{"id":1119,"date":"2021-07-12T17:20:28","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T16:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2021-07-12T17:20:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T16:20:28","slug":"in-historic-voting-british-methodist-church-to-permit-same-sex-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/?p=1119","title":{"rendered":"In historic voting, British Methodist Church to permit same sex marriage \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1114\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1114\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1114\" src=\"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Methodist-Church-of-Britian.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"187\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1114\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Methodist Church of Britain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">With a vote of 254 to 46, the British Methodist Church (BMC) has resolved to allow same sex marriage in its fold.<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">The decision was taken at the conference of the church held on June 30.<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">However, the church said ministers opposed to the decision would not be forced to join couples of the same sex. <\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">BMC has about 164,000 members across 4,000 churches.<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">The motion required a change to the definition of marriage to be \u201ca lifelong union in body, mind and spirit of two people who freely enter it.\u201d<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">But the approval means BMC now has two definitions of marriage. The first is \u2013 \u201cmarriage can only be tolerated between a man and a woman\u201d and the second \u2013 \u201cmarriage can be between any two people.\u201d<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">Church of England and Roam Catholic Church forbid same sex marriage. However, United Reformed Church, Scottish Episcopal Church, the General Assembly of Unitarian, Free Christian Churches and Quakers in Britain permit it.<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">President of Methodist Conference, Rev. Sonia Hicks, said after the conference, \u201cAs we move forward after the historic day for our Church, we must remember to continue to hold each other in prayer, and to support each other respecting our differences.\u201d <\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0cm 0cm 4.8pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: 'Georgia',serif; color: #212121; letter-spacing: -.5pt; font-weight: normal;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0With a vote of 254 to 46, the British Methodist Church (BMC) has resolved to allow same sex marriage in its fold. The decision was taken at the conference of the church held on June 30. However, the church said ministers opposed to the decision would not be forced to join couples of the same [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"0","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechristian.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}