United Methodist Church is losing 'about half' its Kentucky member churches due to LGBTQ+ inclusion by some

The Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church continues to splinter over LGBTQ+ inclusion practices that the denomination's Book of Discipline does not support as Christian, but that some members and clergy have openly defied, Jack Brammer reports for the Kentucky Lantern. "Last December, the Kentucky conference announced that 57 of its churches had disaffiliated. Over the last four years, 80 have left the United Methodist Church in Kentucky." And now 289 of the remaining 663 more are leaving, following last night's 89 percent vote of approval by the conference on the first day of its annual meeting in Owensboro, lay delegate and Eastern Kentucky University journalism professor Ginny Whitehouse reports on Twitter and Facebook.

Lu-Ann Farrar, a member of Lexington’s First United Methodist Church, told Brammer, "It’s a very sad time for our denomination." In Arkansas, more than 15% of churches have left. Leonard Fairley, resident bishop of the Louisville Area, which includes the Kentucky Conference, said before he announced the vote approving disaffiliation, "This is not about winning or losing; none of us should feel victorious." He asked delegates "to seek out those with different views and pass the peace," Whitehouse reports, quoting him: "We are not going to leave this place enemies."

Disagreements over whether to allow or not allow gay ordination, gay marriage and LGBTQ+ inclusion have tested the denomination. "Even though the denomination has repeatedly voted to keep its traditional stance on marriage as only between a man and a woman, conservatives complain that progressives in the denomination have repeatedly ignored the rules," Brammer reports. "The debate reached a boiling point in 2016 after hundreds of United Methodist clergy across the nation came out as gay and when a Western regional conference elected the first openly lesbian bishop. . . . In 2016, at the denomination’s worldwide meeting, held every four years and known as the General Conference, a special commission was formed to review the church’s policies on sexuality. . . . The General Conference signed off on a plan at the 2019 session to allow churches to disaffiliate based on views on sexuality. Disaffiliation votes have been occurring over the last few years. They are to end this year."