When people disagree with their church about current issues, some choose to speak with their elders, some look for another church, and others may leave altogether but this Michigan pastor is protesting his denomination by braving the cold and sleeping outside.
Rev. Michael Tupper of Parchment United Methodist Church has been sleeping in a tent in the Michigan winter since Nov. 30 and plans to keep sleeping outside for another 175 nights in protest of the United Methodist Church's stance on same-sex marriage. The Battle Creek Enquirer asked him why he was using a tent as protest,
“It’s a symbol of how our denomination, the United Methodist Church, is responding to LGBTQ persons and pushing them outside the church,” Tupper said, adding that members of the LGBTQ community “are being forced out of our church and into the cold.”
Tupper isn’t just sleeping outside his home every night either; he’s been taking his tent across the Midwest, to places like the United Methodist conference headquarters in Indiana and Wisconsin. He plans to travel to Ohio and Iowa as well to protest the Methodist headquarters there.
Rebellion to the church isn’t new for Tupper. He was,
“was among nine pastors from western Michigan who defied church doctrine, which says pastors can’t officiate gay weddings, after they pronounced Hutchison and his partner “husband and husband” at their wedding in July. “It starts with family and then it extends out to Rev. Hutchison and others,” Tupper said of his advocacy in the church for LGBTQ people.”
Read more at The Battle Creek Enquirer.
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