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  • Migrants to Iowa strike different portraits where ‘American Gothic’ was created

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    CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — It was in Cedar Rapids, surrounded by cornfields, where Iowa artist Grant Wood painted “American Gothic,” the iconic 1930 portrayal of a stern-looking woman and a man with a pitchfork in front of a white frame house.

    The city presents many different images today, after more than a century of international migration and faith-based resettlement efforts.

    To many newcomers as well as lifelong residents, this heartland river city where migrants from present-day Lebanon built the first U.S. mosque is a welcoming microcosm of America’s melting pot at a time when immigration enforcement is disrupting families and communities.

    Hundreds of refugee families were resettled by The Catherine McAuley Center, founded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy, until the nationwide halt ordered by the Trump administration this spring. At a recent class offered by the center, a Guatemalan woman and her son, along with five men from China, Benin, Togo, Sudan and Congo, sang the U.S. national anthem and rehearsed questions for the citizenship test.

    “It is a matter of meshing or integrating — how do we get around in the community? How do we find our friends? How do we find bridges across cultural divides?” said Anne Dugger, the center’s director.

    As Americans struggle to redefine who belongs in the social fabric, these are snapshots of heartland immigrants and their faith communities.

    Bob Kazimour goes to Mass at St. Wenceslaus, where he remembers as a child the liturgy was in Latin and the homily in Czech. It’s the language of generations of his ancestors who left what was then Bohemia in Central Europe to work in Cedar Rapids’ meatpacking plants, forming the area’s first large immigrant group in the mid to late 1800s.

    Kazimour can still sing a few Czech carols — and there’s a Czech choir, a Czech school and a goulash festival to commemorate.

    He and other parishioners whose great-great-grandparents went to St. Wenceslaus aren’t certain new generations will keep up Czech customs. But the Catholic parish is growing again after merging with Immaculate Conception, a downtown church with a booming Latin American congregation.

    “In Cedar Rapids, unlike the coasts with lots of problems, we’re Iowa nice. We get along pretty darn well,” Kazimour said.

    At the beginning of the 20th century, Lebanese Muslims came to the Midwest, often starting as itinerant merchants before establishing grocery stores. In a few decades, Cedar Rapids had dozens of these businesses — and a mosque.

    Within ten months after Mohamed Mahmoud came to the United States from Sudan in 2022, he opened a halal grocery store in a strip mall a few minutes drive from the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids, where he prays on Fridays.

    “Religion is a part of life wherever you go. If you don’t find a mosque, it’s something missing,” he said in-between serving sweets at a counter with Muslim holiday decorations and American flags. “Cedar Rapids is the best option for me to live the rest of my life.”

    A few blocks from Mahmoud’s shop, the St. Jude Catholic Church’s Sweet Corn Festival was in full swing. And among the many volunteers sporting 50-year-anniversary festival T-shirts were members of the growing African congregation, mostly from Togo and Congo.

    While frying funnel cakes and Snickers bars, Bienvenue D’Almeida described a journey shared by many of St. Jude’s parishioners. Wanting better educational opportunities for their children, they applied for and won the so-called green card lottery, a program for countries with low rates of emigration to the United States.

    At St. Jude, the migrants found aid on arrival, and soon built French-speaking ministries, from family groups to choir to monthly French Mass.

    “You feel safe, and because of that, you’ve that sense of belonging,” said Roger Atchou, a father of two from Togo and festival volunteer.

    “For us, St. Jude represents the United States — it’s open to everyone,” said parish council member Martin Mutombo, a Congolese volunteering with his wife, Clarisse, and five children.

    “We feel very comfortable” in this adopted homeland, Clarisse Mutombo said. Nevertheless, they’re painfully aware that others in the congregation are having a harder time, including a father detained for overstaying a visa.

    Another African refugee congregation gathers in the historic St. Paul’s United Methodist Church for Sunday afternoon services in Kirundi, one of Burundi’s languages.

