Free Republic

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

CV NEWS FEED // Progressive theological shifts may be contributing to the steep declines in both membership and finances that mainline Protestant denominations in the United States continue to face, according to a recent report from the Associated Press (AP). While circumstances vary, the March 14 AP News report highlighted a shared pattern among several groups: internal divisions and declining participation often follow moves toward more progressive positions on doctrine and culture. The United Methodist Church, for example, lost a quarter of its U.S. congregations amid debates over the ordination and marriage of LGBT individuals. Its denominational workforce has shrunk...

The Warren Willis Camp is a United Methodist Camp and Conference Center on Lake Griffin’s picturesque shores in Fruitland Park. They are “dedicated to providing a sacred space where people of all ages and backgrounds come together to experience growth, connection, and transformation.” A ministry of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church and proud partner of the United Methodist Camp and Retreat Ministries (UMCRM,) they offer overnight camps for everyone from 4th-grade students to recently graduated seniors. Here, students enjoy a week of chapel services, worship times, nature hikes, swimming, canoeing, crafts and ceramics, archery, wall-climbing, and making...

For decades, conservative Christians opposed to homosexuality cited the Bible scholarship of Richard B. Hays, the dean of Duke Divinity School, who provided a full-on argument from Scripture against gay relationships. “Homosexuality is one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose,” Mr. Hays asserted in his book “The Moral Vision of the New Testament” (1996), which was read by a generation of seminary students. Then, last year, Mr. Hays released a thunderclap into the evangelical world by recanting his earlier views and asserting that a deeper reading of the Bible revealed that...

A PASTORAL LETTER FROM THE COUNCIL OF BISHOPS OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH “Now faith, hope, and love remain…and the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 CEB Thursday, November 7, 2024 Greetings, May the grace of God and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits. Amid the change and uncertainty that have resulted from the recent U.S. elections, and the ways in which these matters will impact the whole world, we remember that we are held by the enduring power of God’s love and the call to be agents of that love in the...

The United Methodist Church continues to be a simmering cauldron of every vile and aberrant theology conceived in hell, which is why it is almost exclusively populated by weak men and women who are led around by their feelings and fleshly desires rather than the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Enter Reconciling Ministries, an organization “committed to intersectional justice across and beyond the United Methodist connection, working for the full participation of all LGBTQ+ people throughout the life and leadership of the Church.” In their role, they have over 1100 UMC congregations affiliated with them. In light of President Trump’s...

The Texas Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could determine whether or not SMU can cut ties with a regional governing body of the United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdictional Conference, which runs the church’s congregations in eight states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Missouri and Nebraska, sued SMU in 2019. It owns three institutions, according to its website, including SMU. The lawsuit revolves around SMU’s decision to effectively declare itself independent from the denomination’s regional governing body. The university’s board of trustees voted in November of 2019 to update...

We are a people of faith committed to living into and out of the wisdom and compassion of the historical Jesus – a brown man of undetermined sexual orientation who arose from a people bowed down under Empire. His prophetic witness calls us to a risky engagement with powers and principalities and compels us to overturn tables of systemic oppression…. In our quest for justice, we consciously avoid theological litmus tests and external creeds. We are a people led by God’s Spirit in a way that welcomes a dynamic evolution of our beliefs, our practices, and our systems…. Our vision...

Demonstrating what a hellhole of sin, sacrilege, and satanic cowardice the United Methodist Church has become, a prominent Bishop who has for years denied the divinity of Christ has finally retired on her own terms, according to a recent article, by Juicy Ecumenism, which calls her one of the” key architects of the UMC’s recent liberalization on human sexuality.” Bishop Karen Oliveto, a raging heretic if there ever was one, retired from the denomination’s Western Jurisdiction this week. She was elected Bishop in 2016 despite being “same-sex married,” which is against the denomination’s book of discipline. A year later, the...

A former United Methodist Church pastor who was defrocked about 20 years ago for being in a same-sex romantic relationship has been reinstated by the mainline Protestant denomination. The UMC Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference voted overwhelmingly during a closed session of around 200 clergy on Tuesday evening to readmit Beth Stroud. Bishop John Schol, head of both the Eastern Pennsylvania and Greater New Jersey annual conferences, said he was “deeply grateful for the discernment of the clergy” and “grateful that the church has opened up to LGBTQ persons.” “I couldn’t be prouder as your bishop, and you couldn’t have given...

