An Overview of the Debate Over Sexuality in the UMC
By David S. Wisener
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I. What is going on in the UMC?
Most of us don’t really pay close attention to what goes on in other churches or even in our own denomination – unless something happens with the people of our own local church, it’s understandable that a lot of us are largely unaware.
That said, there has been a lot of drama going on within the UMC for at least the last four decades regarding human sexuality. Other denominations, such as the Presbyterians, have split years ago over disagreements on how to understand what differences in sexual orientation means for a Christian, and sadly the UMC is now experiencing the same fate.
A brief overview: the UMC is governed by conferences, which are annual meetings of geographic areas made up of laity, pastors and bishops; the ultimate authority in the UMC is General Conference, which is a gathering once every four years which updates the doctrine of the denomination, which is called the Book of Discipline.
At every General Conference for at least the last 30 years, debate has centered around what the Book of Discipline says about human sexuality. There has been a struggle between those who want to affirm the active practice of homosexuality as accepted by the Church and those wanting to maintain a traditional understanding of sexual practice for Christians. To date, the official teaching of the UMC has kept the traditional stance, but the fighting over it does not stop. It’s worth emphasizing that the disagreement is about practicing homosexuality, not about people who have same sex attraction themselves: it’s about condoning practice or not.
To be clear, this is the relevant portion of what the Book of Discipline states:
“We affirm that sexuality is God’s good gift to all persons. We call everyone to responsible stewardship of this sacred gift.
Although all persons are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage…
We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching. We affirm that God’s grace is available to all. We will seek to live together in Christian community, welcoming, forgiving, and loving one another, as Christ has loved and accepted us. We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.” – Paragraph 161.G, 2016 BOD
There has been so much disagreement and nastiness, in fact, that a special General Conference was called in 2019 for the sole purpose of considering a resolution that would have allowed each annual conference in the UMC to choose for itself what teachings regarding sexuality it would endorse. Instead, the results of the vote at that meeting affirmed one more time that the UMC would uphold the traditional teaching.
An Overview of the Debate Over Sexuality in the UMC
By David S. Wisener
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For those wanting to change the denomination’s stance, that was the final straw. After much negotiation, a protocol was agreed upon between representatives of both sides of the issue that would have resulted in those desiring to continue to teach the traditional understanding of sexuality leaving the UMC and forming a new denomination, while those desiring to fully affirm the practice of homosexuality for Christians would remain in the UMC. This protocol was to be voted on and hopefully adopted at the 2020 General Conference.
Then…COVID. General Conference was delayed to 2021. Then in 2021, it was again delayed to 2022. Then within the last several months, it was decided yet again to delay until 2024. Those in the traditional camp claim this has been a deliberate delaying tactic in bad faith and, in exasperation, announced that they would launch the new traditional Methodist denomination – the Global Methodist Church (GMC) – on May 1, regardless. Likely for all intents and purposes, the protocol is dead, and we now have a very messy situation.
II. What we will discuss
In preparing ourselves as a local church to pray and discern how God would have us respond in this situation, I want to present an overview of what I find to be the most convincing cases for both perspectives in this argument, and I want to do so as fairly as I can – a lot of folks will claim to be presenting both sides to something, but in reality, what they will actually do is present the best of the side they agree with and a really bad and easily dismissible version of the side they don’t agree with.
I don’t want to do that. There are good and faithful Christians on both of these sides, and it would be a disservice to them to not present their beliefs fairly. I also want to try to be as fair to everyone as possible as each of you prayerfully tries to figure out between yourselves and God what you best think reflects God’s will on this matter.
That said, I do have my own opinion, and it’s impossible to completely eliminate all bias from anything we say and do, so I beg your forgiveness if my bias begins to peak through too strongly.
III. Repentance for the Church’s sins regarding hardheartedness
Before doing anything else, I want to lead us all in corporate repentance. When discussing any belief that can be considered hurtful or harmful to anyone, it’s very important to state clearly before anything else is said that there is no room for hatred, discrimination, bigotry, racism, sexism, vitriol, divisiveness or exclusionary practices within God’s Church. That there is a long history of all these attitudes and actions within the Church is to our shame, and every effort should be made to eliminate them as opposed to the way of life Jesus calls all Christians to.
