This article is from The Good News Magazine.
Ronnie
June 3, 2009 – 1 PM
A Brief Update: Annual Conference Votes on Proposed Constitutional Amendments
Eleven of the 63 U.S. annual conferences have now voted on the proposed constitutional amendments. Some conferences have posted complete results, others partial information, and still others are not releasing any results.
The Detroit, Texas, Greater New Jersey, Minnesota, Memphis and South Carolina Annual Conferences released complete vote tallies on each proposed amendment.
The Red Bird Missionary Annual Conference simply noted that only proposed amendments 8, 19 and 22 received more than two-thirds support from its delegates.
Alaska, Kansas West, North Central New York and Oklahoma have not released any information on how their delegates voted on the proposed amendments.
Here are results where available on the most contentious proposed amendments:
Proposed amendment 1 which would radically liberalize membership standards has failed to receive two-thirds support in the Red Bird Missionary, Detroit, Texas, Memphis, Greater New Jersey and South Carolina Annual Conferences. Only the Minnesota Annual Conference has exceeded the two-thirds mark. For those annual conferences reporting actual tallies (Detroit, Texas, Greater New Jersey, Memphis, Minnesota and South Carolina) the overall results stand as follows:
Proposed amendment 1: 2,340 (48%) Yes 2,585 (52%) No
For a proposed amendment to be ratified 66.67% of all the world wide annual conference delegates present and voting must vote yes. Thus far, proposed amendment 1 is far from ratification.
The 23 proposed amendments on the World Wide Nature of the UM Church have yet to receive any where near two-thirds support in the following annual conferences: Red Bird Missionary, Detroit, Texas, Greater New Jersey, South Carolina and Memphis. Five of the 23 proposed amendments would authorize the creation of regional conferences. Here are the total results from the six annual conferences that have reported results for those five amendments:
Proposed amendment 4: 1,452 (30%) Yes 3,439 (70%) No
Proposed amendment 10: 1,464 (30%) Yes 3,401 (70%) No
Proposed amendment 13: 1,533 (32%) Yes 3,290 (68%) No
Proposed amendment 23: 1,463 (30%) Yes 3,375 (70%) No
Proposed amendment 26: 1,470 (30%) Yes 3,391 (70%) No
Finally, proposed amendment 19 which would extend to provisional members and certain local pastors the right to vote for clergy delegates to the General and jurisdictional conferences has been receiving substantial support. Here are the total tallies from the annual conferences that have released information:
Proposed amendment 19: 3,871 (80%) Yes 976 (20%) No
During the month of June 51 U.S. annual conferences will be held. Good News will provide results when annual conferences make the information available through their official websites or other media resources.
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Please note, if you are aware of official and publicly shared voting results that we have not included in this update, please share them with us (wbfenton@goodnewsmag.org). Thank you.
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http://www.goodnewsmag.org/news/3June09UpdateConstitutionalAmendments.htm