A Mississippi church has dissociated from the United Methodist Church (UMC) with overwhelming support from the congregation over the denomination’s increasingly lax stance on homosexuality.
Christ United Methodist Church of Jackson, labeled by the Western Journal as “one of the largest United Methodist Church bodies in Mississippi,” voted on Sunday to disaffiliate from the UMC’s Mississippi Conference.
The vote was a landslide victory in favor of those who wanted to dissociate from modern Methodism, with 717 members, or 86.39 percent, voting to leave and 112 members (13.49 percent) opposing.
Although the UMC Book of Discipline does not allow the blessing of same-sex marriages or the ordination of people in same-sex unions, many Methodist churches do not enforce these stances, according to the Christian Post.
The decision made by the formerly UMC church, which will change its name to “Christ United – Jackson” on January 1, 2024, came after “months of deliberation” regarding association with the blessing of gay marriages and the ordination of homosexual clergy.
The Christ United Methodist Church addressed its decision in a statement and asked for prayers, saying, “Please continue to pray for our church. Pray for our leaders as they gather this week to prepare Christ United to make disciples of Jesus Christ for this next season of life within the church.”
As Breitbart News reported in June, more than 4,000 congregations left the UMC in 2023 over its embrace of LGBTQ+ ideology.
“According to UM News, the official news-gathering agency of the UMC, 4,645 churches officially split from the UMC so far this year,” the Catholic News Agency reported. “That is more than double the number of churches that left in the previous year (2,003) and almost 10 times the number in 2021 (486).”
The report also claimed that nearly one-quarter of UMC congregations have officially broken away within the last five years.
Some formerly UMC churches have also started to affiliate themselves with the Global Methodist Church (GMC) instead, which is a more conservative-leaning alternative to the UMC. As the Catholic News Agency reported, the GMC has amassed 2,500 congregations as of June since its founding in 2022.
