Today’s Southern United Methodism: Non-Celibate Gay Clergy, Weddings Already Here

This continues a series on the dramatically, rapidly changing nature of the Southern United Methodism. Part 1 outlined why no one who remains United Methodist will be able to escape the aggressive new liberalism now dominating the denomination, even in previously conservative regions. Part 2 below documents how even in the Southeast, multiple bishops now openly disregard their UMC’s supposedly governing Book of Discipline as blatantly as we have seen in long radicalized annual conferences in the Western Jurisdiction and parts of the north. Part 3 details how the new liberalism of Southern United Methodist leaders has now spread to every major corner of the Southeastern United States. Part 4 documents the spread of rule-breaking establishing new de facto realities in the South Central Jurisdiction. Part 5 provides all-in-one place documentation for the new liberalism’s dominance of every corner of the South Central Jurisdiction.

It had long been observed that the effective doctrinal and moral standards of the United Methodist Church (UMC) are largely determined by “location, location, location.” Within the United States, Southern United Methodism had earned a significantly more conservative reputation than the rest of the country. Even the liberals among Southern United Methodist leaders had been generally known as the sorts of administrators with the integrity to follow church rules, even when these chafed against their personal feelings.

All of that has now changed, especially in the past couple of months. In the words of one Southern United Methodist minister, “We’ve crossed the Rubicon” and “there’s no turning back.”

It is no longer true that in some future time, only after the UMC’s supposedly governing Book of Discipline is amended, will Southern United Methodism dramatically change. The Discipline’s standards remain the same on paper, yet the de facto reality is already that even in previously conservative Southern areas, the United Methodist Church is now one of those liberal denominations that has gay weddings and same-sex-partnered ministers. 

The fact that the most extreme Discipline violations were committed by new Southern United Methodist bishops, presiding at their first regular annual conference sessions after they were elected in November—rather than by older bishops set to retire next year—shows the liberal direction in which the denomination is rapidly moving, even in previously conservative regions.

On paper, the UMC’s supposedly governing Book of Discipline clearly prohibits “self-avowed practicing homosexual” ministers and also broadly forbids any “ceremonies which celebrate homosexual unions” from being “conducted by our ministers” or “conducted in our churches.” Basic integrity demanded that this former prohibition standards be upheld by all involved in the UMC’s vetting system, in which ordination candidates are approved by their district’s committee on ordained ministry, then approved by the conference board of ordained ministry (BOOM), then approved by vote of the session of all of their annual conference’s ordained clergy, then commissioned by their bishop as a provisional deacon or elder, then sometime later approved again by the BOOM, then approved again by conference clergy session, then ordained by the bishop.

The 2019 General Conference strengthened ordination standards, among other things by requiring bishops to block the commissioning or ordination of gay clergy candidates who were not fully vetted for compliance with traditionalist sexuality standards, “even if the individual has been recommended by the Board of Ordained Ministry and approved by the clergy session of the annual conference.” New rules in the Discipline further require bishops to prevent an annual conference’s clergy session from even voting on any ministry candidates who were not fully vetted for their compliance with the ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexual” ministers (see Paragraphs 304.5 and 415.6).

However, the UMC’s on-paper standards have now proven powerless against the willingness of Southern United Methodist officials, in even the formerly relatively conservative-leaning Southeastern Jurisdiction, to brazenly break the rules. 

Southern United Methodism has included relatively more bishops with reputations for supposedly upholding the Discipline. But a closer look at their track records shows that no remaining active Southern United Methodist bishops have consistently done their jobs to uphold church rules in such areas as defending the church’s doctrines, holding fellow bishops accountable, and allowing congregations to illegally affiliate with the LGBTQIA+ liberationist Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN). 

In the North Georgia Conference, formerly the numerical powerhouse of Southern United Methodism, there has recently been some debate about whether or not the Discipline’s sexuality standards are being upheld beyond these areas. But the fact is that at least two Atlanta United Methodist congregations have challenged the ban on gay-weddings, without clear accountability.

The weddings section of Glenn Memorial UMC’s website includes two pictures featuring two grooms, including one clearly showing two men holding hands at the front of the sanctuary while a man officiates their ceremony. This webpage openly declares that this congregation “welcome[s] to our worship venues the wedding between members of the LGBTQ+ community with the same sanctity and celebration that we do any wedding” – in open violation of the UMC Discipline’s rule categorically forbidding any such ceremonies from being “conducted in our churches” (regardless of who officiates).

