The United Methodist Church is Finally Repenting of Its LGBTQ Discrimination

Photo by Ruan Richard Rodrigues on Unsplash

The United Methodist Church recently decided to reverse its ban on LGBTQ clergy.

As someone who served in the UMC for 17 years, nearly a decade of those in one of the 100 largest churches in the country—it's about damn time!

Traveling this country and engaging thousands of Christians every month, I encounter local faith communities both inside and outside the United Methodist Church, who claim to be LGBTQ-affirming or LGBTQ-inclusive but who want to do so with all sorts of caveats or conditions in place. They aspire to see themselves as open to diversity in areas of sexuality but with barriers that make those aspirations disingenuous at best.

If LGBTQ human beings aren't able to fully engage in the life of your community, you aren't affirming or inclusive or hospitable or loving to them, regardless of how you label yourself. Withholding aspects of community as a penalty or incentive, tells people they are not yet suitable for full participation, that they are currently unworthy—that they must be changed or fixed or "made right with God," in order to find themselves suitable.

This is spiritual segregation: to claim equality with LGBTQ human beings while not allowing them access to the totality of the community that others have as their default.

In my last UMC church, our "official stance" was that we loved and welcomed people who identified as LGBTQ, but that they could not preach, could not be married,
could not serve as leaders, could not be on ministry teams—unless of course they concealed their identities and orientations (even if such things were common
knowledge.) It was a cruel game we played and asked LGBTQ people to play
along with. As a minister who questioned this, I was told by my then pastor to tell such people in my care, that being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender was (in his words) "not God's best for them."

I couldn't do that. I don't believe that. I believe people being able to be the most authentic version of themselves is God’s best for them.

I don't believe exclusion of LGBTQ human beings is ever going to be
God's best for them. I believe treating them with dignity and respect, is.

Community that is selectively available or that causes people to deny essential and immutable parts of themselves in order to participate, isn't authentic community it's conditional community—it is relationship with an agenda, love with stipulations, God with fine print, upfront welcome with a bait-and-switch coming.

If LGBTQ people aren't allowed to marry the person they love, or to share their gifts on ministry teams, or to preach from the pulpit, or to volunteer out of places of passion, or if they are asked explicitly or implicitly to hide themselves in order to do any of the above—your community isn't inclusive yet.

The UMC finally cut to the heart of the matter in a way that all religious entities, local communities, and professed Christians should. As we see a rising religious minority attacking people for their gender identity and sexual orientation, the rest of us need to make it clear:

Either you believe LGBTQ are made by God and fully indwelled with beauty and dignity as-is—or you don't.
Either you value their contributions and talents and intellects and stories to allow them to share such things—or you don't.
Either you declare their worth by inviting them fully into your community—or you refuse to.
Either you believe gender identity and sexuality aren't moral flaws—or you believe they are.

Choose which of these is true for you, and get on to living that out.

Love isn't limited inclusion or half-hearted affirmation, it's full participation.