Posted on 06/12/2018 11:40:41 AM PDT by Gamecock
The Minnesota Conference of the United Methodist Church has removed the term, Father, from the Apostles Creed in an attempt to be more gender inclusive to God.
The ancient creed of the Christian Church reads:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.
However, United Methodists in the Minnesota Conference decided that referring to God as Father wasnt inclusive enough for the 21st century United Methodist Church. At the conference, held May 30 through June 1, conference organizers omitted reference to God the Father. Instead, they changed the phrase God the Father Almighty to God the Creator Almighty. The creed passed out to attendees also removed the phrase, Jesus Christ, His only Son to Jesus Christ, Gods only Son.
One attendee, Keith Mcilwain, posted a screenshot of their newly revised creed via social media:
McIlwain is currently the pastor of Slippery Rock United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania. Mcilwain said, No United Methodist individual or body has the authority to edit those creeds which were formulated by the early Church and have helped define orthodox Christianity for the better part of 2000 years.
The United Methodist Church has repeatedly become more egalitarian in the early twenty-first and latter twentieth century, beginning with the ordaining of female clergy with full ordination rights in 1956. The roots of the egalitarian movement among Methodists began, however, with the 18th century female preacher, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, convincing John Wesley that some women should be given limited preaching abilities. In most recent days, the United Methodist Church has been drained of male clergy, with more than 10,300 female clergy members nationwide.
A United Methodist Church website provides a blog explaining the concept behind removing the Father understanding of God (taught by Jesus and the rest of Scripture). In the following quotiation, their use of the term, God language, means language used by people to refer to God:
Leaders need to establish the ground rules: Everybodys God language is appropriate. Peoples God language signifies a relationship that you cant interfere with. You can raise questions and offer additional perspectives, but you cant dictate. You cant prohibit anybody from using any language about God. Whether they want to call God Jehovah or Big Dog, you cant judge the validity of how that name connects them with God. People just need to get used to that.
Pastors and other leaders should give attention to teaching people what the churchs traditional images mean and what they dont mean. For instance, the fatherhood of God is about relationship, not biology. Our people wont know how to reflect theologically about these things instead of just reacting emotionally unless we give them the tools.
Pastors and other worship leaders should expose people to a variety of images of God, both familiar and new, both comforting and provocative. People should regularly hear God referred to in public worship with images that are male, female, and gender neutral. In a worship service the choir may sing an anthem with thickly sexist, male-dominated language, while the prayers are full of feminine imagery. People can sing their own words, with their personal substitutions, if they wish. People should be encouraged to take responsibility for their own faith.
In the meantime, Jesus taught us to pray, Our Father, who art in Heaven
Father. Son (Word). Spirit. Perhaps these United Methodists should read their Bibles.
Well Laodicea is alive & well in these final days of the Age of Grace.
Most “churches” signed their souls away to Satan long ago.
They’re all “Respect my pronouns!”
But no respect for His pronouns. Figures.
I wondered that too. Why reference to Jesus as God’s son? Why not reference Jesus as his child, without reference to him as a male? If they are going down this road, why not go all the way? Otherwise they are violating their own standards of decorum.
The Latin had the word “father.” The Lord’s Prayer uses the word “father.” The Hebrew in the Old Testament refers to God with the masculine pronoun.
Any more questions?
--Leonard Bernstein (from Mass, 1971)
[The church where I am a member (UMC) offered 3 books for summer reading; a book on White Privilege, a book supporting gun control and a book supporting Global Warming.]
Sounds like it’s way past time to change the leadership or get outta there.
Next step: Our Parent, which art in Heaven...
We left 2 years ago but the current church is hard to get plugged into. It’s a non-denom formed by college professors in the 1960’s. Extremely conservative and Bible-focused.
The books at the UMC are being pushed by the Church and Society Committee which is basically a liberal Democrat political group.
Traditions have to start somewhere...
Also, IIRC, the whole gender-neutral thing has been going around the UMC for a while now. It is now being codified.
Witchcraft!
One more confirmation that leaving the UMC was the correct decision.
A lot of seminaries and church HQ have been infiltrated by liberals.
I had the (non-joy) of working for one at a church organization years ago. They couldn’t understand why their sales fell off. It was their liberal garbage.
no it won’t.
the UMC has been leftist for a very long time.
my father-in-law was a UMC minister ordained in 1961 and he has always been a bat-shite crazy liberal.
would remind that birds of a feather . . .
People have left our UMC in droves. They are just deaf to what is happening because they disguise their politics as “Social Justice”.
The more they liberalize, the more people leave. Our conservative friends say “Stay and fight” and I always respond “You are not fighting”. Disagreeing with the liberals is deemed “divisiveness” and disagreeing with conservatives is seen as “standing up for justice”.
Yes, this is true.
But in the traditional sense of the word for something to be traditional it has to be practiced over multiple generations.
How long is a generation?
The gender-neutral crowd was in full force in the ‘90s, IIRC. And this follows their path of having women elders and pastors, which has been going on since the ‘70s.
Like I said, it is just now being codified.
Common usage today is 20 years. The time from the birth of a child until that child births the next generation.
But I prefer the old usage which is the biblical usage which is the life span of a man; three score and ten or seventy years.
So, for something to be a tradition it would need to be practiced a minimum of 140 years.
Because Jesus is described as a man in the historical Gospels, therefore he is a/the Son. They are stuck with it.
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