United Methodist Church to Split Over Gay Marriage

Like the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America before it, the United Methodist Church ("UMC") is headed towards a split over gay marriage and acceptance of LGBT people based on modern medical and mental health knowledge on human sexuality.  As with the other two denominations, the main opposition to gays has come from UMC churches in Africa and other ignorant and uneducated parts of the world.   To me, the "conservative" - meaning bigoted and hate-filled - African churches and their white counterparts in the USA embody the poisonous aspects of religion where a need exists to condemn others so that adherents can feel superior and pat themselves on the back for their false piety.  As the split goes forward. one can hope (i) the liberal churches cease providing any funding to the "conservative" churches, and (ii) here in the USA the exodus of the younger generations from the "conservative" churches accelerates. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the coming split:

The United Methodist Church is expected to split into two denominations in an attempt to end a years-long, contentious fight over same-sex marriage, church leaders announced Friday. The historic schism would divide the nation’s third-largest religious denomination.

Leaders of the church said they had agreed to spin off a “traditionalist Methodist” denomination, which would continue to oppose same-sex marriage and to refuse ordination to LGBT clergy, while allowing the remaining portion of the United Methodist Church to permit same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy for the first time in its history.

The plan would need to be approved in May at the denomination’s worldwide conference.

“I’ve always been committed to unity. But over time, it could not be unity at someone’s expense,” said Bishop Kenneth Carter, president of the church’s Council of Bishops and one of the formulators of the new plan.

Jan Lawrence, executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network, a pro-LGBT group within the church, said the separation plan “gives the hope that we can move toward a church that allows healing to begin.”

Friday’s announcement came as new sanctions were set to go into effect in the church, which would have made punishments for United Methodist Church pastors who perform same-sex weddings much more severe: one year’s suspension without pay for the first wedding and removal from the clergy for any wedding after that.

Instead, leaders from liberal and conservative wings signed an agreement saying they will postpone those sanctions and instead vote to split at the worldwide church’s May general conference.

Any local church that wants to join the new conservative denomination would have to conduct a vote within a specified time frame, the announcement said. A church would not need to vote to remain United Methodist. Churches that vote to leave could take certain assets with them, including their local church buildings in some cases.

After the separation, the agreement said, the remaining United Methodist Church would hold another conference with the purpose of removing the church’s bans on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy. Some advocates for LGBT inclusion worried that simply removing prohibitions would not be enough.

“There are efforts in the protocol to stop condemnation of LGBTQ people, which of course is good. There are no signs pointing toward a church that affirms us and repents of the significant harm that has been done to LGBT people for decades because of its complicity in spiritual violence against us,” said the Rev. M Barclay, who was ordained in 2017 as the United Methodist Church’s first transgender deacon.

[T]he larger divide is between American Methodists and foreign members of the United Methodist Church, especially churches in Africa. In a church that conducts all of its major decisions in churchwide votes, the much more conservative-leaning voters from Africa competed with American delegates who often fervently pushed for a change on same-sex marriage.

At a conference last year in which church leaders had declared they would solve this issue, many American delegates favored a plan that would have allowed local churches to make their own decisions on whether to perform same-sex marriages and ordain gay clergy. Some supported a plan to simply allow same-sex marriages worldwide. They were stunned when a third option passed, instead — one dubbed the “Traditional Plan,” which ushered in not only a continued ban on LGBT weddings and clergy but also harsher penalties for those who disobey church doctrine.

For some LBGT Methodists, Friday’s news arrived too late. Williams, who worked on earlier negotiations, is pursuing ordination in the United Church of Christ instead of the United Methodist Church.

United Methodist Church Rejects Allowing Same Sex Marriage and LGBT Clergy

Sadly, as anticipated, the ignorance embracing elements of the United Methodist Church prevailed at the denomination's General Conference and measures that would have modernized the church's positions to reflect modern knowledge on sexuality were voted down.  Much of the anti-LGBT mindset came from knuckle dragging elements of the church in Africa - much as what happened in the Anglican Communion - and rural backwater areas of the USA.  One can only hope that the LGBT accepting churches will leave the UMC and take their money with them and allow the reactionary churches to wither and die. Metro Weekly looks at the disappointing outcome.  Note how an obvious mental midget from the Western Pennsylvania Conference described the vote as remaining true to Christ's words - the only problem is Christ never said a single word condemning same sex relationships (check your New Testaments if you don't believe me).  The ignorance, bigotry and idiocy of these "conservatives" is stunning. They should call themselves Pharisees, not Christians.  Here are excerpts from Metro Weekly: 

Delegates at a special session of the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in St. Louis have rejected a plan that would have modernized the church’s stances on LGBTQ issues.

