Largest Mennonite group cuts ties with denomination over homosexuality

The largest conference of Mennonite churches in the U.S. has cut its ties with the broader Mennonite community in a dispute over the denomination's stance on homosexuality.

The Lancaster Mennonite Conference (LMC), which represents 179 church congregations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, had voted to separate from the Mennonite Church USA (MCUSA) in November 2015 and the decision went into effect on Monday.

According to Religion News Service, LMC's decision stems from its opposition to same-sex marriage and its concerns about some of MCUSA's policies that affirmed such unions, including hiring policies that address LGBT individuals.

MCUSA officially considers homosexual activity as a sin and defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Several pastors have been censured and fired for performing same-sex marriages, but there had been some pastors who had pushed for reform from within.

In 2015, the denomination adopted a resolution to extend "grace, love, and forbearance toward conferences, congregations, and pastors in our body who, in different ways, seek to be faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ on matters related to same-sex covenanted unions."

The departure of LMC cuts overall MCUSA membership by about a sixth, according to a 2016 report by Mennonite World Review. At that time, the denomination had about 79,000 members, including nearly 14,000 who were part of the Lancaster congregations.

"We are in a sense not really leaving. They are the ones that essentially have left true biblical Christianity in this respect," Steve Olivieri, pastor of Cornerstone Fellowship of Mill Run in Altoona, Pennsylvania, told NPR.

Since 2015, LMC has been joined by 29 other congregations, including some from the Franklin Conference, which also voted to split from MCUSA. Eight congregations that previously belonged to LMC had decided to stay with the main denomination and has joined the Atlantic Coast Conference, which remains part of MCUSA.

Mennonites are a subgroup of Protestants known as Anabaptists, which believe that only adult baptisms are valid. The denomination is distantly related to the Amish, but Mennonites prefer to pursue lives of service to their communities rather than withdrawing from modern society.

Donald Kraybill, a professor who studies Mennonites and the Amish, has warned that the LMC's immediate split from the denomination may pose a serious threat to the health of the Mennonite community at large.

"Typically, when you have social change, it may occur over one or two generations. To put it in a fast track and to try to make decisions about it in a matter of two or three years can be very dangerous for the health of a community," Kraybill said.