And . . . That's a wrap

The General Conference Session of 2008 concluded its business at 11:14 local time. Followed by a sermon from Bishop Palmer. Frankly it took a while to start listening as I was ready to simply get back to the hotel.

So what happened today?

The committee on the General Conference Agenda made a motion that was easily carried that the 2012 session have no business scheduled on the Sunday of its meeting! Yippee.

The budget passed easily.

The close votes of the day were with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. (An agency the United Methodist Church began in 1972) The RCRC is getting hammered by the far right with many half truths and just plain lies. (Where is all this fear and hatred coming from?) The UMC has voted to continue its support and affiliation with the RCRC but by a very narrow margin.

Some surprising good news of the day. One of our delegation noticed that on a consent calendar item the UMC has made the following statement (altering Paragraph 161 A for those following in their program) “The family: We believe the family to be the basic human community through which persons are nurtured and sustained in mutual love, responsibility, respect and fidelity. We affirm the importance of loving parentsfor all children. We also understand the family as encompassing a wider range of options than that of the two-generational unit of parents and children (the nuclear family) We affirm shared responsibility for parenting where there are two parentsand encourage social, economic, and religious efforts to maintain and strengthen relationships within families in order that every member may be assisted toward complete personhood.”

This was a hard day for the “IRD” a far right conservative group with political motivations to change the church. The items they brought to the General Conference were generally defeated by good margins.

I sat on the floor for the closing speed legislation session. It was at first frustrating as people would go the the microphone on an issue that wasn’t going to be a close vote. Eventually everyone stayed seated and in the final hour we passed 30 items.

I think I will do one more final thoughts post before signing off. Presently it is 2:00 A.M. and I still haven’t packed!