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Bishop Karen Oliveto sees her consecration in 2016 as a breaking point for some of the thousands of people who have made the once unthinkable decision to leave the United Methodist Church. Oliveto is the church's first openly gay bishop and oversees congregations in Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and one church in Idaho. Her service defies long-standing rules in the denomination. Disregard for those church laws is fueling divisions that have already led to the exodus of about 20% of the United Methodist Church's congregations across the U.S. since disaffiliations began in 2019. The number of members who have left...

In the latest wave of departures from the United Methodist Church, the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church voted last week to approve the disaffiliation of another 46 churches. It was the conference’s second such vote this year. The last vote, held in April, resulted in the disaffiliation of 55 churches, with a total of 30,000 congregants — 15% of the conference’s total membership. The conference estimates the value of assets held by the departing churches to be in the ballpark of $36 million. These two votes bring the total number of disaffiliations from the Florida Conference to 120...

Earlier this year, the seven United Methodist churches in Amarillo, Texas, voted to leave the country’s second-largest Protestant denomination over issues of homosexuality and gender identity. Since 2019, in a process dragged out by the COVID-19 pandemic and denominational infighting, hundreds of churches across Texas — and thousands across the U.S. — have opted to disaffiliate from the half-century-old denomination through a protocol that allows them to keep their real estate and pay off their clergy pension obligations. But the departure of all seven UMC churches in this city of 200,000 made it the largest city in the nation known...

In the last couple of months, thousands more houses of worship have left the United Methodist Church, having their disaffiliation votes approved by their UMC conferences. Updated totals show that as many as 6,000 churches have fled the UMC in the last couple of years — and the issue shows no signs of slowing down. "For the last several ... decades, the United Methodist Church has been in a big debate about whether to change its official stance on LGBT issues," Christian Post reporter Michael Gryboski explained on “The Inside Story” podcast. "At present, the UMC prohibits the blessing of...

Three suspects have been charged with vandalism of multiple houses of worship in southeast Maryland, including one historic Black church that suffered approximately $100,000 in damages. On Wednesday, Anne Arundel County Police Department officers arrested Jarren Alexander, 22, on charges of vandalism against two area churches. His alleged crimes included extensive damage to Fowler United Methodist Church (UMC), a historic Black church in Annapolis, on June 9. Alexander also is being charged in connection with two additional incidents of vandalism at nearby St. Philip’s Episcopal Church on subsequent nights. Fowler UMC Reverend Jerome Jones briefly recounted the vandalism he saw...

Nearly 5,000 churches have left the United Methodist Church denomination this year for deviating from the Bible on abortion, homosexuality and other issues. Pro-life pastors and members of the UMC have been increasingly concerned with the denomination’s actions on abortion. For years, the UMC was affiliated with the pro-abortion group Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and some of its pastors promote killing unborn babies in abortions by “blessing” abortion facilities and praying for “abortion rights.” According to the Catholic News Agency, 4,876 churches officially disaffiliated from the denomination this year, many of them joining the biblically-based Global Methodist Church. Nearly...

A Cobb County judge recently ruled in favor of 186 Georgia churches suing to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church. In a crowded courtroom filled with more than 200 people, Superior Court Judge Steven Schuster ruled Tuesday that 186 United Methodist churches should be able to vote to disaffiliate from the UMC, according to a news release from the Wesleyan Covenant Association, an organization helping north Georgia churches disaffiliate. The Georgia churches listed in the lawsuit, filed on March 30, requested the North Georgia Annual Conference restore the processes that were already in place allowing churches to disaffiliate.

A Nebraska Methodist pastor slammed pro-life advocates in a recent interview, claiming their “pro-birth” mission has “corrupted” Christians into thinking aborting unborn babies should be illegal. Nebraska News Connection reports the Rev. Debra McKnight, founding pastor of Urban Abbey Methodist Church in Omaha, made the comment as state lawmakers prepare to debate a heartbeat bill Thursday. The pro-life bill would protect unborn babies by banning most elective abortions once their heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy. McKnight claimed pro-life lawmakers do not really care about children or families. She argued that if they did care, they would pass...

Attendees participate in a special called session of The United Methodist Church North Texas Conference on Saturday, March 4, 2023. | Courtesy of the North Texas Conference Another 41 congregations in Texas have officially left The United Methodist Church in response to the mainline Protestant denomination's ongoing debate over its stance on homosexuality. The UMC North Texas Annual Conference held a special called session on Saturday in which clergy and lay members voted to approve the disaffiliation votes of 41 congregations that formerly belonged to the regional body. According to a statement emailed to The Christian Post by a...

More than 400 congregations in Texas have voted to leave The United Methodist Church amid the mainline Protestant denomination's ongoing schism over LGBT issues. Over the weekend, UMC regional bodies in Texas voted to approve the disaffiliation votes of hundreds of churches, with most planning to join the recently created Global Methodist Church. The total number of departing congregations includes 294 of the 598 churches belonging to the Houston-based Central Texas Conference and 145 of the 201 churches belonging to the Lubbock-based Northwest Texas Conference, reported The Dallas Morning News. The departing congregations constitute nearly half of all UMC congregations...

