Word: methodist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...million-member United Methodist Church, ecclesiastical legislatures have wrestled with several cases involving gay clergy. Though some national church agencies have advocated toleration of gay clergy, grass- roots conservatives have fended off any such policy change. The latest round of the 17-year battle involves a committee that is re-examining the church's approach to homosexuality. The Presbyterian Church too is restudying sexuality, raising the prospect that its stand against gay behavior could be changed...
Harvard is co-sponoring the concert with the city of Cambridge and St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church. University officials estimate that between 11 and 12 thousand people will attend the show and that the proceeds will total around...
...copies of which are being shipped to churches, carries only half the 547 hymns contained in the previous, 1966 edition. Of those, 162 survive with rejiggered words. The most significant alterations involve not war and peace but the battle of the sexes. With women destined to form half of Methodist clergy early in the 21st century, the 16-man, nine-woman hymnal committee desexed many a familiar line that was deemed to perpetuate male bias...
Feminist clout also shows up in the book's liturgical section. In the new wedding ritual, for example, the father no longer gives away the bride. Another change in worship concerns the Lord's Supper. The abstemious Methodists specified in their 1966 hymnal that only "the pure unfermented juice of the grape shall be used." Teetotalers attending last year's Methodist conference failed to get that clause inscribed into church law, and the new hymnal omits the rule. So congregations may use wine if they wish, but most Methodists still opt for grape juice. Score one for tradition...
RELIGION: The new Methodist hymnal scores sexism...