'Sexuality' Among Top Issues for Methodists in Pittsburgh

by Jim Brown
April 27, 2004

(AgapePress) - United Methodists from across the world are converging on Pittsburgh for the start of the denomination's quadrennial General Conference. Nearly 1,000 delegates from the U.S. and foreign countries are arriving in the Steel City for the event which has been themed "Water Washed, Spirit Born."

Those delegates are expected to consider more than 1,400 legislative proposals during an 11-day period. Among measures that will be considered are resolutions that would either ease or tighten the United Methodist Church's stand against homosexual behavior. Associated Press says traditionalists hope to add language to Methodist law that would make it easier to oust homosexual clergy and reverse the acquittal of a lesbian pastor at a church trial last month.

Homosexual-rights advocates have countered with a proposal to drop language from the Methodist Book of Discipline that says homosexual behavior is "incompatible with Christian teaching" -- replacing it with a statement that "faithful Christians" disagree on the issue. Methodist liberals acknowledge that their proposal is unlikely to win a majority vote.

Jim Heidinger, who heads the Methodist renewal ministry "Good News," says the issue of homosexuality in the church -- as it has in the past -- may dominate debate the General Conference. "[W]e realize that ... takes away from time spent about the church, talking about how it can be more effective in fulfilling the Great Commission that's been given to the church," he says, "but at this point, I've have any number of calls from media folks, and they're all coming -- and the thing they're wanting to talk about is the sexuality issue."

The recent church trial of lesbian Methodist pastor Karen Dammann in Washington attracted national attention this spring. Dammann was acquitted of a charge of engaging in a lifestyle that is "incompatible" with scripture. Heidinger says even though the UMC's Pacific Northwest Conference embraced Dammann's immoral lifestyle, the denomination as a whole cannot.

"We're a voluntary, covenantal community," he explains, "and such a community simply can't continue to abide as any kind of a unified, connectional community when segments of that body choose personally to write different standards than the rest of the church have."

But Rev. Troy Plummer, who is executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, a pro-homosexual group, tells Associated Press that the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior should not be the last word.

"Methodist tradition has allowed people to use scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, and to come to their own faithful decision," Plummer says. "We have guidelines, but we're allowed to think -- and our concern is that if some of these conservative doctrines get through, that the church will be changed dramatically."

But evangelical Methodists plan to fight back. In an interview with AP, Heidinger say modern views of morality cannot overrule what the Bible says -- and therefore the existing Methodist standard that homosexual behavior is "incompatible with Christian teaching" should not be changed.

"You could set aside most every moral ethic you wanted to, to say 'we have new insights' -- and suddenly the scripture becomes irrelevant. That is a recipe for chaos," Heidinger says.