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Monday, April 07, 2025

United Methodist Church

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Thinking about disunited Methodist future: Questions, terms and fault lines to ponder

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Thinking about disunited Methodist future: Questions, terms and fault lines to ponder

So the “United” Methodists are back on the clock, in terms of waiting for their amicable divorce?

It would appear so, as COVID-19 continues to delay all kinds of large-scale meetings for pretty much everyone. Maybe they could have a socially distanced meeting in something like the University of Michigan’s “Big House” stadium (which seats about 110,000 under normal conditions)?

This is a huge story, of course, any way you cut it — with major implications for the shrinking world of the Seven Sisters of oldline liberal Protestantism, as well as putting the spotlight on the thriving evangelicalism of the Global South. As GetReligion patriarch Richard Ostling noted the other day:

The United Methodist Church is on the brink of America's biggest religious schism since the Civil War, with the conflict centering on sexual morality, biblical authority and theological liberalism.

At stake is an empire with 6.7 million U.S. members and 31,000 congregations located across most American counties, 6.5 million members overseas and $6.3 billion in annual donations (though there's now a severe money crunch). Many of those churches sit on prime urban and suburban real estate.

You know that COVID-19 has to be affecting the economics of all of this, especially for the center-left UMC establishment. Will they try to run out the clock somehow, assuming that the doctrinal conservatives will simply leave on their own (thus avoiding the need for some kind of severance check)? But that kind of split would lead to legal warfare (think of it as the United Methodist lawyers Employment Act) over church sanctuaries, clergy benefits, etc. Ask the the Episcopalians about that.

This leads me to two think pieces for reporters and news consumers to file. The first comes from the Mark Tooley, the must-follow analyst on the Methodist right: “Global Methodism’s New Church.” He covers essential background, with logical attention to Methodist growth in Africa, then offers this helpful summary:

Why are conservatives leaving when they won at the General Conference?

Liberals, although outnumbered globally, dominate the U.S. church and its bureaucracy. Few American conservatives want to inherit liberal church agencies, seminaries, and local conference structures, whose financial viability is already dubious.


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United Methodists remain on clock: Will 2022 see biggest church split since Civil War? (updated)

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United Methodists remain on clock: Will 2022 see biggest church split since Civil War? (updated)

The United Methodist Church is on the brink of America's biggest religious schism since the Civil War, with the conflict centering on sexual morality, biblical authority and theological liberalism.

At stake is an empire with 6.7 million U.S. members and 31,000 congregations located across most American counties, 6.5 million members overseas and $6.3 billion in annual donations (though there's now a severe money crunch). Many of those churches sit on prime urban and suburban real estate.

But when? The 2020 General Conference to settle matters was postponed until this coming Aug. 29- Sept. 7 in Minneapolis, a city that currently limits meetings to 150 people. News calendars are iffy until the imminent UMC decision on whether it can meet then, or must delay a second time or whether it's possible to manage such a complex international meeting online.

Whenever and however delegates assemble, by most accounts they're prepared to adopt some version of the 33-page "Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation" (.pdf here) hashed out last year via professional mediation among representatives of various factions.

One breakaway has occurred prematurely. Online worship last Nov. 29 established the hard left "Liberation Methodist Connection." The new denomination is intended for Methodist exiles to live out their "God-given identities" regardless of not only same-sex identity but e.g. gender expression, sexual non-monogamy, immigration status, piercings, body art or drug use.

However, the main event involves who inherits the UMC's name, logo, endowments, properties and structures. In U.S. Methodism, liberals and centrists combined have political power to install a laissez-faire LGBT policy, while the evangelical wing dissents alongside millions of Methodists in Africa and the Philippines. (This structure is unusual. Most "mainline" denominations that have legislated full LGBT inclusion are U.S.-only.)

The Wesleyan Covenant Association figures conservative congregations and pastors will happily leave behind UMC assets, schools and agencies and is busily preparing a new breakaway denomination under "Protocol" terms that would merge Americans and booming churches overseas.