Meanwhile, St. Mark’s UMC has been a longtime leading liberal congregation in the region. One lesbian couple had “had a quick ceremony at St Mark United Methodist”—with hashtags identifying this as an “Atlanta wedding,” a “same sex wedding,” and a “gay wedding”—in 2017. Another lesbian couple had their “Saint Mark United Methodist Church Wedding” in Atlanta in 2019, after that year’s General Conference. Long after that conference’s strengthening of the Discipline’s traditionalist standards, the weddings section of St. Mark’s UMC’s website acknowledged UMC rules while defiantly declaring, “some of our clergy have chosen to resist this policy by performing weddings for all who request them regardless of the denominational ban.” While that specific language was taken down at some point since 2021, the current wedding policy does not clearly say that they are now following UMC standards.

In Western North Carolina, Bishop Ken Carter has illegally declared “an abeyance on charges related to LGBTQ clergy and same gender weddings,” effectively inviting clergy in this sizable Southern corner of the United Methodist Church to feel free to violate these standards, with the understanding that they will not face accountability.

Then, last month, two large, Southern United Methodist annual conferences—Florida and (eastern) North Carolina—joined Northern and Western annual conferences in crossing the line by approving gay clergy candidates in defiance of these rules.

In North Carolina, it became known that Charles Daly, one of this year’s ordination candidates, who had previously been approved for commissioning, was homosexually partnered. But Bishop Connie Shelton still chose to allow the clergy session to approve him, and after the vote, illegally chose to ordain him, in open defiance of the Discipline’s clear requirements that she block his ordination. Under Shelton’s leadership, the conference website actually celebrated the “historic vote” of the approval of “a first-ever candidate in a same-gender civil marriage.”

Notably, this official announcement was published on June 16, while the conference session extended to June 17, concluding with the “ordering of ministry service” at which both Shelton and the conference’s former bishop, Hope Morgan Ward, ordained Daly. This means Shelton was well aware that Daly was “in a same-gender civil marriage” (and so unquestionably met the church-law definition of a “self-avowed practicing homosexual”) before the service, at which she chose to knowingly defy the rules by ordaining him anyway.

Shelton was joined in her celebration by her allies in the Reconciling Ministries Network caucus, who declared, “This is a long-awaited day: finally, an openly gay married person has been ordained in the Southeastern Jurisdiction.”

This is not the North Carolina Conference’s only transgression. Gayle Tabor was commissioned by the Pacific-Northwest Conference last year (see pages 31/33) but decided to move to Wilmington to plant a progressive Southern United Methodist church. An interview last spring shared that “Gayle lives with her wife, Jenn.” The conference promotes this partnered lesbian church planters’ efforts, continuing how it did so last year, under Bishop Fairley.

In Florida, last year, conference leaders unsuccessfully tried to ram through the approval of more than one gay activist candidate for commissioning as provisional clergy. Before that conflict escalated, theologically traditionalist Florida United Methodists had raised concerns with conference leaders about at least one of these candidates and pleaded for the Discipline’s standards and requirements for thorough examination of candidates to be honored, evidently to no avail.

Then, last month, a week before North Carolina’s meeting, two of the “out” gay activist candidates, Kipp Nelson and Anna Swygert, came back and were approved and commissioned as clergy. Swygert (who has spoken of “wear[ing] a Pride pin every day” at work) posted that she and Nelson were joined by Rushing Kimball in their commissioning, and that “together, we are the first openly queer clergy members in the Florida Conference and the entire South Eastern Jurisdiction.” Kimball was one of the submitters of the “Queer Delegates” resolution passed at last year’s jurisdictional conferences.

In a speech to the clergy session Magrey deVega, the aggressively liberal chair of Florida’s board of ordained ministry, defended his board’s approving these candidates by claiming that all candidates were committed to the ethic of “fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness,” but conceded that the board had not further pressed these candidates specifically about their commitment to abstain from homosexual practice. So this leaves unanswered such questions as whether or not any of these gay clergy candidates are in a same-sex marriage (in violation of the Discipline), engaged to enter into such a union, or are personally committed to refraining from ever having such relationships. Discipline Paragraph 304.5, as amended in 2019, clearly requires “full examination and thorough inquiry” of ministry candidates about abstinence from homosexual practice, and mandates that the BOOM “shall not approve or recommend” any candidates not satisfying such scrutiny. But deVega defended his board’s refusal to follow this part of the Discipline by claiming that this “would involve a kind of private, intrusive investigation that is as impractical as it is unsettling, and therefore unreasonable to expect.”

