This report may only be encouraging to United Methodists who have been struggling for years against their denomination’s stand on homosexuality. As delegates meet in five regional (jurisdictional) conferences around the country this week, their main task is to elect and assign new bishops. But, as was evident yesterday from the conference in Dallas approving the Bush library at SMU, electing bishops is not their only business. In sharp contrast to the action taken at the United Methodist General Conference last spring, delegates to the denomination’s Northeastern Jurisdiction Conference meeting in Harrisburg, PA voted Thursday to support clergy in California who choose to perform same-gender marriages.

Today, the delegates to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church meeting in Dallas affirmed their Mission Council’s earlier decision to lease land to the President George W. Bush Presidential Center. It also passed a petition said to protect the integrity of both SMU and the jurisdiction itself by indicating that the proposed institute “does not speak” for either.
This is the petition approved by the conference:

(Cross-posted with author’s permission from WallWritings Friday, May 9, 2008)

Guest Column by Andrew Weaver

Milo's Note: Andrew is one of the originators of the protest to locate the Bush library at Southern Methodist University and has been a primary source for several of my diaries on the subject. Andrew is a United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City. He is a graduate of The Perkins School of Theology, SMU. Thanks for your good work, Andrew!

I haven’t told my son yet that the denomination in which his father has been a minister for his entire career has decided once again not to remove the stain from its official policy that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” I doubt that he cares now. He has already felt the sting of rejection, which is now mutual.