    “When I work here for God at St. Paul’s, I have a peace. I find myself home,” said the Rev. Daniel Niyonzima, through his son’s translation.

    The pastor and his wife, from Burundi, arrived nearly 20 years ago after more than a decade in refugee camps in Tanzania, and were hosted by the Methodist congregation. Now they’re U.S. citizens — and grandparents.

    Across the hall from the sanctuary, English classes and driver’s ed are hosted by a nonprofit started by a church member, Mugisha Gloire, a Congolese refugee who came as a child to Iowa. He remembers how warmly he was welcomed by a local volunteer who took him to swimming lessons and baseball games.

    “Cedar Rapids has a long way to go to welcome everyone, but there are also some very great people,” Gloire said.

    A few blocks west of St. Paul’s is Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, where five children were baptized recently at the Spanish-language Mass that’s been held regularly for more than a dozen years.

    Holding her newly christened 4-month-old nephew Gael, Gabriela Plasencia, originally from the Mexican state of Jalisco, said receiving the sacraments in Spanish allows them to “live them differently, understand more deeply.”

    Being able to worship in their native language is a special blessing as the immigration crackdown casts a pall, some parishioners said. Many know people in the country illegally who have left voluntarily, and others who were arrested and deported. Everyone feels affected, said Gabriela’s father, David Plasencia.

    “Inside here, we feel pretty peaceful, but the moment we go out into the streets, we all feel that anxiety,” he said.

    ___

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Arson investigation underway after fire burns Los Angeles church for second time in 2 years

    Arson investigation underway after fire burns Los Angeles church for second time in 2 years

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    Authorities say an arson investigation is under way after fire damaged a nearly 100-year-old Los Angeles church for the second time in less than two years

    LOS ANGELES — An arson investigation was under way Sunday after fire damaged a nearly 100-year-old Los Angeles church for the second time in less than two years, authorities.

    Flames broke out shorty before 7 p.m. Saturday in the sanctuary of St. John’s United Methodist Church and spread into a balcony, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement.

    More than 30 firefighters took about 20 minutes to extinguish the blaze at the two-story church in the Watts neighborhood, the statement said. No injuries were reported.

    The blaze occurred as St. John’s was undergoing renovations from another fire that caused major damage in February 2022, the Los Angeles Times reported.

    After the earlier fire, worshippers moved services to the parking lot, where they were still being held as of this weekend, the Times said.

    The church, built in the Spanish Colonial style with a red-tile roof and beige exterior, is celebrating 97 years of ministry in the Watts community south of downtown LA, according to its Facebook page.

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  • Louisiana churches leave Methodist denomination amid schism

    Louisiana churches leave Methodist denomination amid schism

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    NEW ORLEANS, La. — The United Methodist Church, a mainstay of the American religious landscape, has cut ties with 58 churches in its Louisiana conference amid a nationwide schism within the Protestant denomination.

    The disaffiliations, approved in a virtual conference session Saturday, were the latest in a series of decisions that many Louisiana churches have made in recent weeks to leave the national congregation. Internal tensions over sexuality and theology have roiled the church.

    The congregation’s delegates voted 487-35 in favor of the departures. The disaffiliations required support from two-thirds of the delegates.

    Six churches leaving the conference are from the New Orleans area. Another seven churches are from the Baton Rouge area. St. Timothy, which at 6,000 members is one of the largest Methodist congregations in Louisiana, voted to pursue disaffiliation on Nov. 1, The Advocate reported.

    The United Methodist Church is the latest of several mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S. to begin fracturing amid debates over sexuality and theology. The flashpoints are the denomination’s bans on same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBTQ clergy — though many see these as symptoms of deeper differences in views on justice, theology and scriptural authority.

    The denomination has repeatedly upheld these bans at legislative General Conferences, but some U.S. churches and clergy have defied them. This spring, the Church’s conservative wing launched a new Global Methodist Church, where they are determined to maintain and enforce such bans.

