c. 2008 Religion News Service

FORT WORTH, Texas _ Several years ago, a woman approached the Rev. Alice Wolfe asking to join her United Methodist congregation in Anna, Ohio.

The 38-year-old pastor suspected the woman wasn’t interested in being a Methodist; she just wanted to avoid paying the “wedding fee” at the local Methodist church.

“She has never come back,” Wolfe said, “other than the wedding.”

On Wednesday night (April 30), Wolfe asked Methodist delegates gathered here to bolster church law and allow pastors to turn away candidates _ or at least delay membership _ until they’re sure a candidate is serious about Methodism.

Just who can join the United Methodist Church has become a contentious matter in recent years, and the nearly 1,000 delegates here debated their membership standards long into the night. Amid searching talk of following Jesus, who took all comers, and Methodist founder John Wesley, the famous circuit-riding evangelist, there was discussion about the painful segregation of church in the 1930s and a not-so-hidden subtext: the exclusion of gays and lesbians.

“We are having a discussion here on two values: pastoral discernment of membership readiness versus Christian hospitality,” said Tara Thronson, a delegate from Austin, Texas.

Current church law states that all people may attend “worship services, participate in the programs, receive the sacraments and become members in any local church.” But in 2005, the church’s top court backed a Virginia pastor who denied membership to an openly gay man. The church’s Council of Bishops strongly condemned the pastor’s decision.

Gay rights activists here were hoping to counter the court ruling by passing a law forcing pastors to receive all adults willing to affirm the church’s membership vows. That measure failed by just 12 votes _ one of the closest tallies yet at this two-week General Conference, which ends Friday.

Wolfe, who sits on the assembly’s church membership committee, said the proposal she supported, which failed by a 515 to 384 vote, was not about homosexuality. It was about letting pastors discern a candidate’s readiness to join the church.

But others who backed her proposal had different ideas.

“There’s only one issue driving this, and we all know what it is _ it’s homosexuality,” said the Rev. Mike Childs of Louisville, Miss.

The Rev. Bob Moon of South Georgia warned of “unintended consequences” should the doors to membership be flung wide open. “As pastors, we need to see this not from the perspective of restriction, but of responsibility to care for the flock,” he said.

The Rev. Carole Wilson of Alcoa, Tenn., said that she, like Wolfe, had been approached by a woman who wanted to join the church to avoid the “wedding fee.”

“I struggle with the fact of whether or not I was being faithful in allowing her to join the church when I knew that she didn’t mean it. Was I being faithful to God in that?”

High standards for membership may actually help the church grow, according to current sociological research, said Matthew Johnston, a seminary student from western Pennsylvania.

“When we say to people that they can just come into membership as they please,” he said, “there is no sense of covenant commitment, no sense of high expectation, no sense of true discipleship.”

But others said allowing pastors to discriminate contradicts the tenets of Christianity and Methodism _ not to mention the denomination’s motto of “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.”

“I find I get into trouble if I think my role is a ticket taker or a security guard,” said the Rev. Ted Virts from Sacramento, Calif. “The last one in Scripture I remember is the security guards who tried to keep the kids away from Jesus.”

Also drawing on the Gospels, the Rev. Albert Shuler of Greenville, N.C. said, “We do not want churches based solely on pastoral preferences.“

“If the pastor were to use the teachings of Jesus on money as a litmus test, there wouldn’t be any Americans left in our churches,” he said.

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Photos of delegates debating the church’s positions on homosexuality are available via https://religionnews.com.