United Methodist delegates are heading into the homestretch of a legislative gathering that appears on track to make historic changes in lifting their church’s longstanding bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy.
The Associated Press’s Peter Smith explains key issues that will be discussed and voted on at the United Methodist General Conference. They will include LGBTQ-related bans, disaffiliation, regionalization and budget. First United Methodist Church congregants pray for members attending the United Methodist General Conference, including Tracy Merrick, left, a delegate representing Western Pennsylvania, The Rev.
But whether that measure maintains church unity remains to be seen. The General Conference comes as the American portion of the United Methodist Church, long the nation’s third-largest denomination, has shrunk considerably.between 2019 and 2023 amid conservative dismay over the church’s failure to enforce its LGBTQ bans amid widespread defiance.
The denomination has debated homosexuality for more than half a century. Its Book of Discipline bans “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from the clergy and forbids clergy from presiding at same-sex marriages. It also forbids church funding of any advocacy for the “acceptance of homosexuality.” Some are proposing that African and other churches be given the same chance that U.S. churches recently had to disaffiliate under favorable terms.
The denomination had until recently been the third largest in the United States, present in almost every county. But its 5.4 million U.S. membership in 2022 is expected to drop once the 2023 departures are factored in.
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