Methodist Leader Calls for Church to Separate Over Homosexuality

A leading Methodist evangelical pastor on Thursday called for a split in the denomination over the issue of homosexuality -- a sign of a widening gulf in the nation’s second-largest Protestant church.

“Our friends on the other side are not going to leave the church,” the Rev. William H. Hinson said. “We’re not going to leave the church. They will not stop their struggle. We will not stop ours. It is therefore incumbent, we believe, upon us to have a just and amiable separation.”

Hinson, who formerly headed the denomination’s largest congregation, First United Methodist Church in Houston, made his remarks at a breakfast attended by about 400 people here for the United Methodist Church’s general conference. The conference, the church’s highest rule-making body, meets every four years.

Delegates and church officials here said Hinson’s remarks were believed to mark the first time that an influential churchman had publicly called for a breakup of the denomination, which claims 10.3 million members worldwide, over the issue of homosexuality.

The issue of a split over homosexuality has also been raised in the Episcopal church although in a context because conservative and liberal Episcopalians say they would remain part of the worldwide Anglican communion.

The history of Methodist churches in the United States makes the prospect of a split particularly symbolic. The Methodists divided in the years before the Civil War over the issue of slavery, then reunified in 1968, forming the current United Methodist Church. The discussion of a new split underscores the degree to which the debate over homosexuality has divided America’s churches, particularly large Protestant denominations.

In the last two years, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations have bitterly debated issues related to homosexuality -- whether to allow gay men and lesbians as clergy, whether to bless same-sex unions and how to interpret scriptural condemnations of homosexual conduct. The exception has been the Southern Baptist church, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which is strongly dominated by theological conservatives and has largely avoided the debate.

Last summer, the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of an openly gay priest, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and gave tacit approval for bishops to allow the blessing of same-sex unions in their local dioceses. Those decisions touched off furious opposition within the 70-million member worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, including threats of schism.

“Action in the Episcopal Church has undoubtedly raised the stakes in the [Methodist] general conference,” Methodist Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr. of Denver said Thursday.

Hinson echoed statements made by conservatives in the Episcopal Church who have said liberal American positions on sexuality have embarrassed church members in parts of Africa and Asia where Christianity had been gaining adherents.

“A part of the excitement of the separation is to stand in solidarity with the global South, where the wind of God’s spirit is blowing,” Hinson said. “We desperately want to be a part of the revival.”

But his proposal to split the church caught most delegates, including many rank-and-file conservatives, by surprise.

One conservative, the Rev. H. Eddie Fox of Houston, said of Hinson’s plan: “I am not there. I’m an eight-generation Methodist. I have not left this church, nor has this church left me.”

But even those opposed to the idea of a split called Hinson an influential church leader who had to be taken seriously. “His voice has not been a strident voice,” said the Rev. William K. Quick, associate general secretary of the World Methodist Council and a lecturer at Duke Divinity School. Quick said he did not favor a split.

“There’s no question. This ruptures the body. The body’s already bleeding. This further wounds the body,” he said of Hinson’s plan.

Hinson is president of the Confessing Movement, a conservative group within the Methodist church which claims 650,000 members. Hinson said he was speaking for himself and not the movement he heads. But he told reporters he expected his board to soon back his initiative.

His allies said that by publicly raising the issue of schism, Hinson had cleared the way to rally grass-roots support over the next four years for dividing the church at the next general conference in 2008.

Hinson said he saw no alternative to separation. “I believe the differences are deep and abiding. I believe they’re irreconcilable, and I believe we must ... explore an amiable and just separation,” he said.

But at an impromptu news conference here Thursday, several Methodist bishops were skeptical that Hinson would succeed, even in the long run. “There is a strong sentiment for unity and holding the church together,” Bishop Brown of Denver told reporters.

Bishop Mary Ann Swenson of the California-Pacific Annual Conference, which includes much of Southern California, said she thought most Methodists sought unity. “I think the people really want to hold together and to find a way together into the future,” she said.