Grace through Separation,” to split the church over what it described as "fundamental differences" over issues pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, particularly same-sex marriage. The “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation” plan would create a new traditionalist Methodist denomination, with the existing church moving to more acceptance of non-heterosexual and gender-nonconforming identities. The church's General Conference was expected to vote on the plan in May 2020. The plan would have needed to be approved in May 2020 by the General Conference. It would grant the new denomination $25 million and would allow local churches to vote to affiliate with the new denomination and keep their assets if they leave. The vote was later postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Progressives too announced the creation of a new denomination in November 2020, the Liberation Methodist Connexion. In 2022, the Western Jurisdiction elected a second openly gay bishop, Cedrick Bridgeforth. Military service According to The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church, "The United Methodist Church calls upon all who choose to take up arms or who order others to do so to evaluate their actions in accordance with historic church teaching limiting resort to war, including questions of proportionality, legal authority, discrimination between combatants and noncombatants, just cause, and probability of success...." The United Methodist Church opposes conscription as incompatible with the teaching of Scripture. Therefore, the Church supports and extends its ministry to those persons who conscientiously oppose all war, or any particular war, and who therefore refuse to serve in the armed forces or to cooperate with systems of military conscription. However, the United Methodist Church also supports and extends its ministry to those persons who conscientiously choose to serve in the armed forces or to accept alternative service. The church also states that "as Christians they are aware that neither the way of military action, nor the way of inaction is always righteous before God." The United Methodist Church maintains that war is incompatible with Christ's message and teachings. Therefore, the Church rejects war as an instrument of national foreign policy, to be employed only as a last resort in the prevention of such evils as genocide, brutal suppression of human rights, and unprovoked international aggression. It insists that the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among them; that human