Marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman

The Global Methodist Church, formally launched in 2022 by congregations departing the United Methodist Church over disagreements concerning marriage and ordination, states in its Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline that marriage is a covenant relationship intended by God to be a lifelong union between one man and one woman, a definition the new denomination adopted explicitly to preserve the traditional standard that debate within the larger United Methodist Church had put in question. The Global Methodist Church's own public statements describe this position as continuous with historic Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality rather than as a new doctrine, framing the 2022 separation as a decision to maintain existing standards against a change other United Methodist bodies were moving to adopt, rather than as the introduction of a novel restriction. The doctrine carries direct consequences for the denomination's practice of ordination and clergy conduct, since Global Methodist teaching holds that clergy are expected to model the covenant standard in their own lives and are not authorized to officiate at marriages the denomination does not recognize as falling within that definition, a position stated plainly in its founding disciplinary documents rather than left to individual congregational discretion.

The Global Methodist Church did not form in isolation but emerged from roughly a decade of internal United Methodist conflict over whether the denomination should ordain clergy in same sex relationships and permit clergy to officiate at same sex weddings, a debate that produced repeated special sessions of the United Methodist General Conference without resolving the underlying disagreement. A negotiated framework known as the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, developed by representatives across the theological spectrum, proposed a structured pathway for traditionalist congregations to leave with their properties rather than face an unresolved fight inside the existing denomination, and although the Protocol itself was never formally ratified by General Conference, a separate disaffiliation process under the denomination's own Book of Discipline allowed several thousand congregations, heavily concentrated in the American South and Midwest, to depart between 2019 and 2023. The Global Methodist Church launched formally in May 2022 to receive these departing congregations, retaining most of Wesleyan doctrine and structure from the church it left while making the traditional definition of marriage, together with related ordination standards, the doctrinal line distinguishing it from the United Methodist Church it separated from.