The theological fracture within the country's largest mainline Methodist denomination has grown more contentious as a church conference in Georgia has temporarily blocked churches from disaffiliating. The United Methodist Church North Georgia Conference last week cited "misinformation" for its decision to "pause" any further disaffiliation efforts from congregations attempting to leave the denomination, according to a Dec. 28 email sent to member churches. The email claimed "many local churches have been misled about the disaffiliation process and have been presented with information about the process" and about denominational leadership "that is factually incorrect and defamatory."

Fifty-eight congregations in Louisiana have officially disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church, as the second-largest mainline Protestant denomination in the United States continues to experience schism due to its ongoing debate over homosexuality. The UMC Louisiana Conference held a special session on Saturday, approving the votes of 58 congregations who decided by at least two-thirds vote to leave the UMC. The Rev. Todd Rossnagel, the director of communication strategies at the Louisiana Conference, told The Christian Post on Monday that the 58 churches came after nine other congregations had disaffiliation votes approved at the annual conference in June. Earlier this...

-snip- According to TDJC, Hernandez was released on parole for aggravated robbery on October 21, 2021, with a special condition of electronic monitoring. TDCJ also confirmed that Hernandez was "granted permission to be at the hospital with his significant other during delivery [of her child]." According to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by WFAA, Hernandez went to the hospital to visit his girlfriend, who had given birth to their child. The warrant stated that Hernandez then began "acting strangely" and accused his girlfriend of cheating on him. The suspect started searching the room to see if anyone else was in...

More than 30 congregations based in North Carolina have threatened legal action so they can leave the United Methodist Church, claiming that the disaffiliation process is unfair to them. The Wesleyan Covenant Association, a theologically conservative network, announced earlier this month that over 40 churches in the Western North Carolina Conference are overseeing "pre-suit negotiation requests." The announcement comes as scores of theologically conservative congregations nationwide have left the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States amid ongoing debate over the UMC's longstanding opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. According to WCA, the Western North Carolina Conference "sent a legal...

A doctor in Texas is suing the health care institution that suspended her for allegedly purveying “dangerous misinformation.” Dr. Mary Bowden, who now runs her own clinic, is seeking $25 million from Houston Methodist for alleged defamation. Bowden became concerned that the COVID-19 vaccines were not preventing contraction of the virus that causes COVID-19, and spoke out against vaccine mandates and, later, the vaccines themselves, according to the 19-page lawsuit, which was slated to be filed in Harris County District Court. After Bowden began sharing her opinions on social media, Houston Methodist and its CEO, Dr. Marc Boom, “retaliated” against...

More than 100 churches have gone to court, suing the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) because they want to leave the denomination immediately.The main reason involves disagreements over United Methodist clergy performing marriages for LGBTQ couples and ordaining LGBTQ people as clergy in the church.One hundred and six Florida churches want to leave the denomination, and take their property with them.The lawsuit says the church leadership is not abiding by the church's Book of Discipline, which deals with Christian doctrine, the denomination's beliefs, and the ownership of church buildings and properties. The Tallahassee Democrat reports the lead...

Iliff School of Theology is an official theological school and approved seminary of the United Methodist Church ... *** Tom Wolfe, the president of Iliff, who has been an ordained Methodist elder for over forty years, said in 2020 that the school’s focus is “engaging the moral discourse in the context of multiple cultural constructions of human meaning.” *** The school employs as an admissions representative a Norse Heathen named Alexandra Ravenscroft, who is the head clergy, or Gudellri, of her pagan organization, Forn Sidr of America. Ravenscroft joined Iliff in 2021. In her job at Iliff, she recruits and...

Last year, the United Methodist Church accepted Isaac Simmons, who regularly preaches dressed as a drag queen under the name Ms. Penny Cost, as a candidate for ordination. Since that time, Simmons, who serves as an associate pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Illinois, has challenged basic theological concepts, projecting a worldview where divinity rests not in God but in queerness. In a church preparing to split over LGBTQ issues, the drag queen pastor, who embraces queer theology while barely attempting to plaster on the basic tenets of Christian theology, has become a lightning rod. Conservatives argue that...

A report from Hope Rawlson at the blog for the Institute on Religion & Democracy has documented that students at Duke Divinity School, which is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, have held a “Pride” worship service to pray to the “Great Queer One.”She revealed, “Divinity Pride, a student group affirming the ‘dignity, faithfulness, and strength of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and gender/sexuality non-conforming Christians,'” held the event.The posting explained, “Criticizing the church, Justis Mitchell, a first-year M.Div student, stated, ‘In the pews we listen to the pastor who preaches about commandments, condemning those who disobey, predicating...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Rev. Craig Duke has been a Methodist minister for three decades, building a reputation as a staunch advocate of LGBTQ inclusion. His pastoral duties have now been terminated — the result of a bitter rift surfacing in his Indiana church after he sought to demonstrate solidarity by appearing in drag alongside prominent drag queens in the HBO reality series “We’re Here.” Duke, 62, said he thought most of his 400-member congregation at Newburgh United Methodist Church shared his inclusive views, and he was taken aback when a prominent congregation member, soon backed by other churchgoers,...