The free discussion guide is here: [GUIDE LINK]. If you missed Episode 1, on marriage, divorce and remarriage, it’s here: [EP01 LINK]. Not a Word I Disagree With On the last day of the 2026 General Conference, Lori Rowe, a lay delegate from Florida, walked to microphone three to speak against an amendment. Her first words were, “There’s not a word that I disagree with in the substitute amendment.” Her objection wasn’t to anything the amendment in front of her said. It was to what it replaced. And that’s this whole story in a sentence. Petition 1127 rewrote the Global Methodist Church’s statement on sexual sin and added its first explicit statement on sex and gender identity. On the floor it took about ten minutes, and every argument that mattered was about what gets left out. What must a church say to a girl being told she might really be a boy? To frightened parents? To an adult who transitioned years ago and walks into your church next Sunday? And what must a church never forget to say? This is a tender subject. Some of you love someone who has wrestled with gender dysphoria, or have wrestled with it yourselves. I’m going to tell you the truth as I understand it, the way Jesus would want it told to someone he loves, because he does love you. Two Sentences and a Door Our Social Witness, ¶302, is fourteen short statements, each a sentence or two with Scripture attached. We made it short on purpose, after decades of watching the United Methodist Social Principles grow into what Chappell Temple, this year’s Social Witness chair, called the quadrennial bloodletting. Changing it took a three-quarters vote, and whatever we wrote into ¶302 in Johannesburg will be very difficult to rewrite. Here is ¶302.8 as the church adopted it in Costa Rica in 2024: “We are saddened by all expressions of sexual behavior, including pornography, polygamy, and promiscuity, that do not recognize the sacred worth of each individual or that seek to exploit, abuse, objectify, or degrade others, or that represent less than God’s intentional design for his children. While affirming a scriptural view of sexuality and gender, we welcome all to experience the redemptive grace of Jesus and are committed to being a safe place of refuge, hospitality, and healing for any who may have experienced brokenness in their sexual lives.” Two sentences. The first is a statement of sorrow; the second is a welcome. Twelve of the fourteen statements in ¶302 open with “We believe.” This one opened with “We are saddened,” the only one that tells the world how we feel. It named three behaviors, a vice list like the ones in Scripture, and gave three tests for everything else. The word “gender” appeared once, undefined. Nothing about two sexes, transition or children. In 2024 that silence may have looked like restraint. By 2026 a good many of our people had decided it looked like somewhat of a negligent gap. And it ended with the door open: “we welcome all to experience the redemptive grace of Jesus.” As the legislation developed, that language of welcome seemed to go missing. Call Sin Sin Five petitions were aimed squarely at ¶302.8, from Springfield Oaks in South Georgia, Jonathan Lee of the Upper Midwest, Stewart Kouba of Trinity and others, most wanting to name specific sins. I wish those had gotten more play; I think particularity is our friend. Of the four I could read, every one kept a statement of welcome. Then there’s 1127, filed by David Watson of Allegheny West, who really needs no introduction. His rationale was blunt: “As a church, we are not primarily interested in what makes us sad, but in identifying ethical and unethical forms of behavior. We identify immoral actions as sinful.” Three aims, plainly stated: call sin sin; say there are two sexes and that sex and gender belong together; and deal with intersex conditions head on, so nobody can use them to argue the categories away. This was all very solid, and I appreciate Watson for it. His petition changed the verb to “we recognize as sinful,” added sex slavery to the list, affirmed “there are two sexes,” and called intersex conditions “disordered” while valuing the person as the image of God. It called transition “morally wrong” for adults and “physical child abuse” for minors. And it closed with a sharper welcome than 2024’s, naming “those with gender dysphoria and same-sex attraction.” I filed Petition 1457, a statement under ¶302.9 on biblical anthropology: that all persons are created by God in his image as male and female, and that human identity isn’t defined by fallen desires, inclinations or temptations but by redemption and sanctification in Christ. The committee voted not to approve it, 40–0 with one abstention. So now you know where I stand, and you know I lost. Thirty-Six to Three The Social Witness committee supported 1127 as amended, 36–3–0 (Daily