By Good News. The Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto, senior minister of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, has been elected as a bishop by the Western Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church. She is the first openly married lesbian to be elected bishop within the denomination. After two other candidates withdrew concluding the…
On the last day of the General Conference, Methodists repeal four decades of Roe v Wade support. By Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today. In one of the last actions of its 10-day General Conference, United Methodist delegates voted 445 to 310 to repeal the denomination’s 40-year-old official resolution supporting Roe v. Wade. Paired with the earlier…
Activists who seek to enroll the church in demonizing Israel serve neither peace nor justice for anybody” – UM Action Director John Lomperis By John Lomperis, Juicy Ecumenism. United Methodists have voted to encourage church boards and agencies to end their affiliation with an organization that promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Delegates from…
By Emily McFarlan Miller, Religion News Service. United Methodists who want their church to sanction Israel are regrouping after a committee at their denomination’s General Conference rejected four divestment or investment screening resolutions over the weekend. Those resolutions “pretty much went down in flames,” said John Lomperis, the director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s United Methodist Action…
As church delegates convene, American liberals clash with conservative Africans. By Mark Tooley, Wall Street Journal. As 864 delegates gather this week and next in Portland, Ore., for the United Methodist Church’s quadrennial General Conference, they face a fork in the road: Will United Methodism turn inward and remain a mostly liberal Protestant church? Or…
By Heather Hahn, United Methodist News. On the eve of the 2016 General Conference, more than 100 United Methodist clergy and clergy candidates have come out as LGBTQ religious leaders. “We are here because God has called us to serve in this denomination, and our souls are fed by the theology in which we’ve been…