Welcome aboard, Methodists!

It was a very liberal seminary and about 50% of the Methodist students there were GLBTQ. They all jumped ship to other denominations that allowed them to be who they were. My guess is they've been bleeding ministers and congregants over this stance for going on two decades and they finally woke up to that fact.

This is really a result of Methodists basically splitting after the rich billionaire brought in a bunch of African church folks to vote down LBGTQ and other things at the last big meeting that represented the denomination around the world.

conservative here in the Bible Belt. The conservatives were not classified as mainstream.

I saw, from early on, that there were definitely divisions and very diverse views between the two groups.

The Methodists were held at arms length within the SBC, but I'm sure now the Methodists are hell bound sinnahs.

I've been waiting for this for the last 30+ years. I'm impressed by the huge margin, will worth the wait. Now waiting for this to trickle down to local churches.

That novel concept of loving everyone has taken a long time to reach the UMC leadership. I remember this coming up as a topic of endless arguments at the state level. Then we would vote to close another 2-5 churches without any discussion. They were closing because the message of hate was no longer relevant in many communities. This is why I'm now Presbyterian.

it's pretty hard to justify keeping people out.

That was what the entire disaffiliation process was supposed to be about, but it wasn't. The far right staged a takeover of churches in red areas to gain the assets of the church, with anti-LGBTQ thrown in because it was required in order to disaffiliate. Then they thought they should still be allowed to vote in this process as well. Apparently, it didn't go well for them. Good.

Five of our eight UMChurches disaffiliated.

I have a good bit of contact with the asshole who led the disaffiliation movement in the county (He's my age, I'm 80). Early this year I figured out a way to have as little contact as possible with him and my blood pressure is down by several points.

The break with this fool came back in February. He was wearing a T-shirt with a caption something like "I want to live the way it was when I was growing up." He knew that would irritate me, so, in the midst of a group of people, he asked me what I thought of his shirt, all the while wearing a shit-eating grin.

I told him that I grew in in rural South Mississippi where a young black man who worked for my grandfather was tied to a tree, doused in kerosene, and burned to death by Klan because he would not stop trying to register to vote. I told him that Emmett Till was tortured and murdered a few miles away from my father's home. And I told him, "NO, I don't want to return to those days, though I feel certain you would be right at home back in Mississippi in the 1950's." Shut him up and left him hanging there.

Then we moved to Jacksonville Beach, Florida in 1956. We drove through much of the south on the way. We were poor but I n California I had never seen such poverty as I did in the Deep South. And never such blatant bigotry. One incident in particular made me fully aware of how bad it was.. I had to take the bus to the segregated school. The bus stopped at a stop light. There was a very old and frail looking black man waiting for the light. Most of the kids pushed their way to the windows on the side of the bus so they could spit at the old man a laugh at the n*****r. Segregation was being attacked and the nice bespectacled gray haired teacher assured us that "They will NEVER be allowed in our school!" That was soon after we mumbled our mandatory Christian prayer at the beginning of the class.

Even at 12 years old I was shocked and appalled. About 9 years later I participated in my first Civil Rights demo back in L.A.

I was friended on FB. I kept seeing his crazy religious and political posts. I could had unfriended him. In stead I pointed out his flawed statements and how he has no voice when he hadn't even voted since 2016.

He unfriended me. He hasn't voted in the primary or early general.

So glad my friends in the UMC have joined us. Yes some congregations (mostly in the Midwest) left us. Their loss.

It’s important to stress the UNITED in United Methodist Church because the UMC is – finally we hope – at the end of a schism that has been growing for years.

Several years ago a Methodist Conference in one of the NE states ordained a gay minister as a Bishop. The UMC Book of Discipline, which governs the church, specifically states that homosexuality is not in concert with Biblical teachings, therefore, the UMC will not ordain, bless, etc., etc.

At the same time, local UMChurches and some local or regional UMC organizations had been ordaining and marrying gays.

All of this finally came to a head in a General Conference of UMChurches worldwide – I don’t recall the date but it was pre-COVID. The Conference was a bit contentious but it ended with a decision that the UMC would split into three groups, each of which would go its own way – a Traditional church that would adhere to the current Discipline; a Welcoming church that would welcome all; and a ???? church that could “disaffiliate,” pay what they owed in pledges to the UMC, settle ownership of the church property, and go their own way. Local congregations were to vote on which way they wanted to go.

COVID intervened, churches closed, no one voted, and the issue was left hanging.

Two (three ?) years ago the Church issued new rules: Stay with the UMC or “disaffiliate.” If a congregation chose to disaffiliate, they met with local and state officers then they (1) pay any pledges they made for missions, etc.; (2) figure out who owns the church’s property, if they don’t own it, they must buy it from the owner (usually the local Conference); (3) then they are on their own. Dec 31, 2023, was the last date for churches to disaffiliate.

In my little rural VA county we have eight United Methodist Churches, all of them small with weekly congregations of 15-30. My church has 78 people on the rolls but 25 on Sunday is a big crowd. FIVE of the eight churches in my county voted to disaffiliate, all of them over the homosexual issue. Shortly after Dec 31, new folks started showing up at my church and so far we have welcomed 10 new members who left disaffiliated churches. Meanwhile, during the first week of January 2024, after disaffiliation took effect, all five of the disaffiliating churches painted over the word UNITED on their church signs, letterhead, etc. -- now just "XXXXX Methodist Church".

As you may imagine, the South was a hotbed of churches disaffiliating from the UMC, although churches nationwide disaffiliated.

Throughout Virginia, 227 formerly United Methodist Churches voted to disaffiliate. According to The United Methodist Church Virginia Conference, that number represents nearly 20% of total churches and 10.58% of the total population of Virginia United Methodists before disaffiliation.

https://www.nvdaily.com/nvdaily/a-church-torn-apart-local-methodists-struggle-with-identity-crisis-after-split/article_8b069738-0243-54e7-9800-5615fcd7739e.html

I was born (1944) and reared (in the '50's and early '60's) in rural SW Mississippi, as a Southern Baptist -- Jim Crow and the KKK hung heavy on Mississippi. When I was a young teen, a few years after Brown v. Board of Education was decided, our preacher declared from the pulpit that the idea that little black boys should go to school with little white girls was a lie from Satan. The congregation cheered. I remember thinking that something was wrong. At age 18 I left Mississippi and the Southern Baptist church and never looked back. I'm a United Methodist now and I've had enough of stupid, arrogant, hate-filled bastards calling themselves "christians".