This
month, United Methodist Church delegates voted
to repeal its church’s long-held exclusionary
stance of its LGBTQ Methodists - meaning,
church doctrine, polity, and social
standing.
The
news was received with mixed feelings - cheers
and tears.
“We have been Methodist
since 1917 in the oldest black section of
Houston,” Harold Cox, an openly African
American gay male of Boston, shared with
me. “I’m sad because the United
Methodist Church is my family’s business.”
Cox comes from a supportive and long
line family of United Methodist ministers -
three uncles and his father. Cox is a “PK,”
a pastor’s kid. “I’m sad the church couldn’t
find a way in their differences to find a
way to reconcile.
Defrocked
and excommunicated clergy
For
me, this news is bittersweet. My heart aches
at the number of my United Methodist clergy
friends through the decades who have been
defrocked - either for being LGBTQ+ or
supporting LGBTQ rights.
For
example, In 1999, the Rev Jimmy Creech, a
heterosexual ally, was defrocked for
performing same-sex union ceremonies. In 1997,
Creech officiated a same-sex union ceremony
for a lesbian couple in Omaha. In 1998, the
Judicial Council of the United Methodist
Church ruled that Creech violated church law.
On the eve of his trial, he officiated a
recommitment ceremony for a gay male couple in
NC.
The
Advocate that year asked him why he continued
to marry same-sex couples, knowing the
church’s position. Creech rightly stated the
following: “A cultural prejudice... has been
institutionalized in the church. The position
of the church is wrong; it’s unjust. It’s
discriminatory. It isolates a part of our
population, part of the brothers and sisters
of the human family. It denies their humanity,
considers their own humanity to be somewhat
unnatural or immoral or sinful.”
During
this era, however, not all UMCs shut
their doors to LGBTQ+ parishioners. I was
instrumental in Union United Methodist Church,
a predominately African American church in
Boston’s South End - once the epicenter of the
city’s LGBTQ community - becoming a
Reconciling Congregation, the first in New
England. It is the one institution least
expected to be lauded among LGBTQ+ people of
African descent, given the Black Church’s
notorious history of homophobia. When
its pastor came out at the General Conference
in 2016 to move the global church body’s moral
compass against its anti-LGBTQ policies, UUMC
was in full support.
Disaffiliation
as a means of peace
The bitter
sweetness of moving
the UMC to repeal its theological stance on
LGBTQ+ issues is that approximately one-fourth
of the denomination’s churches have
disaffiliated. Since 2019, 7,600 have left. In
January 2020, before COVID, the church had
thoughts of splitting. I had hoped that during
COVID, the church would have time to reflect
as a church body on its decision.
“Maybe it’s a separation that
needs to happen,” Cox told me. “Fifty years
is a long time to be fighting.”
For
decades, the UMC has struggled to adopt a
policy of fully including its LGBTQ
parishioners, clergy, and all the spiritual
gifts we bring to the church.
In
2018, hoping to avoid a schism, the Council of
Bishops recommended the One Church Plan, which
would grant individual ministers and regional
church bodies the decision to ordain LGBTQs as
clergy and to perform LGBTQ weddings. It was
believed that such a decision on a
church-by-church and regional basis would
reflect the diversity and affirm the different
churches and cultures throughout the global
body of UMC.
The
One Church Plan, however, was one of
three proposed plans by the UMC’s Commission
on a Way Forward. The others include the
Traditionalist Plan and the Connectional
Conference Plan, both exclusionary to
LGBTQ parishioners.
Also,
The One Church Plan would excise the offensive
and controversial language targeted at LGBTQs
from the Book of Discipline and replace it
with a more compassionate, accurate,
up-to-date, and contextualized language
about human sexuality in support of the
mission and all its parishioners.
In
2022, the Global Methodist Church officially
broke from UMC.
However, while
the UMC has repealed its stance on LGBTQ+
clergy and removed its condemnation
of LGBTQ+ sexualities and gender
expressions from its church law and doctrine,
the change does not offer a full-throated
endorsement of same-sex marriages. It
removes their prohibition.
A
smaller church
“The United Methodist Church
was an important vehicle supporting colleges
and hospitals in my life. That is
important,” Cox stated. “With a smaller
church, it’s harder to care for and continue
with those activities.”
Although
the UMC is a smaller body, LGBTQ+ Methodists
can now be fully out in the church. The hope
is that many of the disaffected will return.
Cox won’t be one of them.
Harold
Cox is now an Episcopalian.