The Church has failed numerous times in its engagement with people regarding sexuality, gender and identity, and it has caused trauma for many people by treating groups of people as “others” instead of welcoming everyone who seeks a relationship with God through Jesus as fellow strugglers on the road to sanctification.
We have failed to empathize and have been quick to cast judgments and condemn. We have deferred coldly to written words without giving space to listen in love to hurting people in front of our faces. We
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have not allowed space for the possibility that we might be misunderstanding God’s will, and we have not acted with the humility that is required as a result.
We have failed to act in love with people with whom we disagree on a number of issues. We have failed in trying to understand the views of those we disagree with, often failing to even try, and we have failed to act charitably and with compassion.
For all these things, Lord Jesus, we repent, ask your forgiveness, and look to you to lead us in our brokenness as best we can. Please help us.
IV. The Context in which we live: Diagnosis of Western Culture
Before discussing the two views themselves, an important context needs to be discussed about where we in the American Church find ourselves at this point in history and in the world. Christianity exists within a lot of human cultures around the world. Culture is the set of beliefs, customs, and traditions of a group of people with a shared history. Christianity is shaped by every culture it exists within, making its expression slightly different within each.
In the New Testament, culture is often described by the phrase “the world,” and it is usually opposed to the beliefs of the Church (an example is Romans 12:2 – “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” NIV).
Western Culture (the culture descended from Europe in America) has over several hundred years slowly developed a particular kind of belief in individuality. Most cultures emphasize community and responsibility to family groups and tradition, but in many ways Western Culture has flipped that on its head. It stresses the importance of the individual person over and against all other things, be that community or religion.
A result of this has been empowering every person to define their reality – it has given power to each person to decide what is real, what is true, and what human identity is. The individual (and not community or tradition) has in the West all power to decide how they wish to interpret reality. As decades and centuries have passed, this has led to our society being more secular, since a society in which the individual acts, basically, as if they are a god perceives less of a need for an actual God.
a. The Nature of Christianity
This is in many ways the opposite of Christianity. Christianity, like most religions, offers its own interpretation of reality and life, and it does so according to the belief that its understanding is given to it by God. The teaching of Jesus turns the perspective of Western Culture upside down: freedom and truth are not found through empowering the self but rather in denying the self.
Christianity teaches self-sacrificial love, self-denial, and even death to the idea of self in order to be made alive through the life of God as empowered by God’s Spirit. It sets a difficult standard of moral life that requires sacrifice of all who follow it. It defines human identity according to our best understanding
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of what the Creator of humanity wants it to be, not according to standards chosen by us, the creatures themselves
b. Impact of Western thought on Christianity
In a culture like the West, the temptation will exist to reinterpret scripture and Church tradition in ways suggested by individual people. Scripture addresses something like this, as the theme of Israel “doing what was right in their own eyes” (KJV) recurs in the book of Judges when the people of Israel attempt to include the religious practices of their Canaanite neighbors into their worship of God (Judges 17 and 21; see also Proverbs 26, 28 and 1 Corinthians 1 for further commentary on humanity trusting in its own wisdom instead of God).
The individualism of our culture has affected Christianity by convincing many Christians to confuse characteristics such as masculinity, femininity and sexuality as parts of human identity. Because the Church itself has used Western Culture’s practices of identity formation, it has resulted in even more confusion and harm.
c. We need radical humility
Everyone in the Church needs to understand that interpreting scripture and the history of the Church’s teachings and tradition is very difficult, and the Church has been wrong before and surely will be wrong again in some of what it has taught. In some ways the teachings of the Church have always been evolving as new questions are asked through the course of history. It took hundreds of years for a theology of the Trinity to be formed and for the nature of who Jesus is to be decided, and it took hundreds of years more for a clear opinion on slavery to emerge, and we are still wrestling across denominations with recovering the leadership role of women in the Church that is evidenced in the New Testament.
Because of this, every Christian needs to practice humility by being open to the possibility that we might be wrong on any number of issues and open to change as more learning and movement of the Holy Spirit occurs. Instead, most of us entrench our positions and harden our hearts. We instead need to practice the willingness of the first Church to be persuaded by study and the Spirit to change our minds when it seems “good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15, NIV).
d. The issue of perspective
There is perhaps no better way to look at the tension between the understanding of reality of Western Culture and the understanding of reality of the traditional teachings of the Church than by an illustration. Below is a classic image of an optical illusion:
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Is this an image of a young woman with her head turned away or an old woman looking straight ahead? Either can be seen depending on how one looks at the image. It’s similar with culture’s view of humanity and reality and the Church’s: both make sense of human experience in different ways, depending on how one looks at it.
