The Rev. Rebecca Girrell of Vermont told fellow delegates that she regretted having initially declined a request to perform a same-sex marriage because of church rules. “I promised I would ne…
The Rev. David Meredith, left, and the Rev. Austin Adkinson sing during a gathering of those in the LGBTQ community and their allies outside the Charlotte Convention Center, in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, May 2, 2024.CHARLOTTE, N.C. — United Methodist delegates on Friday repealed their church’s longstanding ban on the celebrations of same-sex marriages or unions by its clergy and in its churches.
It’s the UMC’s first legislative gathering since 2019, one that featured its most progressive slate of delegates in memory following the departure of more than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States because it essentially stopped enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.
On Thursday, delegates approved Revised Social Principles, or statements of the church’s values. In addition to removing the language about homosexuality being “incompatible with Christian teaching,” that revision also defined marriage as a covenant between two adults, without limiting it to heterosexual couples, as the previous version had done.
Later, she said she did defy church rules and performed the same-sex wedding for two military servicemen before their deployment. “You will never convince me that that was wrong,” she said.
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