this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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It's a lot deeper than that.
Since the 70s, there's been a couple lines in their Book of Discipline (central doctrine and interpretation) that say that people are to be loved, but the practice is homosexuality is "inconsistent with Christian teaching". We progressives have been trying to take that back out but the "traditionalists" play legislative games to prevent and real debate. On the flip side, it says nothing about trans people because progressives play the same games too keep their bigoted crap out.
Back in 2019 the UMC held a special General Conference to address the issue. The traditionalists paired up with churches from Africa and a couple other places to make things worse but also created an easy way to leave the denomination. Right after, they started the GMC denomination and started leaving the UMC . IOW, they shit the bed and then moved out.
It's really screwed up because the US congregations tend to be affirming and are shirking while the overseas congregations are more traditional but growing. They had the long term advantage. I think they just wanted to burn it all down. Think Steve Bannon and his desire to destroy the US government
There is also another layer of convoluted-ness to my understanding. Even though the homophobic churches won and prevented removal of anti-gay language, the homophobic churches in the US are all pissy as no one is enforcing it. Progressive UMC churches openly ignore and break the homophobic rules.
So the UMC has been bleeding churches from both ends in the US. I believe most have been homophobic churches running away because no one is enforcing their bigotry, but some are progressive churches which have left because they did not want to appear to support the bigotry still in the doctrine and to avoid any risk of the bigotry being enforced on them in the future.