But, is there a correct way to view the image? Is it supposed to be a young woman or an old woman, or both, or does it matter? The only way to know for sure is to ask the artist who drew the picture what their intent was. And so it is with reality and humanity: the only way to know the truth is to ask the Creator what the Creator’s intent was.
From culture’s perspective, since the individual has become like a god, there is no need for the input of a Creator God, so the picture of humanity and reality is interpreted however each individual wants. From the Church’s traditional perspective, it is very important to allow the Creator the space to speak of the intent and purpose of the creation.
V. The basic teaching of the Church on human identity
Human identity as taken from scripture and Christian tradition mainly comes from the creation account in Genesis. This is a very ancient text written in a very different culture that we only understand in very small part. It follows a theme present throughout much of Judaism and Christianity in that Judeo-Christian teaching – compared to the teachings of its religious contemporaries – is quite radically progressive (also reference both Jesus’ and Paul’s inclusion of women in their ministries as progressive examples).
Most ancient Near Eastern religions taught that gods lived within temples and that they were physically present in ritualistic idols within those temples. Genesis describes a God who names the earth itself as God’s temple and creates humanity as male and female together to act as God’s idol, or image, in creation. Humanity is given stewardship of creation, exercising God’s authority in tending to and caring for the earth.
When humanity falls into sin, it not only alters and corrupts humanity’s nature, but it also brings death and decay to all of creation (see Romans 8). Humanity and creation are changed by the effects of sin and suffer various consequences that are not what God had intended. But through God’s long process of redemption, we see God draw closer to humanity step by step as God works to undo the effects of sin and restore both humanity and creation: God moves the metaphorical temple from all the earth; to a tabernacle with God’s chosen people of Israel when the Law and Mosaic Covenant are made; to a
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physical temple in Jerusalem; then finally, after the work of reconciliation completed by Jesus, within the very bodies of his disciples, living in communion with God’s people through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6).
The vision of scripture for the ultimate end of humanity is eternally dwelling with God in a restored creation in a New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22). God will live eternally with God’s people, transforming us into the image of God’s Son in which the Church and God live in complete communion with one another – just as God established that human male and female become one flesh when united in marriage in Genesis, so God and the people of God will become one when fully united at the end of time.
This is the heart of Christianity’s definition of human identity. It’s a shared identity between all people who follow God. It points to humanity’s eternal future with God where all that we currently know will have passed away (1 Corinthians 7); there will be no more marriage (and presumably therefore no sex – Matthew 22); and no distinctions by ethnicity or gender (Galatians 3). All these things, therefore, while not unimportant, are not part of human identity and are temporary to the life we live now.
“For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28, NLT).
VI. The basic orthodox teaching of the Church on morality and human sexuality
With that understood as human identity, the Christian perspective on how to live life now before Jesus’ return can be looked at. Bluntly put, the moral expectations for a disciple of Jesus are extreme. The Christian should not be sexually immoral, a thief, a drunk, greedy, a slanderer or a swindler (1 Corinthians 6). The Christian should not be impure, practice idolatry or witchcraft, hate, sow discord, be jealous, have fits of rage, have selfish ambition, sow dissension and create factions, be envious or engage in orgies (Galatians 5).
Moreover, Jesus and Paul were single and celibate, and Paul’s stated preference is for Christians to be the same (1 Corinthians 7). The fruit of the Spirit a Christian should exhibit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV). Paul’s requirements for leadership within the Church include even more restrictions (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1).
This all screams that sacrifice, self-denial, and service are at the core of a Christian’s life. That is important to remember when then trying to understand what traditional, orthodox Christians believe scripture teaches about human sexuality.
First, it should be noted that several portions of scripture (famously in Leviticus 18 and 20 and Romans 1:18-32) have been used as proof texts on sexuality in the past to “clearly” rule out the practice of homosexuality, but they are more complicated than they appear on a surface reading. Regardless, the overall teaching on the practice of sexuality in scripture for a Christian is clearly a heavy preference for
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celibacy, and it is upon complete reflection hard to say that the only appropriate place for sex to occur is anywhere other than in a marriage between a man and woman.