The delegates rejected a motion to substitute the so-called “One Church Plan” for the conservative Traditional Plan. The One Church Plan would have lifted prohibitions on individual churches choosing to marry same-sex couples and allowed LGBTQ followers of the religion to become ordained ministers, reports The Nashville Tennessean.

The motion failed by 75 votes, with 449 voting to keep the Traditional Plan in effect and 374 voting to adopt the more LGBTQ-friendly plan.

Currently, the church’s official position is that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching,” and, as such, has opposed past attempts to liberalize its stances on LGBTQ-related issues.

While much of the debate surrounding the fractures over social issues within the Church has focused on more conservative elements who have threatened to leave should the denomination become more LGBTQ-inclusive, Berlin noted that there are more liberal-leaning members of the Church who will be prompted to leave if the rigid prohibitions on LGBTQ inclusion remain intact.

But Nancy Denardo, a delegate from the Western Pennsylvania Conference, argued that the Church should adhere strictly to Biblical teaching on human sexuality.

“The One Church Plan does not agree with the words of our savior and in so doing deceives young persons into believing that same gender marriage is OK with God when clearly it is not,” Denardo said. “There is danger to that not only to those being deceived but the deceivers as well.”

I'm sorry, but Nancy Denardo cited in the article is a freaking moron who doesn't know the New Testament. Shame on her and shame on whoever put he r in a position to be a delegate. The Western Pennsylvania Conference is as follows if anyone wants to speak their mind:

United Methodist Center
1204 Freedom Road
PO Box 5002
Cranberry Township, PA 16066-0002
(724) 776-2300
info@wpaumc.org 

Africa’s Imaginary Gay Crisis

Another member of the Insider/Out list serv that I belong to shared a link to this op-ed column which appeared in The Guardian, a newspaper in Nigeria. The column looks at the manufactured "gay crisis" in Africa which is the handiwork of corrupt political regimes that want to blame a scapegoat for the declining economic conditions in their nations - which are generally the result of the politicians own misdeeds and incompetence - with the help of largely USA based Christianists. While extreme in some ways, the column also gives a glimpse of what the United States would look like as a nation should the Christianists ever succeed in imposing the form of theocratic government for which they yearn. As I continue to maintain, the Christianists and their flunkies in the GOP are a clear and present danger to constitutional government and freedom of religion for all citizens. Here are some column highlights:
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A SPECTRE is haunting Africa - the spectre of homosexuality. But it is an unusual spectre: it does not exist. It is a phantom. Over the past decade, a curious and totally unlikely coalition of religious leaders, the ruling class, and sections of the mainstream media, has launched a vigorous campaign against homosexuality and perceived homosexuals. Trading in the most spiteful rhetoric and symbols imaginable, members of this alliance have sung from the same hymn book, affirming, implausibly, that homosexuality is a recent import into Africa, and that homosexuals are responsible for the continent’s post-colonial throes. Not unpredictably, the alliance’s investment in hate has yielded bountiful dividends of violence and murder.
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I advance two preliminary explanations. The first is economic. It is hardly a coincidence that the two countries where anti-gay rhetoric has been most strident in Africa - Zimbabwe and Nigeria - are also two of the most economically destitute. In both countries, the percentage of the population ‘living’ on less than a dollar a day has risen steadily over the past two decades. Average life expectancy, according to the 2011 Failed States Index (where both are ranked 6th and 14th respectively) is 33.5 for Zimbabwe, and 48.3 for Nigeria. In both countries, a frustrated quest for a rational explanation for economic crisis has produced an implausible demonology in which gays, lesbians, and sexual deviants of all sorts apparently team up with sundry ‘demonic forces’ to ambush not just those countries’, but Africa’s economic progress (incidentally, South Africa, with the most liberal sexual laws in Africa, is also the continent’s most economically advanced country).
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The situation in both Zimbabwe and Nigeria seems to validate the link between material privation and political suggestibility. Where people are poor and poorly educated (or not at all), they are more susceptible to political manipulation by demagogues who parrot easy explanations for complex and fundamentally rational economic problems. In most of Africa today, the insidious fiction that the ‘gay next door’ bars the way to economic progress has been cue for a massive pink-hunt.
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None of this politico-economic explanation can be meaningful without a connection to the expanding influence of religion in Africa. This is my second explanation. Over the past three decades, much of the continent has fallen under the scourge of Pentecostal Christianity. As a social phenomenon, one with key transnational connections, Pentecostal Christianity in Africa has carried a moralist and doggedly anti-intellectual banner.
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As an anti-intellectual force, Pentecostalism in Africa is profoundly ahistorical in that it eschews human, especially political, agency in favour of pseudo-spiritual ‘explanations’.
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This is the overall anti-intellectual, anti-rationalist climate in which gays have become, quite literally, African societies’ whipping boys. I emphasize this climate in order to drive home an important point, to wit: given the atmosphere of pervasive irrationality, gays are only one among many other ‘enemies’. In Nigeria for instance, an ever growing list of ‘demonic forces’ has recently expanded to include so-called child ‘witches’ who are blamed for even economic problems that pre-date their conception. In the most tragic examples, brainwashed parents have colluded in the killing of their own children.
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With many evangelical upstarts naively promising salvation in exchange for gays’ renunciation of ‘sodomy’, the continent is once again chasing shadows at the expense of real solutions to its serious problems. Such problems may vary in manifestation and degree, but they are unified by their being traceable to a common set of factors, foremost among which are elite myopia and failure to invest in human capital and physical infrastructure. These problems require urgent attention, and as it is, African governments’ capacity to deal with them is hobbled by their failure to keep their young men and women at home. These are the things we should be obsessing about, not what the dude next door is up to when the lights go out.
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Ignorance, irrationality, and economic decline are the fruits of evangelical Christianity. Yet this is precisely what the political whores within the GOP are willing to unleash on the USA as they prostitute themselves to the Christian Right for short term political advantage.