Boise’s Cathedral Of The Rockies is one of the worst churches goat pens around. They’re a pro-LGBTQQIP2SAA, pro-choice United Methodist Church (ie, not a church at all) that we last wrote about after they sent out a church newsletter encouraging congregants to help abortion-minded women by paying for their abortions, abortion pills, and traveling expenses to cover the costs of their baby-killing in light of the overturning of Roe. v. Wade. During a recent service, they put on a feminist remix of ‘Be Thou My Vision’ titled ‘God of the Women.’ Written by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette in 1998, she says...

A group of African delegates to the United Methodist Church General Conference have denounced the recent votes to allow for same-sex marriage and noncelibate LGBT clergy. This week, delegates at the UMC General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, passed a series of measures removing from the Book of Discipline rules preventing the officiating of same-sex weddings and the funding of LGBT advocacy groups. On Thursday, the churchwide legislative gathering voted 523 to 161 to remove from the Book of Discipline the statement that the "practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching," which had been originally added to the rule...

The Global Methodist Church has issued an official response to the United Methodist Church's General Conference votes to drop the denomination's decades-old ban on ordaining noncelibate homosexuals and allow the blessing of same-sex weddings. UMC General Conference delegates voted this week via consent calendar to remove assorted rules from the denomination's Book of Discipline, shifting its stance on multiple LGBT issues. Launched in 2022 as a conservative alternative to the UMC at a time when many churches were planning to leave the mainline Protestant denomination, the GMC issued a statement Wednesday stating that it "do[es] not have any affiliation with...

The United Methodist Church General Conference has advanced a measure meant to allow different regions of the global denomination to determine their own standards on LGBT issues.At the Thursday plenary session of the General Conference, delegates voted 586-164 in favor of a petition for an amendment to the UMC’s constitution allowing for regionalization. The petition will now be sent to the annual conferences for possible ratification.The amendment will need to gain at least two-thirds support from the annual conference clergy and lay voters to be added to the UMC constitution, reports UM News.>At present, the UMC Book of Discipline, the...

United Methodist Church bishops are calling for unity as its General Conference kicks off Tuesday after thousands of churches left the mainline Protestant denomination amid efforts to alter its official stance against homosexuality and the ordination of LGBT individuals. The UMC General Conference is a multiday churchwide legislative gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina, which begins on Tuesday and runs until May 3. A group of current and former UMC bishops based in Europe released a statement in advance of the gathering, acknowledging the decades-long internal debate over sexual ethics and calling for unity in the denomination. G "For almost five...

“but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” —Matthew 18:6 There isn’t much that can be said about such demonic filth except that those who force their children into rebellion against their Creator are going to face the harshest punishment. And to do so by taking the Lord’s name in vain is, well, let’s just say they should be praying for the millstone. This Methodist “pastor” dresses his children...

Lee Dong-hwan, the pastor who was recently expelled by the Methodist Church of Korea for blessing same-sex couples, is now turning to the secular court in his continued battle for reinstatement. The 43-year-old is planning to file legal charges against the Methodist Church's decision after its tribunal confirmed his disfellowship last week. "I did not launch the fight for reinstatement so that I can regain my title as a Methodist pastor. I'm (going to the court) because I did not want to leave a bad precedent among the protestants," he said during a public event in Mapo-gu, Seoul, on Tuesday....

A retired California pastor has been caught on camera drawing a Swastika on his Jewish neighbor's groceries. Leah Grossman confronted her neighbor, Mark Nakagawa, at 10.15pm on December 5, seconds after her doorbell camera caught him scrawling on a box of seltzer. The single mother of two told CBS she was 'shattered' when she saw it was a Swastika, and asked him 'Is that a Nazi symbol?' Nakagawa initially denied drawing the Swastika, but when confronted with the video evidence, claimed he was trying to teach her about the history of the symbol. Grossman said it wasn't her first run-in...

The number of congregations that have left the United Methodist Church amid the schism over the denomination's stance on homosexuality has passed the 7,000 mark.Over the weekend, the number of churches that have disaffiliated from the UMC since 2019 reached 7,286, according to UM News, with over 5,200 leaving this year alone.This total includes 366 churches leaving the Kentucky Conference, 349 churches leaving the North Alabama Conference, 334 churches leaving the North Georgia Conference, 326 churches leaving the North Carolina Conference and 317 churches leaving the Indiana Annual Conference.Of the 334 congregations that have disaffiliated from the North Georgia Conference...

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, wrote, " What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace." Wesley could have never imagined how much the church he founded would not just be tolerating but embracing in 2023. Thankfully, some members of the Methodist church have decided to take a stand. According to the Christian Post, Christ United Methodist Church of Jackson, one of the largest United Methodist Church bodies in Mississippi, voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to disaffiliate from the UMC Mississippi Conference. The congregation plans to change its name to "Christ United - Jackson" on Jan. 1, 2024....