A MAINLINE DENOMINATION HOLDS OUT AGAINST SAME-SEX UNIONS

By Mark D. Tooley The Weekly Standard

One of America's largest Protestant denominations voted in May to prohibit the solemnization of same-sex unions in its churches, to withhold ordination from practicing homosexuals, to ban church funding for "gay" causes, to require celibacy for its single clergy, and to endorse civil laws that define marriage as uniting a man and a woman. And it wasn't the Southern Baptists.

No, all this occurred at the governing General Conference of the United Methodist Church, a "mainline" denomination whose leadership has been decidedly liberal for decades. Over 8 million strong, the United Methodists are the third largest church in the United States after the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists, and the turn they have taken on the issue of homosexuality is almost directly opposite to that of the quintessential mainline group, the Episcopalians.

The Episcopal Church -- only one-fourth the size of the United Methodists -- has been much in the spotlight since the election of its first openly homosexual bishop last year. Advocates of approving homosexuality hoped the Episcopal Church was a harbinger of America's religious future. But the Methodists aren't following its lead.

The United Methodists have always been Main Street, to the Episcopalians' Wall Street. They are more suburban and small town than the Episcopalians, more southern and midwestern, and on the whole more culturally conservative.

United Methodists are also highly international. Almost one-third of the U.S.-based denomination is now overseas, mostly in Africa. This represents not only growth abroad but also diminishing numbers at home.

Methodism was America's largest church as recently as the late 19th century, but after 40 years of continuous decline, the United Methodists have gone from 11 million to 8.3 million in the United States. Meanwhile, their former mission churches in places like the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique are surging. Full of enthusiastic recent converts, these congregations are ones where liberal theology holds little sway. Africans and to a lesser extent Filipinos have been crucial to setting United Methodism's more culturally conservative direction.

In the floor debates over homosexuality at the church's 2004 General Conference in Pittsburgh, African delegates seized the lead in arguing against any weakening of the church's stance that homosexual behavior is "incompatible with Christian teaching."

"We have received teaching on marriage from our missionaries," explained one delegate from the Congo, noting the rejection of polygamy. "We Africans, we accepted this teaching, and we became Christians."

About two-thirds of the nearly 1,000 delegates voted to reaffirm and in some cases strengthen the church's disapproval of homosexual practice. Compromise language that would have acknowledged internal church differences over homosexuality was rejected, though by a smaller margin.

Sixty percent voted that homosexual practice was incompatible with Christian teaching, 72 percent voted to uphold the ban on practicing homosexual clergy, 80 percent reaffirmed the ban on same-sex unions, and 85 percent reaffirmed that clergy must be celibate if single and monogamous if married.

Seventy-seven percent voted to affirm "laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman," making the United Methodists the first mainline church to adopt a political stance on same-sex unions.

The ban on funding of homosexual advocacy by the national church was expanded to include regional bodies. And adultery, premarital sex, homosexual practice, and same-sex ceremonies were all made chargeable offenses that could precipitate church trials.

Supporters of endorsing homosexual behavior responded with anger. "Few expected that there would be any moderation in the denomination's position regarding sexual orientation," complained the Rev. Greg Dell, a Chicago pastor put on leave of absence several years ago for conducting a same-sex ceremony.

"But not many were ready for the further tightening of the belt of bigotry that is occurring in Pittsburgh."

Many liberal United Methodists believe only fear is keeping the church from following secular society in embracing homosexuality. They are waiting for what they believe is inevitable.

But time is not on their side. Liberal religion is demographically dying in the United States, as it is around the world.