He gets away with it because there are many bishops, but there is no bishop above any other bishop to bring him to account. They are each independent and unaccountable.
That is something that many tried to address last time, but an archbishop can be a problem, too, so they saw the downside of that and rejected it.
I tend to favor it. I think it will force Methodism to fish or cut bait. We’ll get a bad one who’ll make it obvious that Christians should leave, or we’ll get a good one who’ll clean up the place.
One positive is that we know the regions with nutcases in charge. We can point that out.
I was raised Presbyerian. If we wanted to hire a gay pastor, Louisville can just learn to like it. That’s why it passed in the PCUSA.
The UMC cannot afford to have Bishops ignoring Discipline. What are they going to do when a youth pastor baptizes someone? I personally know someone who was booted from the UMC pulpit for saying he was gay (evidence seems to point otherwise to me). The UMC was not built for chaos.
If they appoint us a gay pastor in June, I’m not running....except my mouth.
re your question of whether to have a Methodist archbishop — in the next town over from me, a very old, historic town, there were once two Methodist churches within twenty yards of each other. One was for the Union, and the other for the Confederacy. So I think if there is to be a Methodist Archbishop, the split should happen at the same time. There are some ideas that are simply incompatible.
By the way, the former Confederate Methodist church is now an office building with a rather imposing front — big columns on an otherwise pretty ordinary building. Kind of metaphoric.