Moving back toward the fold

Moving back toward the fold July 29, 2008

This recent article by Paul Kengor suggests that the Methodist Church might be coming back, closer to the fold.

While Kengor is commenting on Hillary Clinton’s relationship to the Methodist Church, I find it interesting that there are some very substantial shifts in the platform that the United Methodist Church has embraced for many years. Take a look:

Among the steps taken was a statement encouraging the church to “assist the ministry of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers that compassionately help women find feasible alternatives to abortion.” The conference made some important changes in language, deleting a previous assertion that advocating legalized abortion was “in continuity with past Christian teaching,” and even adding a sentence informing Methodists that they are “bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother and unborn child.”

Another impressive change at the recent conference is that even feminist Methodists found a form of abortion they are willing to denounce: gender-selective abortions. Aborting a baby because a would-be mother simply does not want it is one thing, but to abort because the unborn baby is, say, a girl . . . well, that’s just unacceptable.


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