‘Where Are We Going as a Church?' In Dallas, We Methodists Have Seen This anti-LGBTQ Rerun Too Many Times

I prayed with a close friend Wednesday before beginning to write about my church’s grievous anti-LGBTQ vote this week.Sarah Wilke’s family name is synonymous with Methodism. Her parents, Julia and Richard, created the Disciple Bible Study, used by millions worldwide; her father was also a bishop. Their four children have worked most their lives in the denomination’s ministry.I’ve known Sarah since the late 1980s, while she was executive director of the Wesley-Rankin Community Center, a United Methodist Women’s mission in West Dallas. Both here and in Nashville, Tenn., Sarah has led some of the denomination’s largest and most successful not-for-profits.In 1991, she married journalist Nancy Kruh, who has been among my dearest friends since, as twentysomethings, we first worked together at The Dallas Morning News. Same-sex marriage wasn’t legally recognized back in the 1990s; more than two decades passed before Sarah and Nancy could make their partnership official in the state’s eyes.Sarah and Nancy are only two of the thousands of LGBTQ members who for decades have remained steadfastly loyal to the United Methodist Church — despite the denomination’s official stance against them. "The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” the church’s Book of Discipline reads.Like so many other Methodists, I believed this was the year the discrimination — language adopted in 1972 — would end. Instead, the global denomination voted in St. Louis to double-down against same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. An alliance of American conservatives and delegates from outside the U.S. — most notably from African countries — won the day.  Continue reading...