United Methodists set to decide on LGBT policies

The United Methodist Church faces a defining, and potentially dividing, decision on lesbian and gay rights as members from around the world gather this week in St. Louis.

A group of 864 appointed delegates, clergy members and laypeople will meet Saturday through Tuesday in a special session of the General Conference to vote on whether the church should allow lesbian and gay people to serve as clergy members and to be married in Methodist churches.

Since 1972, the Christian denomination, which has 12.5 million members worldwide, has barred “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from becoming clergy members and prohibited same-sex marriages in the church, saying that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

But the topic has been debated since the denomination was founded when two other denominations merged in 1968. The debate has been the impetus of the formation of several groups on each side, although many, including leaders in Ohio, are just hoping the church can remain united.

“What I want is something that moves us forward together,” said Bishop Gregory Palmer, local bishop for the church’s West Ohio Conference, which has about 170,000 members.

In 2016, at the most-recent meeting of the denomination, it was decided that a special group would decide how to proceed. That group, the Commission on the Way Forward, came up with three possible plans — and others have submitted more than 70 other plans — that delegates probably will vote on this weekend.

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Palmer was on the commission but does not get a vote at the conference. He said each of the plans the 32-member commission proposed was “created with equal good intention.”

“Our mission is to touch people’s lives with the love of God,” Palmer said.

The plans the commission came up with are: the One Church plan, which would allow LGBT clergy members and same-sex weddings but not require acceptance of those changes by churches; the Connectional Conference Plan, which would allow three varying positions — acceptance, denial or both of LGBT clergy members — and creates a new regional conference for each; and the Traditionalist Plan, which would keep the rules the same.

The Rev. Amy Aspey, pastor at Short North Church, is a delegate for the local West Ohio Conference and said she has been attending informational and listening meetings locally, reading correspondence on the issue and praying.

Aspey said her responsibility as a delegate is not just to represent the overall feeling of those in the conference, but to listen to God.

Aspey said she hasn’t told people how she’ll vote because she doesn’t know yet, as there could be several amendments to each plan during the meeting. “We really believe holy conferencing is just that ... This is really a movement of the spirit, and we try to remain open to that through prayer.”

While many members hope the church can stay together, one organization has started planning to split from the denomination if it decides to allow ordination and marriage of LGBT people.

“From a traditionalist viewpoint, we would see any change as contradicting spiritual truths,” said Brian Straub, president of the West Ohio Wesleyan Covenant Association, a group with about 300 local members and 125,000 worldwide that advocates that marriage should be between a man and a woman and that single people should be celibate, according to its website. “If the United Methodist Church is not going to uphold spiritual truth, it’s probably not the church for us anymore.”

The denomination’s Council of Bishops has endorsed the One Church plan, but the Wesleyan Covenant Association has said that even that plan — intended to keep the church together — is not acceptable.

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“Scriptural authority is so important to us in the traditional camp,” said Straub, adding that the Bible says same-sex relationships are wrong. “Wesleyanism and Methodism (were) founded on scriptural authority ... we’re trying to maintain that.”

The Rev. Deborah Stevens of Broad Street United Methodist Church believes in interpreting the Bible in a different way — what she calls reading it “seriously,” not literally.

“The most fundamental thing we’re called to do is to love one another,” said Stevens, whose Downtown church has several LGBT members. “The Bible says a lot of things. There’s no one who’s ever taken the Bible in its entirety literally. I don’t think picking and choosing what we take literally is a good way to take the Bible seriously.”

Stevens said she believes the One Church plan is a way to proceed in unity, but she added that she isn’t thinking of leaving no matter how the decision goes.

“God and the reconciling message of Jesus Christ that is at the heart of Christianity is bigger than our human differences, and I’m relying on God being God,” Stevens said. “The unity of the church is a gift of God.”

dking@dispatch.com

@DanaeKing