United Methodists took historic steps toward inclusion but ‘big tent’ work has just begun

• An effort to remove anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions at the UMC General Conference emerged in response to decades of traditionalist legislative wins.
• While also removing anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions, progressive and centrists sought to promote sustained, worldwide communion.
• With steps toward LGBTQ+ inclusion and passage of a regional plan, will the United Methodist Church be able to show the world it's a "big tent."

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Days before their denomination dismantled decades of policies limiting the role of the LGBTQ+ community in the church, the Methodists sipped ale in an Irish pub and sang along to “Don’t Stop Believin'.”

Organized by Reconciling Ministries Network, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the United Methodist Church, the April 28 event featured performances by the Charlotte Gay Men’s and Women’s Chorus, a bingo game to help guests make new friends, and space for old friends to reflect on the progress the 40-year-old movement for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the United Methodist Church was about to achieve.

The celebration was a stark contrast to the last event of its kind, when Reconciling Ministries Network held a service of lament following a special session of the UMC General Conference in 2019. At the time, the denomination’s top legislative assembly had just tightened anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions.

“I had not thought what it might be like to go back to my church next Sunday and lead a congregation that was free to exist fully in our denomination,” Atlanta pastor the Rev. Angie Woodworth, who emceed the event at Charlotte’s Rí Rá Irish Pub, said to the crowd of hundreds, who responded with claps and whoops. 

Amid the excitement for the reversal of longstanding restrictions, many guests in that room — and then at the UMC General Conference in subsequent days — were just as focused on another sentiment: the work has just begun.

At their two-week policymaking summit in Charlotte, which ended Friday, United Methodists approved a series of historic policies that sets the nation’s largest mainline Protestant denomination on a new trajectory. That trajectory is one of newfound freedoms for LGBTQ+ clergy and laity, an overhauled system of regional governance, and a consolidated administrative infrastructure due to financial downturn exacerbated by a splintering in the church body.

The UMC General Conference’s major legislative actions positioned the church to be less explicitly opposed to LGBTQ+ rights while maintaining fellowship United Methodists in countries with staunchly different views and laws. But actually achieving those goals is unprecedented and will depend on even stronger levels of collaboration and participation, all while certain support systems are downsizing. 

“It may take some time,” Texas pastor the Rev. John Stephens, a general conference delegate, said at a Thursday news conference, accompanied by a fellow delegate and three bishops. “I think the church is going to have to earn some trust.”

The general conference removed prohibitions against LGBTQ+ ordination and weddings, and replaced language in the UMC Revised Social Principles that previously said homosexuality “is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

With these changes, Stephens said the UMC will have to earn the trust of both progressives who’ve been hurt by past policies and conservatives who saw the general conference as a rejection of traditional views.

In an interview with The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Thursday, leaders of traditionalist Methodist advocacy groups that have pushed for the mostly conservative exodus out of the denomination — the Revs. Tom Lambrecht, Rob Renfroe and Scott Field — have already expressed that latter sentiment.

“To me, the message is that there’s not going to be a long-term place for traditional voices in the UMC,” Lambrecht said.  

LGBTQ+ clergy ban lifted:United Methodists lift 40-year ban on LGBTQ+ clergy, marking historic shift for the church

The spirit of a 'big tent'

To prove critics such as Lambrecht wrong and amplify a “big tent” vision for the future of the United Methodist Church, progressives and centrists aligned like never before in a coalition to support regionalization, the new UMC Revised Social Principles, and removing anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions.

The coalition emerged in response to decades of traditionalist advocacy groups successfully mobilizing general conference delegates to incrementally pass and protect more conservative policy positions on sexuality and marriage.  Decisions by this general conference in a matter of days reversed it all.  

“This was not some great strategic win on their part,” said Renfroe, citing the dearth of traditionalist delegates due to the recent exodus of mostly conservative churches. “If it brings them some comfort or sense of success that finally they’ve beaten this great villain that they have created in their minds, who cares?”

Though the progressive and centrist coalition saw its support for LGBTQ+ inclusion-related petitions as simply neutralizing what traditionalists went out of their way to insert, others decried United Methodists’ decisions this week as a sharp leftward turn. It shows the church has its work cut out to articulate what it means to be a “big tent.”

As one example, Stephens highlighted provisions the general conference approved that explicitly protect from disciplinary action both those who choose to bless same-sex unions and those who choose not to according to their conscience.

“No one is being penalized,” Stephens said in a news conference. “That means some of that work is going to be pushed down to the local church to make that decision and those are hard conversations.”

Ohio Bishop the Rev. Tracy Smith Malone, president of the UMC Council of Bishops, echoed Stephens at a Thursday news conference, saying the church will need to equip bishops and other regional leaders to educate congregations about these policy changes.

“How do we have these conversations so that when these conversations are being had to respond to the question, ‘Should we host a wedding?’ that it doesn’t tear a congregation apart,” Smith Malone said.

The structure of the 'big tent'

As the UMC demonstrates its new “big tent” ethos in a confessional way, it will need to do the same structurally.

A constitutional amendment passed as part of regionalization requires ratification by two-thirds of all regional conferences, a process expected to take a couple years. Regionalization is the plan seeking to put every United Methodist regional conference on equal footing.

Despite overwhelming approval for eight total regionalization-related petitions, the plan’s implementation faced its first test when delegates debated and ultimately approved a new version of the UMC Revised Social Principles that contains a new definition of marriage.

To traditionalist delegates from African countries, the new definition of marriage was a step too far. A group of five of those delegates staged a protest Thursday afternoon and denounced the new social principles in a news release.

“We return to Africa with important decisions to make regarding the future,” said the news release.

But Nigerian delegate and pastor the Rev. Ande Emmanuel, a proponent of regionalization and the new revised social principles, was confident about regionalization’s fate in Africa.

“Regionalization will receive the vote for ratification," Emmanuel said in an interview. "I am sure about that."

Regionalization allows for a set of universal policies and revised social principles across the whole denomination, while each regional conference can also adopt different policies, Smith Malone said at a news conference.

That means some parts of the world could adopt more traditional stances on sexuality and marriage.

This general conference’s debate over and support for regionalization showed the new highest-ranking bishop “that we can have hard conversations, disagree in love, and be respectful,” Smith Malone said. “What this body has modeled for us is that the worldwide church can still be unified in our essentials of the faith while at the same time, to be able to do mission in a relevant way.”

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media @liamsadams.