Protestants softening stance on homosexuality, despite recent United Methodist vote on LBGTQ clergy, same-sex marriage

WHAT: Members of the United Methodist Church General Conference met in a special session in February and voted narrowly in favor of the “traditional plan,” which reinforces the church’s ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage. The denomination’s Judicial Council is expected to meet in April to decide whether the plan is constitutional based on the church’s Book of Discipline.

EXPERT: Dan Olson, a sociologist of religion at Purdue University, specializes in American religion, particularly Protestantism. Over the past decade, Olson has collected survey data and other publicly available data to quantify differences in religious behavior across geographical lines.

QUOTE: “Many of the representatives attending the special session came from the southern hemisphere – in some of those are countries, homosexuality is a crime. In the United States, however, the majority of Methodist laypeople support same-sex marriage. According to a recent Pew survey, about 60 percent of Methodists in the U.S. said that they favored same-sex marriage. If you look at survey data, this is true not only for churchgoers, but also for the U.S. as a whole: The rate of shift in attitudes on homosexuality has been extremely rapid.”

MORE INFORMATION: Olson has served as chair of the ASA Section on Sociology of Religion, president of the Religious Research Association, and president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. 

Writer: Joseph Paul, 765-494-9541, paul102@purdue.edu

Source: Dan Olson, 765-494-4861 - dolson@purdue.edu