About a fifth of the congregations in the second-largest Protestant church in the U.S. are splitting away over a schism about the inclusion of the LGBTQ agenda in Christianity.<\/p>\n
That comes to about 6,000 communities in the United Methodist Church, according to a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0in the Chicago Tribune.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think any of us want to see any of our churches leave,\u201d said UMC Council of Bishops president Bishop Thomas Bickerton.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re called to be the body of Christ, we\u2019re called to be unified,” he added. “There\u2019s never been a time when the church has not been without conflict, but there\u2019s been a way we\u2019ve worked through that.\u201d<\/p>\n The mass exodus was the latest development in the years-long debate over LGBTQ inclusion in Methodist theology. Traditional Protestant teaching forbids gay relationships and marriages, but some members and churches are opposing the biblical teaching.<\/p>\n Many of the 6,000 congregations leaving are planning to join the Global Methodist Church, a new organization that will neither ordain or marry LGBTQ people.<\/p>\n Rev. Keith Boyette, the chairman of the council guiding the creation of the new denomination,\u00a0said in March<\/a>\u00a0that many churches are frustrated with the actions of the UMC.<\/p>\n “Theologically conservative local churches and annual conferences want to be free of divisive and destructive debates and to have the freedom to move forward together,” said Boyette.<\/p>\n Read more at: www.theblaze.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About a fifth of the congregations in the second-largest Protestant church in the U.S. are splitting away over a schism about the inclusion of the LGBTQ agenda in Christianity. That comes to about 6,000 communities in the United Methodist Church, according to a\u00a0report\u00a0in the Chicago Tribune. \u201cI don\u2019t think any of us want to see … Continue reading 6,000 congregations are leaving the United Methodist church in a split over LGBTQ agenda<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-white-horse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/white_horse_blog-300x100-300x100-1.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-6ko","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24329,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24328\/revisions\/24329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}