As far as how to understand same-sex attraction and practice: first, Romans 1:18-32 may be incredibly complicated to understand. There is a good argument to be made that it is an example of Paul using an ancient writing technique that represents the thoughts of an opponent (and thus verses 18-32 would not be examples of Paul’s own beliefs). There is also some argument to be made (in further detail below) that the Greek word often translated as “homosexual” in English in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 in two of Paul’s lists of sins is not a great translation. But, as radical as Paul could be when it came to distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and regarding Christian identity in Galatians 3, Paul’s discussion of sexuality, overall, affirms a fairly standard understanding of marriage within a far stricter moral framework than existed in Roman society as a whole.
As a former Pharisee, Paul would have been very aware of the prohibitions against homosexuality in Leviticus 18 and 20, and he (and us) would have needed a way to understand why they were included in the Old Testament Law. As best as we can so far tell, the inclusions in Leviticus are most likely moral in nature and not part of the ritualistic laws that the Church deemed void (such as restrictions on what to eat) when it included Gentiles as part of Jesus’ New Covenant. As to why this would have been considered immoral in Leviticus in the first place, especially given that homosexuality was practiced by other nearby ancient cultures, the best explanation is tied to an understanding of the Creation account in Genesis: God’s intent is shown to be that humanity as male and female together image God, and sexual activity is intended to take place within the context of God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28, NIV).
VII. The basic case for changing the Church’s stance on the practice of human sexuality
On the other hand, it is important to know that on a whole lot of issues Christianity has never been an easy, black-and-white, yes-and-no kind of religion. If it was, and if Jesus, Paul and the Apostles followed the principle many Christians today claim of “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,” then Christians to this day would be required to be circumcised and to follow all the Old Testament regulations on worship, diet, and being Jewish (including having church on Saturday). Why? Because their Bible said it, and yet, they then argued that to adhere to all of those laws was to miss the forest for the trees – it was to focus on details that had a purpose at one point but miss the big picture of what the Bible said and what God was doing.
Jesus regularly criticized the Pharisees for misunderstanding scripture and for being overly-devoted to the Law and missing out on the God behind the Law. As one example, when Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees about his disciples working on the Sabbath (breaking the Law), he points directly at how they have misunderstood the bigger picture of scripture: “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread – which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent” (Matt. 12:3-7, NIV).
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In Acts 15, at the first major council of the Church, they are arguing over whether, like scripture says, for non-Jewish believers to be a follower of Jesus (which at that time was understood as still being part of Judaism) meant that they had to go through the entire process of becoming Jewish. It’s worth sharing this at length:
“Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question…The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: ‘Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are’” (Acts 15:1-2, 6-11, NIV).
After more discussion, the council decided to send a letter to the Gentile believers in Antioch saying part of the following:
“We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said…Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things” (Acts 15:24, 27-29, NIV).
So Peter and the apostles decided, because it “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” that the stuff written in their Bibles commanding those who would follow God to practice all of Moses’ laws no longer applied. That is a huge, huge deal – they saw the Holy Spirit move in a particular way, and they decided that meant a large chunk of their Bible no longer applied to Gentile followers of Jesus. So even though the Bible said it, the Holy Spirit was doing a new thing, and that’s what they believed.
The analogy to how we view sexual practice today as Christians is hopefully clear: if we see the Holy Spirit at work within people and, as Peter said in Acts 15, “purify[ing] their hearts by faith,” then that should be enough for us to say that God has accepted them. That is exactly what those Christians who want to fully affirm homosexual practice are saying: the Holy Spirit is clearly using many practicing gay Christians in powerful ways, so that should be all the evidence we need that God has accepted them.
We also need to really take a hard look at the very few places in scripture in which we suspect homosexuality might be discussed. As mentioned before, in the New Testament, it’s not totally clear that the Greek words being used in the Bible that we are translating as “homosexual” are actually the correct translations. In fact, these words have been translated in many different ways in many different languages in Bibles for centuries. Homosexuality is said to appear in three places in the New Testament, all in Paul’s writing: Romans 1:18-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. The main word often translated today as “homosexual” is the Greek word “arsenokoites,” which is a Greek word that has not been found anywhere else in ancient Greek literature, so there is no other work to compare it with. A
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literal translation of this word is “male bed.” Martin Luther translated this in German in 1534 to be “boy molester.” So while there is good evidence to suggest the best translation is something like “homosexual,” it is not a completely open and shut case.
