Thread by @Delafina777

So, my dad is Methodist, and on the board of a Methodist church, and also my (Jewish) community shares space with a Methodist congregation, so I've been hearing/seeing/reading a lot about the United Methodist Church's current LGBT conflict.

For context, if you're not aware of the whole thing, here's a brief explainer. hrc.org/blog/united-me…

According to my dad, it's even a bit worse than that--the church is retaining a lot of anti-gay language from the 1970s, but they actually strengthened/added to that language. (Don't have the details since this was from a text convo with a Baby Boomer. 😂♥️)

Anyway, context from around here (Pacific Northwest). Every Methodist church I've driven past, and the one from whom my community rents space, is flying rainbow flags and has some variant of "we don't agree with the UMC decision" on their marquee.

And the one we share space with has a bunch of stuff that looks like they're having a meeting about whether to leave the UMC on their welcome table.

So anyway, the first convo my dad and I had was via text, because I was going to call him that day and he pinged me to be like, "hey, can you call before 4:00 because I have to go to a meeting about LGBT inclusion." And I'm like, "I'm out doing errands and it's 3:50 so... no."

But of course I have Feelings about LGBT inclusion, so I couldn't really leave it there.

My dad's church is the reason I was super-shocked about the UMC decision, because I am used to thinking of the Methodists as the Nice Christians, because I went to a discussion there once about "who goes to heaven?" and they were like, "we dunno, probably everyone."

Which is to say, they're like a couple hymns away from being Unitarians, and I fully approve of their vagueness. But they are very much a bunch of polite Midwestern white people, so mostly they're like, "we don't really take stands on a lot, we're just nice to everyone."

So I'm a bit worried that maybe they don't have hard data as to why fully welcoming, affirming, supporting, etc. LGBT people is not just the RIGHT thing to do, but the only way for them to ensure they have a church in 20 years.

So I'm peppering my poor father with texts with links to all kinds of statistics about which denominations are shrinking and which are growing, millennial attitudes toward Christianity, etc. I offered to pull over and put together a Power Point for him but he said no.

I maybe overwhelmed him a little bit.

So anyway, he went off to his meeting, and later that night, I called to chat with my mom, but was home from the meeting and answered the phone so we got to talk about it.

And the debate, it sounds like, was primarily between people who wanted to leave the Methodist church, and people who wanted to stay and see if they could change the leadership's minds. So, at least they weren't wasting time arguing with bigots.

But the main topic of conversation was that the high school kids who are about to get confirmed said they wouldn't go through with confirmation if the church remained with the UMC--either the church schisms, or loses its young adults en masse.

And young couples with babies were putting their baptisms on hold, saying they weren't going to allow their kids to be baptized if the church stayed with the UMC.

Which was a good reminder to me and my fellow millennials: I know I tend to think of us as fighting FOR Gen Z and those who come after them (which, I think, includes babies right now), but we're way more effective when we fight WITH them.

Gen Z are powerhouses. They're super-smart. They've got a steely, fire-forged ethical core. They're educated on the issues. They're articulate. They coordinate.

And it's time to stop treating them as passive kids we're trying to help and start consciously coordinating action plans with them, if we're not already.

Because millennial parents shifting focus to speaking for babies and little kids who can't speak for themselves, and giving Gen Zers space to speak for themselves, was enormously effective here.

Like, my dad was on their side, and still seemed a bit shaken by the high school students' refusal to be moved.