UMC Mum on Status of Approved Seminaries That Oppose Gay Marriage

Removal of Asbury may signal further culling of approved schools.

When the United Methodist Church amended its standards to fully embrace same-sex marriage, at least three seminaries that train the denomination’s ordination candidates found themselves out of step with its new teaching.

In June, UMC dropped one of those schools — Asbury Theological Seminary — from its list of approved non-UMC institutions.

That move has placed a question mark over the denomination’s future relationship with Fuller Theological Seminary and Seattle Pacific Seminary, both of which share Asbury’s commitment to biblical marriage. So far, however, church officials aren’t talking.

The Asbury Decision

The UMC General Board of Higher Education and Ministry gave two reasons for parting ways with Asbury Theological Seminary. One was its lack of “a full-time United Methodist faculty member who consistently teaches required United Methodist history, doctrine, and polity.” The other was Asbury’s adherence to the traditional Wesleyan view of marriage.

In 2024, the denomination scrapped a statement from its rule book that declared homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching” and inserted new language affirming marriage as the union of “two adult persons of consenting age.”

By contrast, Asbury President David Watson said, “We affirm marriage as sanctioned by God, which joins one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union for life, as delineated in Scripture.”

“Asbury’s published ethos statement is not compatible with the Social Principles of The United Methodist Church,” UMC officials said in a June statement.

The decision to cut ties with Asbury means losing the eighth-largest seminary in the U.S. and largest Wesleyan seminary in the world. Until now, the Lexington, Kentucky, school was a top destination for aspiring UMC ministers. A 2009 study by the denomination found that, among elders and deacons ordained that year, more had attended Asbury than any other seminary, including the denomination’s own 13 schools, which struggled to attract students.

The decision also pushes Asbury further into the orbit of the rival Global Methodist Church, a denomination that broke away from UMC in 2022 and is associated with the theologically conservative Confessing Movement. Asbury is among just seven seminaries on the GMC’s list of approved educational institutions. Neither Fuller nor Seattle Pacific is on the list.

“More of [Asbury’s] graduates will choose to serve with the Global Methodist Church,” said David Dockery, president of the International Alliance for Christian Education. “I think that that’s where the difference will come in the years ahead. I don’t think it will affect Asbury’s reputation, Asbury’s enrollment. The quality of their faculty is commendable in every way and certainly will be a magnet for students for years to come.”

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Fuller and Seattle Pacific

In 2025, Fuller’s trustees voted to reaffirm the school’s “historic theological understanding of marriage.” All faculty must sign a community standards agreement that includes limiting sex to “marriage, which is the covenant union between one man and one woman.”

Seattle Pacific has faced multiple lawsuits over its policy of not permitting employees to engage in same-sex relationships. Its Statement on Human Sexuality says, “We affirm that sexual experience is intended between a man and a woman. We believe this is the ancient and historic teaching of Christian scriptures and tradition, including the teaching of Seattle Pacific’s founding denomination, the Free Methodist Church.”

When asked why Fuller and Seattle Pacific remain in good standing with the UMC, the communications office of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry reiterated the explanation given in June for Asbury’s removal. When pressed for details about the other two schools, the office declined.

“The University Senate does not evaluate schools in comparison to other listed institutions. Each non-UMC approved theological school is regularly reviewed on its own merits,” said Susan Clark, the board’s chief communications officer. “The decision to delist Asbury was based on material Asbury submitted and a follow-up interview with its leadership during their most recent Senate review.”

Tracy Norlen, interim associate vice president of university communications for Seattle Pacific University, of which Seattle Pacific Seminary is part, said the school will be due for a reevaluation in two years.

“We were approved in 2024 and met the requirements for schools at that time. We are not up for approval again until 2028,” she said.

According to Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Seattle Pacific is the only remaining Wesleyan seminary approved by the UMC. Seattle Pacific is affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, while Fuller, located in Pasadena, California, is a nondenominational school with Baptist leanings.

On his organization’s blog, Tooley also suggested another possible motivation for Asbury’s removal: the threat it posed to the denomination’s seminaries.

“Across decades Asbury was the main engine for educating conservative/evangelical clergy. Nearly all of United Methodism’s official seminaries have long been theologically more progressive,” Tooley said. “Institutionally, it cannot sustain the competition. The denomination has 13 official seminaries. Asbury was not official but had in recent years graduated more United Methodist ordinands than any other single school.”

For Dockery, the removal of Asbury “seems to send a signal that evangelicals in the Wesleyan tradition are not welcomed as they once were” in the United Methodist Church.

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