Posted on 04/26/2024 4:40:38 PM PDT by Morgana
Delegates at the United Methodist Church General Conference voted to allow a regional body based in Eastern Europe to disaffiliate from the denomination over theological issues.
At the churchwide legislative meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, delegates voted on Thursday to approve Petition 21103 in a tally of 672 ayes to 67 nays, thus giving the Eurasian Episcopal Area, which has four annual conferences, autonomy.
Bishop Eduard Khegay of the Eurasia Episcopal Area expressed his gratitude for the denomination, explaining that "I became a Christian because of The United Methodist Church."
While overwhelmingly approved, some argued that the petition was unnecessary in light of the UMC considering another measure that would allow different regions of the global denomination to determine their own stance on hot-button issues like homosexuality.
The petition granting the Eurasian churches autonomy had previously passed the UMC Standing Committee on Central Conference, which met on Monday in advance of the General Conference's kickoff on Tuesday.
"This is for us like leaving home," Khegay told the committee, as reported by UM News. "My hope is we can keep the friendships and relationships whenever it's possible. … We want to remain your sisters and brothers."
The updated status for Eurasian conferences will become effective in early 2025 at a session of the Northern Europe and Eurasia Conference, according to UM News.
Over the past few decades, the UMC has been embroiled in a divisive debate over whether to remove language from its Book of Discipline that prohibits the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of people in same-sex relationships.
Although efforts to amend the Book of Discipline at past General Conferences have always failed, many theological progressives within the UMC have either refused to follow or enforce the rules.
In recent years, thousands of theological conservative congregations have disaffiliated from the UMC after the UMC amended the Book of Discipline rules to create a window for congregations to leave.
While most of the disaffiliations from the UMC have been in the United States, especially in the South, many elsewhere in the global denomination have left.
In 2022, the Bulgaria-Romania Provisional Annual Conference voted unanimously to leave the denomination and join the Global Methodist Church, a conservative alternative to the UMC.
In March 2023, UMC Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference delegates voted 40-20 in an online meeting to let regional bodies take the first steps toward disaffiliation.
This vote allowed the regional bodies of Central Russia, Northwest Russia and Belarus Provisional, the Eastern Russia and Central Asia Provisional and the South Russia Provisional annual conferences to become self-governing entities.
The liberals couldn’t win an election, so they are driving the conservative churches out.
Conservative Christians found the continual fighting unseemly. Liberals lay awake at night thinking of new fights and arguments to start. Saving an empty shell of a denomination just is not worth it. Now that so many good people have left, the libs will prevail and own it all,
And no! There are NOT many good people on both sides.
Apparently the UMC has theological variances.
does HE know ?
No doubt Mom will stick with the US (woke) version of the church.
HRC’s supposed denomination couldn’t win an election ..
hmmmm
Use to go to a UMC church until the pastor changed from a conservative man to a lib woman. Immediately left.
They now fly a giant LGBTQ flag across the building.
Glad I left.
They should just merge with the UUs. All they are good for is to give liberals something to do on Sunday morning.
I experienced several umc peculiar moments. Not easy to depart. 20 years ago at Christmas service~no mention of Christ, not once. Pastor sung tunes about animals that may have been involved in celebration-just special. That did it. Entire life I thought I had been umc. Had to take action.
The sane people of the world react to the insanities of the Decadence of Western Civilization.
And in the process the lefties will take control of billions of dollars of real estate and endowments that they can use to support idiot far-left clergy in comfortable style for the next couple of decades - until the treasure chest runs out
The conservative churches want to leave because the liberals have ruined what was once a Godly denomination.
It’s sad that a few radical leftists have been allowed to take over and fracture the UMC. They should have been sent packing and kept the church whole, not allowed to take over.
Any thoughts on this?
Those churches are a financial drain. That’s why they got cut loose. If they supported LGBT, that would have been a reason to keep them on for the vote but after that, they would be gone. Our UMC congregation supported one of those churches. It was a hole to throw money in.
“allowed to leave”
Say what? Is it like a parole board meeting?
The 2030’s will be an Extinction Event for the UMC.
Churches will die off right and left because they cannot attract men into a female run organization.
“The liberals couldn’t win an election, so they are driving the conservative churches out.”
The conservatives are not being driven out, they are driving themselves out, willingly. The “progressives” in the U.S. mostly have made the UMC not the UMC it once was.
The “progressives” are offering a “regionalism” gambit, where each region would be allowed to have its own policies on some matters (like on “LBGT” matters).
They want the global money the UMC has been used to. I think they also believe that if the regions have some autonomy but are still in the UMC that over time they can “convert” more conservative regions to the progressives way of thinking. I think the conservative regions should see it that way and not buy “regionalism”, just leave.
They’ve all become “The Church of What’s Happening Now”
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