Earlier this week, the United Methodist Church’s (UMC) Judicial Council ruled that within local UMC churches, the pastor has sole discretion in deciding whether to preside at same-gender weddings. But wait, didn’t that already happen?
One year ago today, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church finally voted to remove all harmful and discriminatory language in its Book of Discipline pertaining to homosexuality, the ordination of “practicing homosexual” clergy, and the rights of UMC clergy to preside at same-gender weddings. The General Conference, which meets every four years, is the governing body of the worldwide UMC.
The overwhelming majority approval of these measures was due to the absence of a significant number of previous voting delegates whose churches had disaffiliated from the UMC in the years preceding the 2020–2024 General Conference. (The 2020 General Conference was delayed due to the COVID pandemic.)
Many of those disaffiliated churches chose to form their own denomination, the Global Methodist Church, while others became independent churches. This effective split of the UMC before the 2020-2024 General Conference centered mainly on the denomination’s long-held stance that “the practice of homosexuality…is incompatible with Christian teaching.”
This language was added to the UMC’s Social Principles at the 1972 General Conference and has been a hotly contested issue at every General Conference since. Defiance of such discriminatory language and additional restrictions increased over time as public attitudes in Western Europe and the U.S. shifted toward greater support of the LGBTQIA+ community.
With the absence of so many voting members who wished to uphold (and tighten) the denomination’s discriminatory stance toward members of the queer community, the road was paved for a much more liberative movement to come to fruition; a road which most (though not all) United Methodists who remained would agree aligns with the denomination’s longstanding Wesleyan values of social holiness.
Randall Miller, who chaired the 2020-2024 Social Principles Task Force, had this to say about the historic moment last year: “It’s been 40 years of work for me and others to remove the incompatibility clause from our Social Principles and really live into our belief that all people are sacred… Just deeply grateful and it’s wonderful to have come to this moment.”
Nevertheless, when the curtain closed on the 2020-2024 General Conference, at least one operational snag was left in question regarding same-gender weddings in the UMC. The question was whether the trustees of local churches had the authority to refuse to allow their pastors to preside over same-gender weddings on their church premises.
In response to a request from the Arkansas Annual Conference, the denomination’s Judicial Council ruled this week that “a pastor has discretion in whether to perform or not to perform any marriage ceremony…The local church board of trustees cannot prevent or interfere with the pastor’s use of the local church facilities for religious services or other proper meetings.”
This week’s Judicial Council ruling solidifies what so many United Methodists have been joyfully celebrating for one year now: A United Methodist Church that embraces and recognizes the sacred worth of all God’s children, regardless of their sexual identity or orientation. Praise be to God!
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Dr. Rebecca M. David Hensley holds a PhD in religious studies, with an emphasis in theological and social ethics. She is a member of the adjunct faculty for Iliff School of Theology and an ordained Deacon in the United Methodist Church.