More Than 100 Methodist Ministers Defy Church Rules, Come Out As LGBT - BY JACK JENKINS

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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(The Left is never content with letting people choose their own way of doing things. Churches especially are targets for their ire. Anything that contradicts their agenda or worldview must be made to conform. 

The Left has been at work in the UMC for decades, slowly infiltrating its leadership, for the purpose of causing the denomination to abandon its historic teachings. Little by little they effect compromise. They continue to press and harass and impugn the church, calling it all sorts of vile names, until they start to get some popular support for their cause. 

Then they press harder. Couching their objectives in innocuous language like "tolerance," "equality," and "love," they insist that the church change for them, rather than them change for the church.

If it were indeed simply an issue of them practicing their faith according to their consciences, then they would form their own denomination and do what they want to do. But that is not the objective. They are not interested in their own group, they're interested in toppling institutions, especially institutions that oppose them.

And they won't stop with achieving the objective currently being pursued, because it's not about that. It's about the total annihilation of not only traditional morality and the historic church, but of any opposition whatsoever.

You can be sure, if the UMC leaders acquiesce, this protest group will not be satisfied. They will never stop.)

A slate of 111 United Methodist ministers have come out as LGBT, challenging their denomination’s ban on “practicing homosexuals” and hoping to influence a major church-wide vote on LGBT issues later this week.

On Monday morning, Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), an LGBT advocacy group within the United Methodist Church (UMC), published a letter signed by 111 ministers openly declaring their dual identity as both clergy and LGBT persons. The effort constitutes a direct affront to existing church policy — which currently prohibits the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” — and comes just one day before thousands of UMC leaders gather in Portland, Oregon, for General Conference, an event held every four years where delegates vote on issues of church governance and theology.

“As we gather in Portland to begin the 10 day discernment of God’s leading for The United Methodist Church known as General Conference, we, your Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and Intersex (LGBTQI) religious leaders — local pastors, deacons, elders, and candidates for ministry — want to remind you of our covenant with you,” the letter reads in part.

“…While we have sought to remain faithful to our call and covenant, you have not always remained faithful to us. (Wait. Did this covenant have any standards of belief or conduct, like for example, the UMC Book of Discipline, 2012? If this group is calling upon the covenant, and claiming they have been faithful to it, then they agreed with paragraph 2702:

1. A bishop, clergy member of an annual conference (¶ 370), local pastor, clergy on honorable or administrative location, or diaconal minister may be tried when charged (subject to the statute of limitations in ¶ 2702.4) with one or more of the following offenses:

(a) immorality including but not limited to, not being celibate in singleness or not faithful in a heterosexual mar-riage;

(b) practices declared by The United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings, including but not limited to:

being a self-avowed practicing homosexual;or conducting ceremonies which celebrate homosexual unions;or performing same-sex wedding ceremonies;

(c) crime;

(d) disobedience to the order and discipline of The United Methodist Church;

(e) dissemination of doctrines contrary to the established standards of doctrine of The United Methodist Church...

They have clearly broken that to which they agreed.)

While you have welcomed us as pastors, youth leaders, district superintendents, bishops, professors, missionaries and other forms of religious service, you have required that we not bring our full selves to ministry, (A tacit admission that they knew the standards.)

that we hide from view our sexual orientations and gender identities. (There is no such requirement. Page 111: 

"Although all persons are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage... The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching."

Page 219-220:

"To this end, they agree to exercise responsible self-control by personal habits conducive to bodily health, mental and emotional maturity, integrity in all personal relationships, fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness, social responsibility, and growth in grace and in the knowledge and love of God. 

While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.

You will note that the rule is to be celibate, not to hide their sexuality.) 

“As long as we did this, you gladly affirmed our gifts and graces and used us to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world in the varied places you sent us,” the letter adds. (That is, as long as they chose to submit to the things they agreed to, everything was fine.)

The letter sent a shockwave throughout the UMC, a global denomination that claims around 12 million members worldwide: soon after it was posted, the RMN website promptly crashed due to overwhelming traffic, forcing the group to post a version of the message on another blog. The letter caught people’s attention in part because signers could face repercussions for coming out, as bishops are able to defrock them for violating the UMC’s Book of Discipline. (There we have it again. These people are violating their covenant!)

But according Anthony Fatta, a 29-year-old associate pastor of Los Gatos United Methodist Church in Silicon Valley and a signer of the letter, going public is worth the risk. He told ThinkProgress that he and others felt the letter was the best way to express their frustration with current church rules, which not only condemn “practicing” LGBT clergy but also label all same-sex relationships as “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

“This letter is letting the general church know that there are a substantial number of …LGBT people who are very much entrenched in the UMC at all levels of leadership,” Fatta said. “According to our Book of Discipline, you’re not allowed to be a ‘self-avowed, practicing homosexual,’ [but] no one knows what ‘practicing’ means, and no one knows what ‘self-avowed’ means either … Really? "No one knows?" What part of "celibate" don't they understand?)

So the letter is not a window into 111 persons’ sex lives or lack thereof. It’s just a proclamation that we’re serving the church, and we’re just as much ministers of God as any other clergy person.”

The letter follows a flurry of LGBT activism leading up to this year’s General Conference. In January, a Methodist minister in Kansas came out as a lesbian to her congregation in a sermon, declaring that she is in a relationship with another woman. Another pastor disciplined for officiating his daughter’s same-sex wedding has been sleeping in a tent for months to protest the church’s anti-LGBT stance, and pastors in North Carolina publicly officiated a same-sex union in late April in direct defiance of church law. And last week, 15 Methodist clergy from the church’s New York Conference came out as LGBT.

But even LGBT advocates express doubts that the church will take steps towards equality this year, in large part because progressive-minded delegates are often been outvoted by more traditional American Methodists and conservative-minded delegates from other parts of the world.The efforts, often organized by RMN and similar groups, are geared toward swaying votes on LGBT issues at conference in Portland. They also represent the liberal bent of most American Methodists: a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute reported that that 53 percent of both evangelical and mainline Methodists backed same-sex marriage, and a 2015 poll found that solid 67 percent of mainline Methodists said the same.

“Our main focus [with the letter] is to change hearts and minds, and not necessarily focus on legislation,” Fatta said. “For me, personally, I’ve lost a lot of faith in how we do business in the church and legislate these things. Robert’s Rules of Order are not the best way to discern God’s grace.” (Perhaps, but that doesn't allow him to simply pick and choose the rules he likes.)

Indeed, many pro-LGBT Methodist leaders have resorted to extreme measures to support equality within the church. Several bishops have simply refused to take up trials against clergy who officiate same-sex marriages, and some ministers brought up on charges have been acquitted on technicalities.

Regardless, Fatta says he doesn’t regret coming out, even if it results in sanctions from his bishop. Noting that “it’s God who calls me, not the UMC,” (Um, no. God, or whomever he considers to be god, may have called him to ministry, but the UMC called him to minister IN THAT DENOMINATION, conditional upon his abiding with the terms of his calling.)

he explained that living a closeted life doesn’t just hurt his personal life — it hurts his ministry.

“It really does take your entire self to be a full minister,” he said. “As people in your church open themselves up to you, you want to be able to provide a very open sounding board — and one of the ways to do that is live authentically.”

“I don’t think keeping secrets is the best way to do that,” he added.