North Texas United Methodists reacted with joy, tears and enthusiasm after the denomination overturned its ban on LGBTQ pastors in a vote on Wednesday morning.
Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference — the first such legislative gathering in five years.
“We passed it by an overwhelming majority,” said Jessica Vittorio, a lay delegate representing the North Texas Conference. “In the moment the vote was taken, it seemed anticlimactic.” Shortly after the vote, she said, people were crying, hugging one another and singing the hymn “Draw the Circle Wide.”
Jane Graner, an out gay woman and senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Duncanville, was also at the vote.
“Several of the queer clergy were sitting together, and when we saw the [vote] got passed, most of us just burst out crying,” she said. “We’ve been waiting our entire careers for this to happen.”
The change doesn’t mandate or even explicitly affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them. It’s possible that the change will mainly apply to U.S. churches, since United Methodist bodies in other countries, such as in Africa, have the right to impose the rules for their own regions. The measure takes effect immediately upon the conclusion of General Conference, scheduled for Friday.
Church delegates are also expected to vote tomorrow on replacing its Social Principles with a new document that no longer calls the “practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching” and that defines marriage as between “two people of faith” rather than between a man and a woman.
United Methodists have spent decades disagreeing on human sexuality. In 2019, the denomination began allowing churches to leave and keep their properties if they cited “reasons of conscience” regarding human sexuality before the end of 2023. More than 7,600 churches nationwide left the church, including 53 in the North Texas Conference.
About half of the departing churches joined the Global Methodist Church, a new and more conservative denomination. The denomination has said it intends to enforce rules forbidding same-sex marriage rites and openly gay pastors.
In a press release Wednesday, the Global Methodist Church said it “is aware of recent decisions made by the General Conference of The United Methodist Church with respect to its definition of marriage and its ordination standards. The Global Methodist Church operates independently from The United Methodist Church and therefore, we do not have any affiliation with their decisions, nor do we wish to comment or provide commentary on the actions of other religious organizations.”
Keri Lynn Lucas, the executive pastor of family ministries and missions at Creekwood United Methodist Church in Allen, watched a livestream of Wednesday’s vote from her home in Plano. “I started weeping,” she said of her response to the vote. “I’m a straight cisgender woman. This does not affect me personally. But it affects so many people and generations of clergy.”
From the founding of Methodism by John Wesley in the 18th century, at the heart of the movement “was this idea that God’s grace is available to all people,” said Clayton Oliphint, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in Richardson and the lead clergy delegate for the North Texas Conference. The vote, he said, “puts us back on a track to say we really mean that.”
Mike House, an associate pastor at Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas, struggled to describe his response to the vote. “I am elated, I’m overjoyed, I’m a little stunned,” he said.
House was ordained in the United Methodist Church in the 1980s and has served as a pastor in the North Texas Conference for decades. For much of that time, he kept secret his identity as a gay man.
In 2017, House married his husband, Cody McMahan, at Northaven United Methodist Church. McMahan died in 2023.
“Seeing a church that’s always been known for grace and social justice really coming forward to express that for LGBTQ folk like me — it’s healing,” House said.
“I wish my husband could have seen it happen.”
Joy Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.
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