U.S. Conservatives, African Churches and Homophobia - Part II

Yesterday I wrote here about a new report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches and Homophobia, that looks at the toxic efforts of U.S. Christianists to export their hate based perversion of Christianity and homophobia to the third world and Africa in particular. The issue is important to American LGBT efforts for two reasons: (1) it shows Christianist like Rick Warren to be liars - something we in the LGBT community already knew, but which is lost on most voters - and (2) it provides religious Neanderthals in mainline Protestant denominations an ability to break away from the national churches in the USA and affiliate with truly nasty bigots within the African church hierarchies like Nigeria's Peter Akinola. Queerty has a piece that looks at the issue in great depth than I did yesterday and it is something readers should look at to better understand the agenda of our enemies and their goal of making the lives of LGBT individuals around the world a true Hell. Here are some highlights:

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Rick Warren . . . understands that subscription to Judeo-Christian faith in the West is on the decline, and that's a huge impediment to winning his (homophobic) culture war. At least here in America. But the rest of the world? It's fertile ground to the Saddleback Church leader and other religious conservatives. And they're making the African continent their own Ground Zero to persecute, and sometimes eliminate, queers.

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"Last Sunday there were more Christians who went to church in China than all of Europe combined," Warren, 55, told an audience this month at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
And Warren is right: The future of Catholicism lives not in North America or Western Europe, but in Asia and Africa. Which is why you should be even more concerned about American religious leaders working with their counterparts across the world to foster homophobic beliefs. It's not just Uganda
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U.S. conservatives have successfully recruited a significant number of prominent African religious leaders to a campaign seeking to restrict the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. The flagship issue … is the ordination of LGBT clergy by mainline Protestant denominations– particularly the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches– in the United States….
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As [Project Director Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts] argues, the U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and educational materials, U.S. religious conservatives warn of the dangers of homosexuals and present themselves as the true representatives of U.S. evangelicalism, so helping to marginalize Africans’ relationships with mainline Protestant churches.
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“Just as the United States and other northern societies routinely dump our outlawed or expired chemicals, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and cultural detritus on African and other Third World countries, we now export a political discourse and public policies our own society has discarded as outdated and dangerous,” writes PRA executive director Tarso Luís Ramos in the report’s foreword. “Africa’s antigay campaigns are to a substantial degree made in the U.S.A.”
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The future of conservative-backed bigotry is not in the James Dobsons, Rick Warrens, or even Lou Dobbs, but in cross-continental crusades to encourage the persecution of LGBTs.
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This phenomenon demonstrates why it is so essential that Christianist extremist be shown for what they really are in this country. If they can be defeated here and shown to be the hate filled liars and extremist that we know them to be to the larger public, it may be possible to thin their ranks and ultimately hit them where it hurts them the most- money contributions to fund their foul activities.