Lest there be any hope that the board, appointed by Carter, somehow sought to honor the spirit of the Discipline’s moral standards, deVega made clear that the board’s approvals of these candidates were intended as “intermediate acts of dissent” in order to “help to change the Discipline” eventually, not waiting for General Conference to first officially liberalize the Discipline.

New Bishop Tom Berlin was evidently aware of what was happening. DeVega’s speech was promptly publicized by the Florida Conference. The aforementioned Discipline Paragraph 415.6, as amended in 2019, requires that when the BOOM “has failed to certify it carried out the disciplinarily mandated examination” for compliance with the ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexual” ministers—a failure which Florida’s BOOM chair publicly admitted was the case with this year’s candidates—then “Bishops are prohibited from commissioning” or ordaining any such incompletely vetted candidates. And yet this rule was trampled over and they were commissioned anyway. 

For his part, Nelson made clear that with this action, “we have gone technically against the rules of our Discipline.”

The actions in this Southern United Methodist conference to blatantly disregard the Discipline’s clergy vetting requirements have made clear the new direction of this most Southeastern corner of United Methodism. As one liberal Florida minister  summarized: “The die is cast. We’ve crossed the Rubicon. It’s done. There’s no turning back.”

To be fair, while Bishop Berlin clearly supports a liberal new direction, he has actually pleasantly surprised me with the non-hostile approach he has taken, so far, towards congregations who now feel that their conscience compels them to disaffiliate from this new United Methodism.

There are other reasons to question the judgment of the Florida clergy session and especially its board of ordained ministry in the ministers they chose to approve.

Among those approved and ordained as a full elder in Florida last month was Christopher S. Haden. Through the United Methodist congregation to which he is appointed, he has produced several controversial videos. In one 2021 video, he irreverently combines God’s name with a curse word (around the 1:37 mark). In another 2021 video, he uses the F-word nine times within less than seven minutes (beginning at 13:30). In an April 2023 video, (beginning around 13:55) he appears to more broadly dissent from traditional Christian teaching that sex should be limited to monogamous marriage, teaching that “my measure of sin has always come down to what is harmful.” Of “consensual, loving sex” he teaches with a chuckle, “I don’t think that’s ever hurt anyone, actually” (and then bizarrely pivots to say “more power to” people who enjoy consensually receiving or inflicting physical pain during sex). And in May 2023, this subsequently approved and ordained Southern United Methodist pastor devoted an entire public video to discussing masturbation, rather inappropriately including a female employee of his as one of his co-panelists.

The #MeToo and #ChurchToo movement have done so much to sensitize many people to the realities of sexual harassment and the vulnerabilities that come with unequal power dynamics in churches. Do liberal Southern United Methodist leaders still see no problem with a pastor inviting a female subordinate to participate in a frank discussion of inherently very personal sexual matters (even though he told her she did not have to do this if she was not comfortable)?

Note that all of these videos were publicized before the Florida clergy session chose to accept the recommendation by the board of ordained ministry to approve Haden.

In any case, Southern United Methodist leaders disregarding the Discipline did not begin this year.

After Bishop Carter indefinitely halted accountability for liberal activist Florida Conference clergyman Andy Oliver’s officiating of one gay wedding in 2019, Oliver was emboldened to brag in 2021 of officiating “more than a half-dozen same-sex weddings.” Since 2017, his congregation has had an official policy of making their sanctuary open to same-sex weddings, a policy they continue to proudly announce.

The Discipline’s standards related to homosexuality have de facto become a dead letter in this sizable Southern United Methodist conference.

Last fall, Oliver’s congregation hosted drag-queen activist and certified United Methodist ordination candidate Isaac Simmons (a.k.a., Ms. Penny Cost), infamous for his foul-mouthed disparagement of God and biblical authority, to preach and also offer the children’s sermon. More recently, his congregation has attracted media attention for more regularly hosting drag shows during some Sunday worship services and using its outdoor marquee sign to promote LGBTQIA+ liberationist ideology at the expense of basic orthodoxy about the Trinity, declaring, “JESUS IS GOD IN DRAG” and “HUMANITY IS GOD IN DRAG.”

Drag-queen preaching to children. Top denominational officials openly violating the church rules they promised to uphold, with no accountability. Officially permitted ceremonies to claim God’s blessing and encouragement for what Scripture, the Discipline, and the clear historical, global consensus of the wider body of Christ are clear is self-destructive sin. New clergy openly engaging in homosexual practice, flippant blasphemy, and casual profanity.

Welcome to the new Southern United Methodism.