Journal, Wed 2 Sep, p. 40). It added adultery and pedophilia to the list. Good. It struck the “physical child abuse” sentence. I think that’s regrettable. And it added a paragraph opposing “practices, policies, or interventions that encourage or assist minors in seeking to alter their God given sex through social, medical, or surgical transition”: narrower, with no word about adults, but wider, reaching social transition and policies. One thing isn’t marked at all. The petition’s third paragraph, welcome and Scripture references included, simply isn’t there, not struck through, just absent. When Temple presented it on the floor he seemed to indicate it was supposed to be there, but I still found myself confused. At 92 percent in committee, 1127 went on a consent agenda, to be adopted without debate. On Thursday, Bella Duke of Mid-Texas and ten delegates pulled it off, and it waited two days. Ten Minutes Saturday was the last day of legislation. Brad Folsom of South Georgia moved to cut debate to two speeches each way, two minutes apiece, and the body, tired and watching the clock, chose speed. An hour later Temple brought 1127 to the floor, read something close to the missing welcome, and called on Susan Kent of Trinity, who had a substitute “which will simplify this whole petition.” Kent kept “We believe,” the word “sinful,” and the welcome and Scripture references, but left out everything specific: no named behaviors, not even pornography; no marriage; no two sexes; nothing on minors. Her text, she said, “does not define our Christian ethics by a list of prohibited behavior, but roots it in God’s design of humanity.” To my mind, given the myriad vice lists found in our very Scriptures, Kent’s proposal was decidedly unscriptural. Lori Rowe’s reply was the mirror image. She agreed with every word of the substitute; her objection was its silence, above all about children. “We have children who are being asked to reject their sex by their peers, by their schools, by people online. This is being done without consent or knowledge of parents.” She asked for “unmistakable condemnation of these practices.” Practices, notice: not children, not parents. The substitute failed on a show of hands, and I’m very glad for it. No one spoke for or against 1127 itself; the chair went straight to the ballot. The hall screen put up the count: 308 yes, 41 no, about 88 percent, well past the three-quarters it needed. Then Temple took the microphone: “Many of us have been working on this issue for more than 40 years. … You’ve made my last rodeo my best one.” Anyone who lived through the long Methodist argument over sexuality, from 1972 to the division that gave us the Global Methodist Church, heard relief in that. The church was finally saying out loud what it has always believed. What the Book Says Now As printed, the adopted text calls sinful all sexual behavior that exploits, abuses, objectifies or degrades, naming adultery, pedophilia, pornography, polygamy, promiscuity and sex slavery; grounds our ethic in God’s design of us “as males and females” and in marriage between one man and one woman; affirms “there are two sexes”; calls intersex conditions “disordered” while valuing the person “as imago Dei”; and opposes transition for minors. It has no Scripture references and no welcome. It doesn’t call experiencing gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction a sin; its list of sins is a list of behaviors. It says nothing about adults who have transitioned, and it sets no rule for membership; ¶302 is a witness, not a rulebook. Which leaves real questions. Will the welcome be in the published 2026 Discipline? (I’m fairly confident it will.) What does “social transition” mean for youth ministers on the front lines with young people caught up in sexual critical theory? We came out of a body obsessed with activism; to what degree will GMC churches engage the public on these “policies,” if at all? How do we receive the adult who has already transitioned? (On that, I’d recommend the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s panel The Church and Gender Ideology with KathyGrace Duncan. And on what’s happening among our young people and in our legislatures, my conversation with January Littlejohn.) And Temple’s own question from Thursday: will it play in Paris, Panama, Kenya and Nepal? Is this crisis really as unique to the West as we think? Male and Female Created He Them I believe the heart of what the church adopted is true. God made us male and female, and our bodies are not costumes worn over some truer self hidden inside. The very first thing Scripture tells us about human beings is this: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27) When Jesus was asked about marriage, he went straight back to that verse: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4). T
