As the outreach coordinator at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in downtown Toledo, Katie Kuntz-Wineland hands out a lot of business cards. She runs the Marketplace for All People, a ministry that turns the church into a free store for members of the hundred-some households who pass through its doors each Friday.
The way she styles the cards — her name, then M. Div., a nod to a master’s degree in divinity through the Methodist Theological School in Ohio — is intentional: The title “reverend” is not an option for Ms. Kuntz-Wineland, an out lesbian in a religious tradition that bars marriage and ordination to those who identify as LGBT.
How does she reconcile her relationship to the United Methodist Church, particularly in light of a recent divisive vote within the church body that doubled down on language finding homosexual practice “incompatible” with Christian teaching?
It’s a question that many, regardless of their sexual orientation, are considering as the global denomination continues to feel the reverberations of the vote, which took place at a special session of the denomination’s general conference in late February. It’s given rise to national conversations about the possibility of a breakaway branch of the denomination.
In Toledo, it leaves some congregations watching, waiting, and wondering about what’s next for their communities.
For many, especially those who feel as committed to full inclusion of the LGBT community as they do to the United Methodist Church, there is also pain and disappointment.
The Revs. Doug Damron and Mary Sullivan, local pastors, describe themselves as “heartbroken.”
The Rev. Tom Rand of Sylvania First United Methodist Church is similarly dismayed, describing the way the division within his denomination feels like a division within himself.
“It has shaped my spiritual life and how I have lived my whole life,” Pastor Rand said of the United Methodist Church. “It’s just devastating.”
Chris Steiner is a member of Church of the Cross United Methodist in Toledo. As a delegate for the general conference, he backed the Traditionalist Plan that ultimately passed.
But he too expressed discontent with the way he sees the denomination affected.
“While I appreciate the fact that the Traditional Plan was favored over the other three plans, I am not at all satisfied with the outcome,” he said in an email. “The passage of the Traditional Plan has not helped to make the members of the United Methodist more ‘united.’ In fact, the opposite impact may be the result. If the members of the global UMC are to become more united, then we must find a structure and a way of living out our differing theology while we walk together arm-in-arm to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Ms. Kuntz-Wineland considered her relationship to the church when a friend, so upset at the outcome of the general conference that she left the denomination, recently posed the question to her.
“I looked at her and said, ‘I was born here. It’s in my bones,’” Ms. Kuntz-Wineland said. “There is so much truth to that for me. Even when I tried to remove myself from this church, for a period of a few years, I can’t take my bones out of my body, if that makes sense. It’s just a part of me.”
“I’m in it for the long haul,” she continued. “I’m not sure if that long haul is going to be in that United Methodist Church denominational structure or whether God is going to birth something new among us and I’m going to be a part of that.”
An uncertain future
The recent vote did not introduce or establish the denomination’s position on homosexuality, which had already been laid out in the United Methodist Book of Discipline. But it did strengthen it, introducing stricter discipline for pastors who perform a same-sex marriage.
For those who advocated alternative plans that would have opened the doors for some congregations to perform LGBT marriages and ordinations, it felt like a lost opportunity to move in a new and biblically sound direction.
Katie Collins is the youth and family ministries pastor at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Toledo. She followed news of the general conference closely, as did her classmates at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, who she said are now “graduating … and wrestling with this whole idea now of what it means to be United Methodist.”
“We were all hoping for the best case scenario,” she said. “We were hurt and disappointed, more than anything, because we were hoping for a different outcome.”
Local congregations encompass a diverse set of worshipers, representatives said. Even those where opinions on the general conference are more or less homogeneous are watching and waiting, rather than taking any immediate action.
In part that’s because, while the general conference vote offers a clear indication of the direction that the denomination is heading, it isn’t a once-and-for-all decision. A judicial council is set to review the petitions that passed at the general conference in April; some of them were flagged as unconstitutional per the church’s highest court even before the vote was taken in February.
That means details are expected to be rehashed at the denomination’s next general conference in 2020.
“We’re not looking to act quickly,” Pastor Rand said, ‘but with patience to trust that God is at work and will find a faithful pathway forward.”
It’s too early to say what a new expression of the religious tradition might look like if one does emerge, let alone whether any local congregations would definitively align with it.
Pastor Rand and Pastor Doug Damron of Epworth United Methodist Church said they expected their congregations might want to be a part of those conversations. St. Paul’s United Methodist Church is coming together for a congregational discussion about it after Easter.
Ms. Kuntz-Wineland said she wants to have a voice in what takes shape.
“I expect to see national gatherings to discuss the future of the United Methodist Church, and the future of progressive within that denomination, within the next six months or so,” she said. “I intend to be a part of those conversations.”
What price inclusion
Sylvania United Methodist Church is “inclusive and welcoming of all persons, no matter what,” Pastor Rand said, echoing a commitment the church puts on its website. Other local churches offer similar language, including Monroe Street United Methodist Church, which is part of the Reconciling Ministries Network of the United Methodist Church that equips and mobilizes congregations to “seek justice for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.”
As Pastor Rand followed the news of the general conference in February, he said, “it felt like the general conference was telling us we can’t be that way anymore.” So as his and other congregations continue to navigate the wake of the divisive vote, they stressed that what happened at the convention center does not change the relationships they have within the community.
“We just want our community around us to know that we do not align with this decision,” St. Paul’s Pastor Mary Sullivan said. “We have always been inclusive and progressive with all people. That’s not going to change. That’s a part of who we’ve always been.”
Pastor Damron reaffirmed that Epworth United Methodist Church “extends the wide welcome of Christ to all people.”
“For us,” he said, “all means all.”
At Monroe Street United Methodist Church, pastors and church members who attended the general conference in St. Louis as observers shared the same message with the congregation in an emotionally charged reflection the weekend after the final vote. Pastor Larry Clark said he will continue to perform same-sex marriages.
“I commit to you that as a pastor will continue to live out my understanding of the call of Jesus Christ,” he told the congregation, “even if it puts me in violation of the discipline of the United Methodist Church.”
That doesn’t mean he isn’t concerned about the consequences, he said in an interview. Like Ms. Kuntz-Wineland and Pastor Rand, he was born into the United Methodist Church, raised by its values, and has committed himself to it.
“I’ve given my life to the church, and I don’t want to be kicked out of the church,” he said. “But on the other hand, I have to live faithfully and according to my calling and to serve the people of my congregation.”
First Published March 30, 2019, 1:33 a.m.
