United Methodists
In July 2016, the Western Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church elected Karen Oliveto as the first openly lesbian bishop in the denomination. Immediately after her election, opponents filed a complaint with the ecclesiastical Judicial Council to remove her from office. In response, friends and supporters of Bishop Oliveto are sharing letters of gratitude and…
Read More
Last Wednesday the executive committee of The United Methodist Church Council of Bishops announced that they had sent out invitations to the people they hoped would constitute the special commission formed at General Conference to discuss the vexing issue of whether and how the church will continue to discriminate against LGBTQI people. Lots of people…
Read More
Reconciling Ministries Network celebrates with great joy the election of the first openly lesbian bishop in The United Methodist Church (The UMC). This is an historic moment in the movement of LGBTQ persons for spiritual and civil equality both in the church and the public square. The election of Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto of Glide…
Read More
There was no headline proclaiming, “Methodist Church OKs Marriage Equality” or “Methodists Finally Embrace LGBTQ People.” Your newsfeed wasn’t lighting up with “Methodists Go Gay!” or, frankly, anything that looked like victory for LGBTQ people in the third-largest Christian denomination in the United States. Instead, after two weeks of the United Methodist Church’s recently wrapped…
Read More
As spirit-filled protests and demonstrations of support for LGBTQI people fill the halls of the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in Portland, the Council of Bishops that serves the denomination has put forward a historic proposal that will be considered by the gathered delegates before the Conference ends on May 20. The United Methodist Church’s…
Read More
To our LGBTQI colleagues in ministry in the United Methodist Church, As you gather for General Conference and engage in difficult conversations around inclusion, we are sending you so much love and light. We sign this letter as openly LGBTQI clergy, future pastors, and faith leaders in our own denominations who stand with you in…
Read More
Originally posted by Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), the letter below caused RMN’s website to crash due to an overload of traffic just hours after the letter’s release. Believe Out Loud is honored to host a copy of this historic letter, and we stand in solidarity today with the 111 LGBTQI clergy and candidates below. Dear…
Read More
As a mother of a gay son, I don’t think you can really understand where an LGBTQ person is coming from unless you come from a place of intense love. I don’t know that the LGBTQ issue would have registered much on my radar if I didn’t have someone whom I loved intensely struggling with…
Read More
As a young queer and trans person seeking ordination in The United Methodist Church, I am incredibly blessed to have a wealth of role models to look to as I imagine the type of minister I hope to become. This may seem a strange thing to say in a denomination that has written discrimination against…
Read More
Methodist and United Methodist lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people: “They are invisible (past and present) understand, simply, because we refuse to see them” -Paraphrased from the words of a character in Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people were and are composed of all races, ethnicities, biblical perspectives. They are…
Read More