As the United Methodist Church prepares for its quadrennial General Conference next week, conservative and progressive factions of the UMC expect a heated debate over the compatibility of gays with church teachings.

The conference, scheduled for April 27 - May 7, comes in the wake of a Methodist court acquittal on March 20 of a lesbian minister from Washington state on charges that her sexual orientation is “incompatible with Christian teaching” and that she should be stripped of her ordination.

“We’re in a crisis here,” said Rev. James Moore, pastor of St. Mark United Methodist Church in Atlanta, a church that includes a heavily gay congregation. “As much as I applaud what happened in Seattle, this decision really strikes at the heart of who we are.”

Some 1,000 delegates meet in Pittsburgh beginning next week to revise the UMC Book of Discipline, which serves as church law for the 10 million UMC members in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Philippines.

Recommendations to alter Methodist laws about gays will be made by delegates who want further acceptance of gays in the church as well as those who seek to make the church code more “orthodox,” said Patricia Miller, executive director of Confessing Movement, a group opposed to gay clergy.

“There are people working on a proposal to work on the damage of what happened as a result of the Dammann trial,” Miller said.

Governing members of the denomination-wide Board of Church & Society, a social action and advocacy branch of the church based in Washington, D.C., has already proposed eliminating the Book of Discipline clause that makes practicing gays “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The board recommendation says, “Although faithful Christians disagree on the compatibility of homosexual practice with Christian teaching, we affirm that God’s grace is available to all.”

Yet the gay-friendly proposal does not allay fears that Dammann’s acquittal fueled a conservative backlash that would make the acceptance of gays more challenging in the long run, Moore said.

Several leaders in the Methodist church, including some in the Southeast, disagree with Dammann’s acquittal. They have called for her removal as pastor at First United Methodist church in Ellensburg, Wash.

The fallout from the verdict reached Georgia when the state’s two Methodist bishops, Lindsey Davis and Michael Watson, issued a March 22 statement calling Dammann’s verdict “a clear sign of rebellion.”

Since then, bishops in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas and Pennsylvania have released statements against the Dammann verdict.

Some 91 pastors in Georgia signed a statement dated March 30 from Rev. Randy Mickler of Mt. Bethel UMC in Marietta that calls for Dammann’s removal and asks the UMC General Conference’s Judicial Council to overturn her acquittal.

Currently, 114 petitions from churches, individuals and the entire Northern Illinois regional conference are being circulated asking General Conference delegates to remove anti-gay language from the Book of Discipline, said Rev. Troy Plummer, executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, a group working for gay-inclusive Methodist policy.

In the Dammann decision, the jury, comprised of members of the Pacific Northwest Conference, concluded that the church did not provide sufficient evidence to prove that being gay conflicts with Christian principles.

“It’s not a big deal [in Washington],” Dammann said this week. “I think the congregation at Ellensburg was happy to have someone who was competent and cared about them.”

No proposals have been made to remove the gay ordination ban, but Dammann is doubtful that the church’s “incompatibility” language or gay minister ban will be removed this year.

“In the best of all worlds, they would just stop prohibitive language at all,” Dammann said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. It might … maybe the unexpected will happen.”