‘A better church is possible:’ Methodists celebrate as the church embraces the LGBTQ
CNN
The United Methodist Church marked a new era of LGBTQ inclusion by voting to lift the bans on LGBTQ clergy and on pastors performing same-sex unions. They also removed the language that said homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
On a Sunday morning in 2020, while Rev. Andi Woodworth welcomed her congregation to the Neighborhood Church in Atlanta, Georgia, she had an epiphany. For years, Woodworth said she and her wife and co-pastor, Anjie, worked to build a United Methodist Church community that was “radically inclusive” of everyone – especially its LGBTQIA+ members. Their church flouted the Methodist denomination’s official ideology, which, in 1972, declared homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching” and later banned “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from becoming ordained. But that Sunday morning, as she welcomed everyone to church no matter their race, identity, or sexuality, Woodworth said she realized she was talking to herself. “At the very beginning of 2020, I came out to myself as being trans,” she said. “I thought I was this White straight guy and, as it turns out, that’s not who I am at all. I spent a lot of the quarantine time at home figuring some things out about myself and realized that Anjie and I helped to start a church where I could actually be myself.” While she was accepted by her own church community, Woodworth said the decision to embrace being a trans woman and a pastor in the United Methodist Church also meant that she could lose her job, her home and her congregation.