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A church in Savannah, Georgia, is the first congregation in recent years to depart the United Methodist fold in support of LGBTQ inclusion.

Over the past four years, multiple congregations have left the denomination in response to its intensifying disagreement over how accepting to be of homosexuality. Most have done so citing weariness with the debate or a lack of enforcement of the denomination’s bans on same-sex weddings and “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy.

Gil Caldwell, a civil rights activist who later in life stood up for gay rights in the United Methodist Church, died Septem­ber 4 at the age of 86.

The native of Greensboro, North Carolina, struggled with cancer, his son said on Twitter. The United Methodist News Service reported he had been in hospice care in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

David Opderbeck’s book about theology, the law, and how we engage with both