| Cleveland Plain Dealer United Methodists decline to act against transgender clergy Posted by Daniel Burke/Religion News Service May 02, 2008 13:21PM Categories: Religion Fort Worth, Texas -- Efforts to remove a transgender pastor from ministry in the United Methodist Church died quietly at the denomination's General Conference.The failure to enact a ban most likely means the Rev. Drew Phoenix, a pastor in Baltimore who entered the ministry as the Rev. Ann Gordon, cannot be defrocked solely because he is a transgender man before the next General Conference in 2012.Conservative Methodists had proposed a handful of resolutions that would bar transgender men and women from the pulpit during their 10-ay conference, which ends Friday, May 2.But none of those bans was even debated by the full body of nearly 1,000 delegates gathered here for the church's quadrennial assembly. Rather, the proposals were defeated in smaller legislative committees.As the nation's second largest Protestant church, Methodists are often viewed as a bellwether in mainstream Christianity. The debate over transgender pastors here was expected to create a flashpoint in the 11.5 million-member church and bring the issue a new prominence in the public square. Read more: |
Soul Force
A Soulforce Open Letter to Members of the United Methodist Church
On April 30, 2008, delegates to your General Conference meeting in Ft. Worth, Texas, voted to keep these words in their Book of Discipline: "The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching." Since 1972 United Methodists have used these words to deny lesbian and gay Methodists the rights of ordination and of marriage. As I write clergy can even use these words to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christian the rights of membership in a local church.
For 36 years lesbian and gay United Methodists and their allies have worked tirelessly to replace these words with words of affirmation and acceptance. Once again a UMC General Conference has decided to keep those words in place even though they lead to intolerance, discrimination, suffering and even death. In his book "Why We Can't Wait," Martin Luther King, Jr. describes the 1963 struggle for civil rights that climaxed with legislation that ended segregation in the United States. Dr. King's book might have been titled, "Why We Didn't Wait," for he describes the "disappointments" that drove African-Americans into the streets - "disappointments" that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans know all too well.
We lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are also disappointed in the Congress and the courts; disappointed in both political parties and their leadership; disappointed in the lack of change in the United States when European nations are granting their gay and lesbian citizens the full rights of citizenship; but especially we are disappointed in our churches for ignoring the empirical and biblical data that homosexuality is not a sickness to be cured nor a sin to be forgiven.
Open Letter to UMC from The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
An Open Letter to my United Methodist Sisters and BrothersRev. Rebecca Voelkel, Institute for Welcoming Resources and Faith Work Director The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
In seminary, my systematic theology professor would always admonish us to remember that any talk of the crucifixion was almost blasphemous without an understanding of resurrection and any talk of resurrection without the crucifixion wasn’t Christian. She said this because injustice and oppression are realities in our lives and in the lives of millions around the world. If we forget this, we participate in the oppression. But if we live without hope, we cannot name ourselves as followers of the One who was a doer and a bearer of justice and new life. I struggle with this, but I think she is right.
It is this intertwining reality that comes to me as I sit in Minneapolis, Minnesota (the Northland where winter’s presence is still felt) gazing out at the rain-soaked day which promises of Spring, and read all the news of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church and its machinations about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks.
Although the resurrection threatens to break through in all kinds of places, yet the crucifixion holds sway in many:
World Wide Faith News
UMNS-GENERAL-CONFERENCE-NEWS] UMNS GC90 - Demonstrators call church's 'anti-gay' policies sinful
By Linda Green *
FORT WORTH, Texas (UMNS)-In an act of witness in front of delegates to the 2008 United Methodist General Conference, more than 200 people declared that the denomination's policies and practices against homosexuality are "sinful" and that "sexuality is a gift from God."
Primarily dressed in black, demonstrators walked onto the legislative floor at the Fort Worth Convention Center, formed a two-lined cross around the communion table located in the center aisle and draped it in a black shroud to witness against the church's stance on homosexual practice. They entered silently, but once all demonstrators were in place, they sang, "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?"
The black shroud and the black worn by the demonstrators to "recognize our brokenness" and "to acknowledge that the body is broken," said Audrey Krumbach, who read a statement during the witness.
The 15-minute demonstration was in reaction to the April 30 decision to retain the denomination's decades-old proscription in the Social Principles and other parts of the Discipline describing homosexual practice as "incompatible with Christian teaching."
Delegates voted 501-417 to keep the stance and also passed a resolution against homophobia and heterosexism, saying the church opposes "all forms of violence or discrimination based on gender, gender identity, sexual practice or sexual orientation."
One witness, speaking on behalf of the protesters, told the General Conference that when The United Methodist Church refuses to accept and honor everyone's call to professional ministry, it refuses to abide by the rules of Methodism's founder John Wesley: do no harm, do good and stay in love with God.
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