    A proposal to amicably divide the denomination and its assets, unveiled in early 2020, has lost its once-broad support after years of pandemic-related delays to the legislative General Conference, whose vote was needed to ratify it. Now the breakup and the negotiations are happening piecemeal — one regional conference at a time.

    In annual regional gatherings across the U.S. earlier this year, United Methodists approved requests of about 300 congregations to quit the denomination, according to United Methodist News Service. Special meetings in the second half of the year are expected to vote on as many as 1,000 more, according to the conservative advocacy group Wesleyan Covenant Association.

    Those departing are still a fraction of the estimated 30,000 congregations in the United States alone, with nearly 13,000 more abroad, according to recent UMC statistics.

    The Louisiana disaffiliations will take effect after Dec. 31, church officials said. The Louisiana conference will also see a new bishop in the new year, Delores Williamston. She is the conference’s first Black female bishop.

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  • LGBTQ-friendly votes signal progressive shift for Methodists

    LGBTQ-friendly votes signal progressive shift for Methodists

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    The United Methodist Church moved toward becoming more progressive and LGBTQ-affirming during U.S. regional meetings this month that included the election of its second openly gay bishop. Conservatives say the developments will only accelerate their exit from one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations.

    Each of the UMC’s five U.S. jurisdictions — meeting separately in early November — approved similarly worded measures aspiring to a future of church where “LGBTQIA+ people will be protected, affirmed, and empowered.”

    They also passed non-binding measures asking anyone to withdraw from leadership roles if they’re planning to leave the denomination soon — a category that almost entirely includes conservatives moving toward the exits.

    The denomination still officially bans same-sex marriage and the ordination of any “self-avowed, practicing homosexual,” and only a legislative gathering called the General Conference can change that.

    But this month’s votes show growing momentum — at least in the American half of the global church — to defy these policies and seek to reverse them at the next legislative gathering in 2024.

    Supporters and opponents of these measures drew from the same metaphor to say their church is either becoming more or less of a “big tent,” as the United Methodists have long been described as a theologically diverse, mainstream denomination.

    “It demonstrates that the big tent has collapsed,” said the Rev. Jay Therrell, president of the conservative Wesleyan Covenant Association, which has been helping churches that want to leave the denomination.

    “For years, bishops have told traditionalists that there is room for everyone in the United Methodist Church,” he said. “Not one single traditionalist bishop was elected. Moreover, we now have the most progressive or liberal council of bishops in the history of Methodism, period.”

    But Jan Lawrence, executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, which works toward inclusion of Methodists of all sexual orientations and gender identities, applauded the regional jurisdictions. She cited their LGBTQ-affirming votes and their expansion of the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of bishops.

    Jurisdictions elected the church’s first Native American and Filipino American bishops, with other landmark votes within specific regions, according to United Methodist News Service.

    “It is a big tent church,” Lawrence said. “One of the concerns that some folks expressed is that we don’t have leadership in the church that reflects the diversity of the church. So this episcopal election doesn’t fix that, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

    Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, elected in the Western Jurisdiction meeting, agreed. He is the first openly gay African-American man to be elected bishop. The vote comes six years after the Western Jurisdiction elected the denomination’s first openly lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto of the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area.

    The LGBTQ-affirming resolutions point “to the alignment of the denomination more with the mainstream of our country,” Bridgeforth said. “It can also help us begin to center our conversations where we have unity of purpose, rather than centering on divisions.”

    Bridgeforth will lead churches in the Greater Northwest Area, which includes churches in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and small parts of Montana and Canada. He said he has always worked across ideological lines in his administrative duties and would continue to do so.

    “I have used our differences as an opportunity for us to come together,” he said. “It creates more space for a different kind of conversation than, ‘That’s different, that’s bad, we can’t be together.’” If some churches under his jurisdiction do choose to leave the United Methodist Church, Bridgeforth said he would help them make that transition.

    “I would not want anybody to be where they don’t want to be,” he said.