Lastly, it is critical to try our best to understand the particular contexts in which Paul is writing his letters. These were letters written to specific churches and people dealing with specific issues. We have to look at everything Paul wrote to try to figure out the bigger picture of what he is trying to communicate.
The best example to compare to is what Paul writes about women. The infamous passage from 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 reads: “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”
Plenty of Christians have taken that at face value, but many, including the UMC, do not – why not? Do we just hate the Bible and ignore it? No, you have to look at everything Paul wrote and did. Paul mentions several times in his letters his missionary friends Priscilla and Aquila (and always lists Priscilla’s name first). Paul sends his letter to the Romans through Phoebe, and writes of her “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me” (Rom. 16:1-2). It was custom at the time that whomever delivered a letter would be the person to read it to the recipients, so we know that the first preaching in a church of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans was done by a woman at Paul’s request. And Paul lists Junia in Romans 16:7 (mistranslated by the NIV as “Junias”) as an apostle.
Clearly, then, in the big picture, Paul has zero problem with women leaders in the Church or with them preaching and doing the same work as men. So there must be something quite specific going on with the church in Corinth for Paul to say what he did in 1 Cor. 14. What that was, we don’t know for sure, but this is a perfect example of needing to take a bigger look at all of scripture to understand what is going on, and sometimes what we read was only intended for the direct audience to which it was written.
VIII. The implications for the life of the Church
With all of that as the background, the call to change how the Church treats sexual practice is found in looking at what kinds of people the Holy Spirit is working through while also keeping the larger picture of scripture in mind. If the Holy Spirit is working through people who are in committed same sex marriages, then perhaps we need to broaden how we are understanding scripture and look at the forest of God’s love and grace for all people and not get lost in the trees of specific verses that can be imperfectly understood. This view of sexuality implicitly states that ultimately, since the New Testament teaches us that there will be no marriage nor sex in God’s Kingdom, as long as we are ethical with our sexuality here and now, the gender of the person we commit to doesn’t matter.
Conversely, the traditional, orthodox Christian way of understanding those of us who have same-sex attraction is that this experience of sexuality is one of many consequences of the Fall in which humanity and creation are no longer what we were at first created to be. Every person is subject to a potential
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variety of effects stemming from the Fall that are not what God meant for any of us – so much of life is full of matters that are unfair and often appear random. While it is true that there will be no marriage nor sex in the Kingdom, God created the world to work, for now, in a particular way, and sadly all of us have different parts of us that don’t work the way God meant for them to because of the corruption of sin.
Instead of the weight of all this being placed on people who have same-sex attraction, though, this ought to be understood within Christianity’s clearly strict emphasis on overall self-denial and sacrifice for all Christians, which the Church has done a very poor job teaching. The Christian sexual ethic, regardless of sexual orientation, has a strong preference for singleness and celibacy that has been ignored in our sex-obsessed culture. Instead, the Church – like our culture – has acted as if a romantic relationship is the right of every person. Particularly for a Christian, it is not. We all must completely submit to God’s will, take up our crosses – whatever they may be – and follow Jesus, our single and celibate savior.
The danger for a Christian community that holds an orthodox Christian ethic regarding identity and sexuality is in treating some people as “normal” and other people as not. This is completely false, harmful, and must be repented of. As stated above, all people have different struggles in life that are a consequence of the Fall. As Paul writes in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (ESV) or, in other words, all have different parts of themselves that are a struggle in different ways.
The way of the Church is radical inclusion of anyone who is curious about Jesus, with radical grace, mercy and compassion equally available for all. Of course the Church is going to have a lot of people with different backgrounds and different beliefs, and the work of the Church is to mold disciples of Jesus who in good faith follow Christ as best they can. We all live and exist in the Western world in America, so we will every day be in regular contact with people who view reality and God in different ways; our children are likewise quite susceptible to picking up the way of thinking of the world subconsciously without being aware of it. Most of us, in fact, just live life and believe what we believe without asking too many questions about it, operating from our heart or our “guts” by what feels right to us.
