Good News, One More Joins Our Camp.

Another Christian sect is looking to change their views about LGBTQ and the know it will be difficult and they will lose members.

LGBTQ-friendly votes signal progressive shift for Methodists
AP News
By Peter Smith
November 12, 2022


The United Methodist Church moved toward becoming more progressive and LGBTQ-affirming during U.S. regional meetings this month that included the election of its second openly gay bishop. Conservatives say the developments will only accelerate their exit from one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations.

Each of the UMC’s five U.S. jurisdictions — meeting separately in early November — approved similarly worded measures aspiring to a future of church where “LGBTQIA+ people will be protected, affirmed, and empowered.”

They also passed non-binding measures asking anyone to withdraw from leadership roles if they’re planning to leave the denomination soon — a category that almost entirely includes conservatives moving toward the exits.

The denomination still officially bans same-sex marriage and the ordination of any “self-avowed, practicing homosexual,” and only a legislative gathering called the General Conference can change that.

But this month’s votes show growing momentum — at least in the American half of the global church — to defy these policies and seek to reverse them at the next legislative gathering in 2024.

This is a big step for a major religion!

Even though they don’t sound like they are becoming an affirming religion they are taking bold steps in that direction.

But Jan Lawrence, executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, which works toward inclusion of Methodists of all sexual orientations and gender identities, applauded the regional jurisdictions. She cited their LGBTQ-affirming votes and their expansion of the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of bishops.

Jurisdictions elected the church’s first Native American and Filipino American bishops, with other landmark votes within specific regions, according to United Methodist News Service.

[…]

Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, elected in the Western Jurisdiction meeting, agreed. He is the first openly gay African-American man to be elected bishop. The vote comes six years after the Western Jurisdiction elected the denomination’s first openly lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto of the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area.

The LGBTQ-affirming resolutions point “to the alignment of the denomination more with the mainstream of our country,” Bridgeforth said. “It can also help us begin to center our conversations where we have unity of purpose, rather than centering on divisions.”

It is going to hard but they are trying and that is what counts.

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But on the negative side of the ledger…

The Christian Nationalist Forces That Terrorized Me as a Child Have Grown Only More Powerful
Time via Yahoo News
By Silas House
November 7, 2022


I was raised in a church of terrorists. The preacher pounded on the lectern while he boomed that all queers deserved to die, that mixed marriages were going to lead to the downfall of “our way of life.” This was the 1980s, when women’s rights were being discussed much more broadly but according to him, God dictated that women were inferior beings to men. He railed against the separation of church and state, assuring us that the Founding Fathers had intended this to be a Christian nation. We were right and holy; the rest of the world was evil and against us. Worst of all, the congregation applauded and hollered “Amen!” in response.

Today, members of Congress and rising Republican stars are the ones who terrorize LGBTQ children and anyone who does not follow their doctrines. These are not just fringe politicians and candidates; Christian Nationalism, the belief that the American government should be defined solely by Christianity, is now firmly entrenched within much of the GOP. This label does not apply to everyone who goes to a Christian or even a fundamentalist church. However, a survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, found that 45% of Americans believe strongly that the United States should be a Christian nation. Recent decisions from a Supreme Court stacked by conservative nominees have stripped women of autonomy even while they’ve reinstated the right to pray at public school functions. The way of thinking that terrified me as a child is now being embraced by the Republican Party.

[…]

Over the last few months, several preachers across the country have called for the executions of LGBTQ people. This summer, thirty-one members of the Patriot Front were arrested in Iowa before they could invade a Pride gathering shortly after a preacher there said from the pulpit: “God told the nation that he ruled…Put all queers to death.” Similar sermons have recently made news for being preached in Tennessee, Texas and Arizona. In North Carolina Lt. Governor and pastor Mark Robinson has said that being gay or transgender is “filth,” “garbage” and “perversion.” He is currently a popular choice to run on the Republican ticket for the governor of North Carolina.

In August conservatives gave a raucous welcome at CPAC for Viktor Orbán, the autocratic leader of Hungary who is opposed to mixed race relationships and calls for the global spread of Christian Nationalism. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told the CPAC crowd God “wrote the Constitution.” Senators such as Josh Hawley and Congress members like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert routinely call for an end to separation of church and state and claim Christianity is under attack in the very country where it should be the rule of law, a rhetoric that was repeated at the January 6th insurrection.

And these are the people the Republicans are courting for their votes!