    Progressive groups have said the church should be open to appointing bishops and other clergy, regardless of sexual orientation, who show they have the gifts for ministry and a commitment to serve the church.

    Conservatives, however, say the church needs to abide by its own rules.

    “I am sure Bishop Bridgeforth is a person of sacred worth, but he does not meet the qualifications to hold the office of elder, much less bishop, and should not have been elected,” Therrell said.

    At least 300 U.S. congregations have left the denomination this year, according to United Methodist News Service. Hundreds more are in the process of leaving, and Therrell predicted that number would be in the low thousands by the end of 2023. Overseas conferences in Bulgaria and Slovakia have ended their affiliation with the denomination, and churches in Africa are considering it, he said.

    Many are bound for the newly formed conservative denomination, the Global Methodist Church.

    The UMC is a worldwide denomination. American membership has declined to about 6.5 million, from a peak of 11 million in the 1960s. Overseas membership soared to match or exceed that of the U.S., fueled mostly by growth and mergers in Africa. Overseas delegates have historically allied with American conservatives to uphold the church’s stances on sexuality.

    Support for a compromise measure that would have amicably split the denomination, negotiated in 2020, fell apart after that year’s legislative General Conference was postponed three times due to the pandemic. The next General Conference is now scheduled to begin in April 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    A vote by a 2019 General Conference was the latest of several in recent decades that reinforced the church’s ban on gay clergy and marriage. But that vote also prompted many local conferences to elect more liberal and centrist delegates, whose influence was felt in this month’s regional votes.

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    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • United Methodists are breaking up in a slow-motion schism

    United Methodists are breaking up in a slow-motion schism

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    United Methodists have for generations been a mainstay of the American religious landscape — one of the most geographically widespread of the major Protestant denominations, their steeples visible on urban streets, in county seats and along country roads, their ethos marked by a firm yet quiet faith, simple worship and earnest social service.

    But the United Methodist Church is also the latest of several mainline Protestant denominations in America to begin fracturing, just as Episcopal, Lutheran and Presbyterian denominations lost significant minorities of churches and members this century amid debates over sexuality and theology.

    In annual regional gatherings across the U.S. earlier this year, United Methodists approved requests of about 300 congregations to quit the denomination, according to United Methodist News Service. Special meetings in the second half of the year are expected to vote on as many as 1,000 more, according to the conservative advocacy group Wesleyan Covenant Association.

    Scores of churches in Georgia, and hundreds in Texas, are considering disaffiliation. Some aren’t waiting for permission to leave: More than 100 congregations in Florida and North Carolina have filed or threatened lawsuits to break out.

    Those departing are still a fraction of the estimated 30,000 congregations in the United States alone, with nearly 13,000 more abroad, according to recent UMC statistics.

    But large United Methodist congregations are moving to the exits, including some of the largest in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

    The flashpoints are the denomination’s bans on same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBTQ clergy — though many see these as symptoms for deeper differences in views on justice, theology and scriptural authority. The denomination has repeatedly upheld these bans at legislative General Conferences, but some U.S. churches and clergy have defied them.

    This spring, conservatives launched a new Global Methodist Church, where they are determined both to maintain and to enforce such bans.

    A proposal to amicably divide the denomination and its assets, unveiled in early 2020, has lost its once-broad support after years of pandemic-related delays to the legislative General Conference, whose vote was needed to ratify it.

    Now the breakup and the negotiations are happening piecemeal — one regional conference at a time.

    New York Bishop Thomas Bickerton, president of the Council of Bishops, issued a statement in August denouncing “a constant barrage of negative rhetoric that is filled with falsehood and inaccuracies” by breakaway groups. In particular, he disputed allegations that the church is changing core doctrines.

    But he said the denomination seeks to find a balance between encouraging churches to stay yet enabling them to go.

    “It’s a both/and,” Bickerton said in an interview. “We want people to know straight up front that we don’t want them to leave. We need traditionalists, we need centrists, we need progressives willing to engage in a healthy debate to discern what God’s will is.”