U.S. Conservatives Are Funding Anti-gay Jihad in Africa

Bob Felton at Civil Commotion has a post that among other things looks at the rising tide of homophobia in Africa that comes to the conclusion that the anti-gay religious extremists in the USA are behind the upsurge and are funding the draconian laws now being proposed in nations like Uganda. Among the leaders in this foul agenda is the Institute for Religion & Democracy. The report on what's happening in Africa among other things concludes:
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The Institute on Religion & Democracy is the organization named in “Globalizing the Culture Wars” as the prime mover in the the upsurge of harsh anti-gay legislation in Africa, so I went to their Web site and looked around.

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Bob has a link to the full report here. One should not be fooled by the word "democracy" in the name of the organization. While IRD describes itself as "an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches' social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, and to contribute to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad." what it is really pushing for is Christo-fascist theocracy and a subjugation of the civil laws to IRD's reactionary, hate driven form of religion. Among its preferred targets are gays and non-Christians. The organization - like so many Christianist groups - purports to have "experts" that back up its agenda, but as so often is the case behind the fancy titles bestowed upon themselves there are no legitimate credentials. Besides exporting hate and intolerance overseas, IRD seeks to turn back progressive movement in U.S. denominations that have moved away from an ignorant, fundamentalist form of Christianity.

Churches Involved in Torture, Murder of Thousands of African Children Denounced as Witches

We have looked at this issue before and I find it both frightening and disgusting - Christian churches in Africa branding children as "witches" and then causing them to be tortured and/or killed. Equally frightening is the fact that many of the Neanderthal elements within the Episcopal Church in the USA are aligning themselves under the leadership of such utterly deranged nutcases and homophobes. It's as if the members of these break away parishes have had a collective lobotomy or some similar mind destroying procedure because of the homophobia. Not surprisingly, this increasing phenomenon tracks with the spread of evangelical Christianity in Africa. Would that the professional Christians in this country stopped worrying about what gays do in the privacy of their own homes and sought to stem the torture and murder of children and the abject poverty endured by so many people throughout the world. But then, that would require actual adherence to the Gospel message - something these false Christians find impossible. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post on the ongoing torture and murder of child "witches" (the Los Angeles Times, Star Tribune, Daily Press and numerous other newspapers are carrying the story as well):

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EKET, Nigeria -- The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall. His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him - Mount Zion Lighthouse. A month later, he died.

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Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." "It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity," said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria.

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The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire. Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children's Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

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The Mount Zion Lighthouse - also named by three other families as the accuser of their children - is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship's president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.

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Ignorance and religious extremism are ugly things. Combined, they are a deadly mix. Shockingly, it is those with this type of mindset that are increasing calling the shots in the Anglican Communion and other denominations that are seeing explosive growth in the undeveloped world while rational, educated church members in the developed world refuse to believe in the lunacy that slavish adherence to fundamentalist dogma produces. One cannot help but wonder whether religion is a greater force for evil than good when confronted with stories like this one.

Evangelical Lutheran Church at a Crossroads

The Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ("ELCA") starts today and will address issues that will basically determine whether or not LGBT Lutherans will be granted full membership in the Church or relegated to continue as semi-welcomed second class members of the denomination. Depending upon the outcome this week, I will probably decide whether to remain in the Church or look for a different church home that is more welcoming - or perhaps simply give up on organized religion completely. The ELCA currently allows gay clergy, provided they remain celibate - a clear message to gay Lutherans that their relationships are not valued or acceptable regardless of what spin the Church tries to put on it. In my view, continued bigotry and discrimination in Christian denominations is the principle fuel behind all other forms of homophobia and the problems that it visits upon LGBT individuals. A key vote this evening will be a harbinger of whether gays will be thrown under the bus yet again to appease the Neanderthal, anti-modern element in the Church and the more lunatic elements of the Church in Africa. Here are some highlights from the Washington Times which interviewed the ELCA bishop for Virginia - one of my office subtenants:

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America's largest Lutheran denomination has reached its crossroads on homosexuality and allowing openly gay clergy, with crucial votes slated at its biennial assembly this week in Minneapolis that participants say are too close to call.

