The United Methodist Church marked a new era of LGBTQ inclusion by voting to lift the bans on LGBTQ clergy and on pastors performing same-sex unions. They also removed the language that said homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
On a Sunday morning in 2020, while Rev. Andi Woodworth welcomed her congregation to the Neighborhood Church in Atlanta, Georgia, she had an epiphany. For years, Woodworth said she and her wife and co-pastor, Anjie, worked to build a United Methodist Church community that was “radically inclusive” of everyone – especially its LGBTQIA+ members.
“We’ve basically been through a denominational divorce already in a lot of ways,” she said. “There’s been so much harm done and so much abuse wrought on queer folks in our denomination – really overtly sometimes at past General Conferences – I think people’s fear and trauma responses have been coming up, even though things were going well.
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