The bishops of the United Methodist Church have endorsed a plan that would allow individual pastors and regional bodies to make their own decisions on whether to perform same-sex weddings and ordain LGBT people as clergy.
The Council of Bishops recommended the One Church Plan, on Friday (May 4), after nearly a week of meetings in Chicago, according to a council press release.
“The Council’s prayerful deliberation reflected the diversity of the global denomination on the matter of homosexuality and many other matters,” Bishop Ken Carter, president of the Council of Bishops, said in the release.
“The Council affirms the strength of this diversity and our commitment to maintain the unity of the church.”
Differing views on the inclusion of LGBT members have roiled the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States, drawing to a stalemate at a contentious meeting of global delegates at the 2016 General Conference in Portland, Ore.
Bishops there announced the creation of a 32-member commission that would make recommendations to settle questions of ordination and marriage at a special session of the General Conference to be in held in February in St. Louis.
Carter was one of the moderators of that commission.
The denomination’s rulebook, the Book of Discipline, states that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible…
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