main body due to their unscriptural and ungodly positions. The church he pastored was average sized, a few hundred parishioners, of different age groups. They voted almost unanimously to leave.
Excellent questions!
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