NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) — The United Methodist Church, a mainstay of the American religious landscape, has cut ties with 58 churches in its Louisiana conference amid a nationwide schism within the Protestant denomination.
The exits, approved during a virtual conference session on Saturday, were the latest in a series of decisions many churches in Louisiana have made in recent weeks to leave the national congregation. Internal tensions over sexuality and theology have rocked the church.
The delegates of the congregation voted 487-35 for the departure. The exits required the support of two-thirds of the delegates.
Six churches leaving the conference are from the New Orleans area. Another seven churches are from the Baton Rouge area. St. Timothy, which is one of the largest Methodist congregations in Louisiana with 6,000 members, voted to resign on Nov. 1, The Advocate reported.
The United Methodist Church is the latest of several Protestant denominations in the US to begin to break up amid debates about sexuality and theology. The flashpoints are the denomination’s ban on same-sex marriage and openly ordaining LGBTQ clergy — though many see these as symptoms of deeper differences in views on justice, theology, and scriptural authority.
The denomination has repeatedly enforced these prohibitions at legislative General Conferences, but some American churches and clergy have defied them. This spring, the conservative wing of the church launched a new Global Methodist Church, where they are determined to enforce and enforce such bans.
A proposal to amicably divide the denomination and its assets, unveiled in early 2020, has lost its once wide support to the legislative General Conference, whose vote was needed to ratify it, after years of pandemic-related delays. Now the breakup and the negotiations are taking place piecemeal – one regional conference at a time.
At annual regional meetings in the US earlier this year, United Methodists approved requests from about 300 congregations to leave the denomination, according to United Methodist News Service. According to the conservative advocacy group Wesleyan Covenant Association, another 1,000 votes are expected to be cast in the second half of the year.
According to recent UMC statistics, the outgoing group is still a fraction of the estimated 30,000 municipalities in the United States, with nearly 13,000 more abroad.
The Louisiana exits will take effect after Dec. 31, church officials said. The Louisiana Conference will also see a new bishop in the new year, Delores Williamston. She is the conference’s first black female bishop.
