SAN ANTONIO, Texas — On the last day of General Conference Session business meetings, a landslide majority of delegates voted to tighten the definition of “GC delegate” to “male Adventist with a midlife crisis.”
Capping off a GC Session marked by numerous attempts to tighten the parameters of church belief, the majority consensus of delegates was that the safest way to preserve the status quo going forward was, in the words of GC delegate Manny Mansome, “to keep having the same guys make all the decisions.”
Mansome said that many felt Wednesday’s hugely laborious process of voting against regionally-approved women’s ordination could have been “streamlined or avoided altogether if the church had not made the elementary mistake of selecting female delegates to join the official voting body.”
To avoid excessive debate at future GC sessions, delegates voted not simply for male gender exclusivity but also opted to bar male Adventists under 50 from being GC session delegates. “We have noticed the tendency of some of our younger male delegates to suggest ideas that are new and go against the grain. They have now been released from future participation,” said Mansome.
Although this is a significant deviation from what many Adventists were hoping would be an increasingly representative and inclusive delegate pool, Mansome did not foresee any major difficulties going forward. “There were so few female and delegates under 30 this time anyway,” said Mansome. “Nobody will notice.”
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