NEWS STORY: Methodist meeting takes up agenda of conscience

c. 1996 Religion News Service DENVER (RNS)-Delegates and visitors to a 10-day meeting of the United Methodist Church’s top decision-making body held a two-hour worship service Thursday (April 18) that promoted greater openness to people of diverse backgrounds and denounced sexism and racism. The service was aimed at uniting the church, which is seeking to […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

DENVER (RNS)-Delegates and visitors to a 10-day meeting of the United Methodist Church’s top decision-making body held a two-hour worship service Thursday (April 18) that promoted greater openness to people of diverse backgrounds and denounced sexism and racism.

The service was aimed at uniting the church, which is seeking to heal divisions over abortion, homosexuality and feminism.


The General Conference, as the quadrennial meeting is called, began Tuesday (April 16) and ends April 26. Nearly 1,000 official delegates will consider some 3,000 petitions on a host of church and secular issues, including a statement on baptism, rules on the Methodist ministry, and resolutions on gambling, abortion, the death penalty and tobacco.

Delegates will vote on separate petitions calling for Christian-Jewish cooperation, an apology to American Indians for Colorado’s Sand Creek massacre of 1864, and support of a proposal in Congress that the U.S. government consider reparations to African-Americans because of slavery.

Final action on most of the major proposals is not expected until next week.

The tone of the meeting’s first days was set Tuesday (April 16) by Bishop Judith Craig of the West Ohio Episcopal Area (similar to a diocese) in her”Episcopal Address.””The church … must be an open house, where Jesus sits at the doorway and welcomes all who come,”said Craig, the first woman ever to give the address.

At Thursday’s worship service, F. Belton Joyner of Raleigh, N.C., invoked church founder Charles Wesley, who fought against child labor in his native England and slavery in America, in a speech that sought to create a middle ground on gay rights, one of the most fiercely debated topics at this year’s conference.

Referring to Amendment 2, a controversial gay-rights limitation measure passed by Colorado voters in 1992 and currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, Joyner discussed those Methodists who said the church should move the meeting from Colorado.”Some of our members felt it was no longer appropriate for us to meet in Colorado,”he said,”but rather than leaving this moment of history, we have stayed to see how God might be working in this, and how God might have us work in this.” Another speaker, Randy Miller of San Francisco, identified himself as”an African-American, gay male, United Methodist, Christian, and child of God.”I know the rejection of being the unwelcome guest, even in God’s house, even in this church,”he said.

Others spoke out against the death penalty and for human and civil rights. And speakers from Russia and Angola called Methodists to extend their vision around the world.

MJP END RABEY

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