United Methodists Pass Traditional Plan, Keep Ban on LGBTQ Clergy, Same-Sex Marriage
Religion News Service’s Emily McFarlan Miller reports, “A special session of the United Methodist Church decided Tuesday (Feb. 26) to strengthen the denomination’s ban on the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ people.” Of three proposals before the church, fifty-three percent of the delegates at the St. Louis meeting voted to approve the so-called “Traditional Plan,” which took a harder line against LGBTQ inclusion. McFarlan Miller writes, “LGBTQ United Methodists and those who support their full inclusion in the church have to decide what comes next, said the Rev. Gregory Gross, a delegate from the Northern Illinois Conference and organizer with the Queer Clergy Caucus. There may no longer be room for them in the denomination, he said. So LGBTQ Methodists may have to envision ‘a new expression of Methodism.'”