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"We recognize we're in for some long conversation this week," said Virginia Synod Bishop James F. Mauney, who oversees 42,000 members in 163 churches across the state. "I am hopeful that our worship will guide our conversation and we will be guided by the Holy Spirit." The gathering of 65 synods representing the 4.6-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America mirrors a denomination split over homosexuality.

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Only celibate gay clergy can serve in ELCA churches. A small majority - 54 percent - of ELCA clergy support gay ordination, according to a Clergy Voices survey conducted in May and posted recently on the denomination's Web site. Of the two main documents on sexuality issues that will be considered at the ELCA assembly, one is a proposed social statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust," which, as a statement of church teaching, must be passed by a two-thirds vote (about 700 people) of the 1,045 voting members present.

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The other document, called a "Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies," recommends a change in ELCA ministry policies so Lutherans who are in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gendered relationships" can serve as ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal ministers and ordained ministers.

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But on Monday night, Lutherans will vote on whether the document, known in shorthand as "the recommendation," can be passed by a simple majority vote; that is about 520 people, greatly lowering the bar for passage. However, a two-thirds majority vote is needed to agree that the sexuality recommendation can pass with a simple majority. Bishop Mauney said everything hinges on Monday night's vote.

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Needless to say, I will be watching closely to see what happens. If a two-thirds vote is required, then it will be pretty clear that gay Lutherans are headed towards being thrown under the bus yet again.

African Crucible: Children Cast as Witches

This is a troubling story for many reasons (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/world/africa/15witches.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp). Moreover, it again shows the insanity often arising from professed religious beliefs. I also find it ironic having posted yesterday about "conservative" Episcopal congregations aligning themselves with fundamentalist elements of the Anglican Communion in Africa. I find it bizarre that allegedly intelligent and educated people in places like Northern Virginia are rushing to become the spiritual brethren of the backward, superstitious and benighted who believe in witches, cast out children, etc. I can only conclude that such is the ultimate result of religious fundamentalism run amok. In my view, having gay bishops would appear rather normal compared to this stuff. These story highlight show just how strange the "truth" of religion can become:

They gathered that afternoon in Domingos’s mud-clay house, he said, seized him and bound his legs with rope. They tossed the rope over the house’s rafters and hoisted him up until he was suspended headfirst over the hard dirt floor. Then they told him they would cut the rope if he did not confess to murdering his father. “They were yelling, ‘Witch! Witch!’” Domingos recalled, tears rolling down his face. “There were so many people all shouting at me at the same time.”

Terrified, Domingos told them what they wanted to hear, but his relatives were not appeased. Ferraz Bulio, the neighborhood’s traditional leader, said seven or eight captors were dragging Domingos down a dirt path to the river, apparently to drown him, when he intervened. “They were slapping him and punching him,” he said. “This is the way people react toward someone accused of witchcraft. There are lots of such cases.” Mr. Bulio is right. In parts of Angola, Congo and the Congo Republic, a surprising number of children are accused of being witches, and then are beaten, abused or abandoned.

The Angolan city of Mbanza Congo, just 50 miles from the border with Congo, has blazed a trail. After a child accused of witchcraft was stabbed to death in 2000, provincial officials and Save the Children, the global charitable organization, rounded up 432 street children and reunited 380 of them with relatives, the witchcraft report stated. Eleven fundamentalist churches were shut down because of reports of child exploitation and abuse. Eight Congolese pastors were deported. Villages formed committees to monitor children’s rights. The authorities say the number of children who are abused or living on the streets dropped drastically.

Moises Samuel, director of the provincial office of the children’s institute, said he was concerned not only about traditional healers but also about a bevy of churches with soothsayers who claimed to exorcise evil spirits and drew crowds even on weekdays. Once a soothsayer or healer brands a child a witch, child welfare specialists say, even the police often back away.