A church moves to deal with an issue of it’s members….
The plan would need to be approved in May at the denomination’s worldwide conference.
The writers of the plan called the division “the best means to resolve our differences, allowing each part of the Church to remain true to its theological understanding, while recognizing the dignity, equality, integrity, and respect of every person.”
The United Methodist Church is the United States’s largest mainline Protestant denomination. The church has fought bitterly about LGBT inclusion for years, and leaders often feared the fight would lead to a schism.
“I’ve always been committed to unity. But over time, it could not be unity at someone’s expense,” said Bishop Kenneth Carter, president of the church’s Council of Bishops and one of the formulators of the new plan.
The Anglican Communion (headed by the Church of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury) is perhaps irreparably split over gender issues in general, not only same-sex ones but also female ordination.
The Anglican churches in Africa and other former British colonies are far more conservative socially than the Western ones (Episcopal in the U.S., Anglican elsewhere), who I think collectively have significantly fewer members than the Third World ones.
The latter (and some conservative Episcopalians in the U.S.) often threaten either to secede from the Anglican Communion, or else somehow to expel liberal Western churches.
Recent Archbishops of Canterbury have been torn apart emotionally and spiritually in their efforts to preserve unity in the Community.