Posted on 10/17/2022 4:22:42 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Will drag queens in the pulpit become "mainstream" in the United Methodist Church?
That's what one Methodist critic is warning after a UMC pastor in Florida invited a man dressed in women’s clothing to preach a sermon with children seated next to him during a recent church service.
Allendale UMC Senior Pastor Andy Oliver said he invited Isaac Simmons, who performs in drag as “Ms. Penny Cost,” to deliver the sermon on Oct. 2 because he wants “all people to see people like themselves called by God to preach the Gospel.”
In a Facebook post, Oliver wrote that Simmons — who was seen in a video clip of the service wearing a wig and a sequin dress — was “an angel in heels appearing to shepherds in the fields on the night shift, telling them that Good News had arrived on their doorstep.”
Oliver compared the decision to have a drag queen teach during Sunday service to other churches “putting a flag on your altar,” and called Simmons “an incredible preacher, grounded as Allendale is, in Wesleyan and liberation theology.”
Mark Tooley, the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, believes drag queens like Simmons are becoming the “new public face of United Methodism.”
"His children's sermon and role in the Eucharist at a Florida church showcase how drag ministry will now become mainstream in the denomination," Tooley told The Christian Post in an emailed statement. “To my knowledge, no United Methodist official, including Simmons’ bishop, has publicly expressed concern about this United Methodist drag queen."
For Tooley, Simmons and others like him are among the reasons that United Methodism, which, as Tooley put it, “has never enjoyed a single year of growth in its 53 years, is imploding.”
“Traditionalists have been given a one-year window to withdraw from the denomination with church property,” he said. “Thousands of congregations are doing so.
“Dying United Methodism faces only further tragedy ahead.”
At one point during the Allendale church service, after a worship band performed a song with the lyrics “We are building up a new world/ we seek justice for all people,” two young girls wearing face coverings were seated behind Simmons as Oliver asked him about his dress.
“Are you always dressed up like this?” asked Oliver.
Simmons replied, “I wish!” adding, “No, I only get dressed up like this on special occasions.
“I kind of feel powerful when I put on a dress like this and a big wig and lots of makeup. It kind of helps me to say things that I don’t have the confidence to say outside of it.”
Simmons went on to make an apparent comparison between the final days of the life of Jesus to what he sees as the “end of injustice.”
“We, members of the United Methodist Church, any church, or just the common humanity, we have a privilege and a duty to change the very doctrine and systems of oppression which surround us,” said Simmons.
“The time of change-making will likely be uncomfortable for you, but just as the liminal last days of Christ’s life were uncomfortable for him, the liminal days which rest between now and the end of injustice will be uncomfortable for us all.”
He went on to warn that “those of us with the privilege of whiteness, of ‘cis-ness,’ and the privilege of the access to power must be willing to get uncomfortable.”
Oliver then turned to address the children and referenced Romans 12:2, which reads in part, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
“One of the things I think is great about Ms. Penny Cost is that she reminds us that we follow a God who calls us not to conform to things of this world,” Oliver is heard telling the children. “We are supposed to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. That means what I think today may have to change tomorrow if I continue to renew my mind.”
While Oliver declined a request for comment from CP when asked, among other things, whether drag queens are invited to teach children’s studies at Allendale, an image posted on the church’s website shows a man dressed in women’s clothing reading to young children.
It’s not clear how many children attend Allendale, but the church reportedly has a fellowship size of roughly 100 people every Sunday.
Simmons, an associate pastor at Hope UMC in Bloomington, Illinois, has a video on his website in which he declares “the Bible is nothing”, adding, “God must be nothing / Religion must be nothing / It is all nothing / Until we wield it into something."
The United Methodist News Service, which serves as the official UMC media outlet, has touted Simmons as the first drag queen to become a certified candidate for UMC ordination.
The United Methodist are not Christians
Next they’ll be inviting prostitutes and drug dealers, and allowing them to ply their trades.
Michael Savage probably 5 or more years ago said the wimpy religious leaders wanted to make sure they raked in more money so would shut up about wokeness and other evil so as not to sound preachy and harsh to the congregations with their rapidly declining morality.
Jews and Christians were cited. I heard a case where a bishop called a priest on the carpet for openly saying abortion was wrong. The priest could shut up or get sent to some place like the Yukon.
And we know Biden and Pelosi have been pampered by the Vatican as an insult to good people like Archibishop Salvatore J. Cordileone who said Pelosi has no right during a state of unrepentant mortal sin for promoting and enabling abortion, to take communion.
I’m a member of a United Methodist congregation. I have to put up with all the turmoil in my church because I’m too old and tired to find another church. They stuck with me. 😊😊
Ordination? really? Fagging helps him clear his mind? There’s a clever admission that his mind was/is bleeped up to start with? Maybe he could stick with being a Hoggette at the Redskins?
United = Fag Church
They split up
The falling away picking up speed. Sad.
He’s a fag, Jim
I have attended two weddings in Methodist churches. There was only one prayer said in each “service”, The Lord’s Prayer. There was no other mention of God.
Same with the Catholics
“The Methodist Church started dying at the turn of this century.”
My MIL a third generation Methodist died in 2004.
That church and its love for gays and a anti Christ movement had driven this wonderful woman away.
She told her family and wrote down a plan so she would not be involved at all with the Methodist re her funeral.
First instead of the service being held in the Church, the service was held at the funeral palor in a town 8 miles away.
Her local Baptist minister, her real pastor for her last 3 years did her funeral service at the funeral parlor.
Then, there was a reception held in the church basement of the Methodist church. Her surviving family members made a short announcement at that reception,noting that they and their family members were no longer members of that church and no longer contributing to the church.
In less than a year, the church had closed its doors as a church. It was purchased by a local historical society and is now used as a museum and for local HS meetings.
How many of our so called Christian churches will be closed in a decade?
Will any make it past two decades?
I have been a Methodist all my life. Just a few years ago, our pastor, a Korean, was an old-time Methodist who preached that salvation came only through Christ and that every book in the Old Testament pointed to the cross. But our latest pastor is a hard-core woke leftist.
I’ve been attending some functions at the Calvary Chapel, which many conservative activists attend, but I’m turned off by the “praise” music they use at their services.
“ How many of our so called Christian churches will be closed in a decade?”
Hopefully as many of the fake churches go down the tubes as possible
“liberation theology” is the idea of killing God, because in the minds of communists, He is the ultimate oppressor .
It’s such a shock that the drag queen minister is rooted in liberation theology, isn’t it?
“Hopefully as many of the fake churches go down the tubes as possible!”
Amen!
I was United Methodist for the first thirty years of my life. The conference the drag queen is from, the old Central Illinois Conference, used to lean toward theological and cultural conservatism. I have been away from the UMC and out of touch with it for over thirty years, but I never imagined the famous drag-queen minister would come from Central Illinois.
The pastor in Florida is an even bigger problem than the drag queen. Check out his bio on the congregation’s website. His type have accelerated the rot, and there are plenty of them in the UMC and other mainline denominations. I am not saying this guy will some day have all his people drink the poisoned Flavor Aid, but his type always remind me of Rev. Jim Jones in their approach to ministry. Jones was recruited into the Methodist Church ministry of his time by a district superintendent in Indiana. Even though Jones had had a decade or so of experience in various ministries, by that time he claimed to be more of a Communist than a Christian. (The superintendent was not concerned about that.) Jones asked himself, “How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church.”
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