    But more departures are expected next year.

    In just the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, about 300 of its 800 churches have begun inquiring about the process of leaving by the end of 2023, according to the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Not all may follow through, but some see it as inevitable.

    “We feel like to stay the same in our mission and theology, we need to change denominations,” said the Rev. Steve Cordle, lead pastor of Crossroads Church. Based in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, it’s one of the largest congregations in the conference. It’s considering going independent or joining the Global Methodist Church.

    A few miles away in Bethel Park, another Pittsburgh suburb, Christ United Methodist Church remains committed to the denomination.

    The Rev. Chris Morgan said his church has a “big tent” of liberals and conservatives with most congregants “leaning in toward the center.” The church recently hosted an educational series on hot topics including the schism, guns, abortion and COVID-19.

    “Instead of becoming like society, we’re trying to become an example of what it looks like to disagree and still treat people with respect and care and love,” Morgan said.

    He was far from the only one to see a parallel between the Methodist debates and broader societal polarization.

    “We live in a world of division. Just look at our political front,” said Bishop David Graves, who oversees the South Georgia and Alabama-West Florida conferences. Both conferences have dozens of congregations moving to the exits, though the large majority are staying so far.

    Graves said he wants to help enable churches to leave if they want to but has spent long hours urging them to consider all the factors and be sure it is God’s will.

    “It’s very taxing,” he said. “Those are intense meetings.”

    Conservatives say denominational leaders are making it difficult for those who want to leave to do so, however.

    Currently churches may leave after paying two years’ worth of “apportionments” — essentially denominational dues — plus their share of unfunded pension liabilities. Conferences may also impose additional requirements, and some are asking for a percentage of the property value of church buildings.

    “In many cases, (the requirements) are onerous, they are punitive,” said the Rev. Jay Therrell, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a conservative advocacy group that is working to help churches jump to the Global Methodist Church.

    Bishop Karen Oliveto of the UMC’s Mountain Sky region — who in 2016 became the UMC’s first openly lesbian bishop — said via email it is “extremely wounding to LGBTQ persons that our very personhood is being used as a wedge to disrupt unity in the church.” She expressed hope that UMC churches “will be safe places for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

    Conservatives have lamented that UMC has failed to enforce its Book of Discipline on standards for ordination and marriage.

    Oliveto said, however, that sometimes “the Holy Spirit runs ahead of us and gives us a glimpse of the future to which we are called. This is certainly the case across the denomination, where LGBTQ persons have been examined at every step of the ordination process and found to possess the gifts and graces for ordained ministry.”

    United Methodists are part of a global movement that traces their origins to the 18th-century English revivalist John Wesley, who emphasized personal piety, evangelism and social service.

    American membership has declined to about 6.5 million, from a peak of 11 million in the 1960s. Overseas membership soared to match or exceed that of the U.S., fueled mostly by growth and mergers in Africa.

    It’s too early to say if there will be widespread departures from international churches. African churches, for instance, often combine conservative stances on sexual issues with progressive views on the economy and colonialism’s legacy.

    Several African bishops issued a statement denouncing conservative advocacy groups, including one called the Africa Initiative, for collaborating to “destroy our United Methodist Church.”

    The Africa Initiative replied that it respected the bishops but would continue its efforts “to see biblical Christianity taught, lived and sustained.”

    Neal Christie of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition, a partnership of progressive and ethnically based Methodist advocacy groups, said the “notion that outside the United States there’s one monolithic voice is a caricature.”

    The coalition is promoting a more decentralized church where regions could make their own decisions on issues such as LGBTQ inclusion based on their cultural contexts.

    “We believe this is a big tent church, that the church is big enough for all,” he said.

    But after decades of controversy, some are done.

    “The traditionalists decided this is like a toxic relationship now, and we’re just harming each other,” said the Rev. Laura Saffell, chairperson of the Western Pennsylvania chapter of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. “The best we can do is bless and send” each other their separate ways.

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    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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