United Methodist delegates overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment seen by advocates as a way to defuse debates over the role of LGBTQ people in the church by giving regulatory autonomy to each region of the international church.
Delegates voted 586-164 Thursday for the “regionalization” proposal on the third day of their 11-day General Conference, the legislative body of the United Methodist Church, meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The plan would create several regional conferences – one for the United States and others covering regions from the Philippines to Europe to Africa.
Existing regions outside the United States – known as central conferences – already have the flexibility to adapt Church rules to their local context, but US jurisdictions do not. This constitutional change would give the American Church this flexibility, while more precisely defining autonomy for all regions.
The vote total easily exceeded the two-thirds majority required for an amendment to the United Methodist Church’s constitution. However, becoming official will require approval from two-thirds of its annual conferences or local governing bodies.
If ratified, one effect of the change is that it could allow the American Church – where support for LGBTQ ordination and same-sex marriage is increasingly strong – to authorize such rites, even if international churches with more conservative positions on sexuality would not.
“The big change that this petition brings is really for our brothers and sisters here in the United States, where you would finally have the right to decide things that only concern you between yourselves, the same right that we enjoy for a long time,” said Christine Schneider-Oesch of Switzerland, a member of the committee proposing the changes.
The measure comes during the first General Conference since a quarter of American congregations left the denomination over the past four years — most of them conservative churches reacting to the denomination’s failure to enforce rules banning same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.
Supporters have hailed the proposal as a way to decolonize a church that some see as too focused on U.S. issues, although one opponent, a Zimbabwean pastor, said the plan’s details are reminiscent of the divide-and-conquer strategies of the colonial era.
LGBTQ issues were not the focus of Thursday’s debate, but they are expected to come up in the coming days during General Conference.
“We have members who are part of the LGBTQ community and whose loved ones are part of the community,” said the Rev. Paul Perez, senior minister of Detroit Central UMC, in an interview with CBS affiliate WWMT. “So in many ways our church has chosen to be what it’s going to be, and it’s had a long-standing commitment to inclusion. But many of my members are closely watching what happens at General Conference because they want the values to be respected. of our congregation must be reflected in the denomination.
Some proposals would lift current bans on ordaining LGBTQ people and same-sex marriage.
“I believe that the values on which global regionalization is based will give renewed strength, life and vitality to the Church,” said the Rev. Jonathan Ulanday of the Philippines. He said this gives self-reliance while maintaining connection with the global denomination, which he said has been helpful in areas ranging from disaster relief to helping Filipinos working overseas .
But the Rev. Forbes Matonga of Zimbabwe said the plan actually perpetuates colonial structures by creating multiple regional conferences in Africa along national lines, compared to just one in the United States. He pointed out that many African national borders had been created arbitrarily by European colonial cartographers.
“It’s divide and conquer,” Matonga said. “Create a region for Africans. Create a platform for Africans so that we speak as a continent and not as small colonies.”
The Rev. Ande Emmanuel of Nigeria said he has participated in several general conferences and that many of the discussions are “U.S.-centric,” and not relevant to African delegates. Regionalization would allow each sector of the Church to deal with these issues, he said. “We are not here to control Americans,” he said. “Our brothers in America are not here to control us either. We are trying to build a mutual platform. We are trying to build an understanding that would move our church forward.”
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