Ultimately, our job as the Church is to love as Jesus loves us and to train people in discipleship. We actively must affirm all people in dignity as beautiful creations of God, regardless of (and in spite of) what particular characteristics each of us has, showing as best we can how we believe God looks at us and identifies us, determining what is of eternal importance from what is temporary and – while still important for a season – not of eternal consequence. Lastly, as shown in scripture, we must also hold our leaders within the Church to a higher ethical standard than we would others.
IX. Coexisting in love with Christians who disagree
As explained in section VI above, radical humility is crucial for all Christians as we need to recognize that we might be wrong in our understanding of how God views humanity. We must be open to dialogue and correction as called for. The fact is that there are faithful Christians who love Jesus but nonetheless disagree about how to understand human identity and sexuality. We must all do a better job loving and working with Christians regardless of their positions on these issues.
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This can, however, be a breaking point for Christians when it comes to belonging to the same local church body and to the same denomination. Those Christians who are fully endorsing of the practice of all sexualities for fellow Christians often feel the need to open leadership positions within the Church to all because they view this as a matter of justice and inclusion. To not do so is, for them, a sin. When looked at along the perspective taken traditionally in the Church, though (and not counting the abuses which have occurred from a toxic misunderstanding of that perspective that has been used as an excuse to harm others), neither justice nor inclusion are necessarily at play as they require a person to use the perspective of Western Culture to see.
For those Christians holding an orthodox view, this is likewise a breaking point if they also take seriously the reality of the spiritual world and the effects any unacknowledged sin can have. Paul quite clearly establishes the reality of a spiritual existence in which Christians are truly engaged in (an often subconscious) battle with dark forces opposed to God (Ephesians 6). For these Christians, then, the matter of sin is not just something private between an individual and God but something that can affect an entire church body spiritually (the idea of sin being private and personal being once more another example of a Western mindset). To then affirm openly practicing homosexuality among Christians and Christian leaders is therefore, for them, a sin.
The sad truth is that the Western Church no longer gives much effort to actively disciple Christians (train Christians to be more like Christ and hold each other accountable) and, when it has, it has done so judgmentally and poorly – that makes holding Christians dealing with same-sex attraction accountable highly hypocritical. The answer, though, is not to continue tolerating all sorts of sin, but to holistically return to our roots in holding one another accountable in love in all areas of life.
Therefore, as far as both kinds of Christians are concerned, we must continue to love and serve one another, but we have to understand the above reasons why this issue strikes at the core of what it means to be a Christian differently for both kinds. The truth is that all churches should welcome all people to come and follow Jesus and to do so lovingly and without playing favorites. But our fundamental disagreement on whether acting in particular ways on our sexual desires is sinful or not means that we are going to have very different ways of discipling people to Jesus in love, and ultimately those different ways of discipling are incredibly difficult if not impossible for some to reconcile within the same church body.
X. What do we do?
There are three options available to us as a church body moving forward:
1. Decide as a congregation that we believe the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing regarding human sexuality and is permitting Christians to participate in same-sex relationships. Remain with the UMC.
2. Decide as a congregation that Christian tradition on acceptable sexual relationships remains the same as it’s always been and lovingly be open about that belief, but nonetheless be open and welcoming to all people regardless of their personal beliefs on the matter. Remain with the
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UMC – the current Florida bishop has said he will allow traditional local congregations to remain traditional (though what happens when he is no longer bishop is unknown).
3. Decide as a congregation that Christian tradition on acceptable sexual relationships remains the same as it’s always been and lovingly be open about that belief, but nonetheless be open and welcoming to all people regardless of their personal beliefs on the matter. Begin working to leave the UMC, then decide to either join the GMC; another Wesleyan denomination such as the Wesleyan Church, Church of the Nazarenes, or Free Methodist Church; join a non-Wesleyan denomination; or become an independent, non-denominational church.
Regardless, much prayer and loving discernment is required, and likely seeking the advice of others who land on both sides of this issue. In all things, we must remember we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and when we disagree, we must disagree with love and charity and not hatred, bitterness, or divisiveness. May God bless us, guide us, and move us to unity toward what we believe is God’s will on this matter for our local church.