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Looking ahead: After SCOTUS ruling, some major faith groups still face LGBTQ battles

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In a closely-watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday (.pdf here) that gay and transgender employees are now included under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars job discrimination based upon “sex.” With the high court’s prior edict legalizing same-sex marriage, that settles much of secular law except for ongoing disputes between LGBTQ rights and religious liberty, which journalists should be prepared to cover for some time to come (see tmatt update here)

The doctrines within most American religious groups are also settled. Many “mainline” and liberal Protestant churches, Jewish organizations, Unitarian Universalists and others are committed to same-sex weddings and clergy ordinations. Meanwhile, there’s no prospect sexual traditionalism will be abandoned by e.g. Islam, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical groups, the Church of God in Christ (the largest African-American body), Orthodox Judaism or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But three divided Protestant denominations have showdowns ahead, all postponed from this year due to the coronavirus crisis. The media have widely reported on the impending massive split in the United Methodist Church. Legislation on this is expected from a General Conference in August 29-September 7, 2021 (mark your calendars).

Any day now, the venerable Reformed Church in America will receive a panel’s plan to resolve its “soul-sapping conflict” at next June’s General Synod. Proposals have included continuation of the ambiguous status quo, radical reorganization perhaps with three loosely affiliated entities or outright “graceful separation” based upon sexual belief. Watch for news breaks here.

The pacifist Church of the Brethren ( www.brethren.org) is further along on the schism path. There may be no way the Annual Conference of June 30–July 4, 2021, can prevent a breakaway, since a conservative “Covenant Brethren Church” began operating last year. Sources: Church of the Brethren General Secretary David Steele (800–323–8039), CBC chair Grover Duling (groverduling@gmail.com and 540-810-3455), and the liberal caucus Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBT Interests (bmc@bmclgbt.org and 612-343-2050).

Then there’s the conservative Presbyterian Church in America, which just released a 60-page committee report on human sexuality (.pdf here) to come before a General Assembly June 29–July 2, 2021.


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Big news decades in the making: Why are United Methodists finally going to divorce?

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THE QUESTION:

Why is the large United Methodist Church preparing to split in May?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

One of 2020’s major news events occurs May 5-15 when delegates in Minneapolis decide whether and how to break up the large United Methodist Church (UMC). The simple answer to why is that long-running conservative-vs.-liberal differences proved irreconcilable when it comes to sexual morality in general, and homosexuality in particular. But there’s much more to be said.

The stakes are high, since the UMC is America’s second-largest Protestant denomination and biggest of the so-called “mainline” groups, which are long-established, predominantly white, active in ecumenical organizations, and allow more flexibility on belief than conservative “evangelicals.” The UMC has dealt with the gay issue for 48 years, during which membership slid from 10.3 million to 7 million. Continual and enervating haggles doubtless contributed to membership shrinkage in all of “mainline” Protestantism, even as U.S. culture and politics shifted toward gay toleration following the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

The UMC’s debate began soon after it was founded in a 1968 merger between the Methodist Church and the smaller Evangelical United Brethren Church. An official commission was appointed to collate the uniting groups’ teachings on a range of topics and report to the new denomination’s first General Conference in 1972. (The Guy covered this Atlanta event for Time magazine).

The commission proposed approval of the statement that “homosexuals no less than heterosexuals are persons of sacred worth, who need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship which enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. Further, we insist that all persons are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured.”

Conservatives did not dispute those concepts but were wary, and seemed befuddled during floor debate. Then Texas lawyer Donald Hand jotted down wording, ran it past a state Supreme Court justice, and offered this amendment: “we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian doctrine.” The spur-of-the-moment insert passed, and remains on the books to this day.


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Des Moines Register offers master class on writing a slanted United Methodist-LGBTQ story

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I have never been a full-time police-and-cops reporter, but I have pulled an occasional shift on that difficult beat — which tends to involve lots of work with legal terms linked to crimes and trials.

At the same time, I have covered religion news in various capacities for 40-plus years and — this is a commentary on the divisive times in which we live — that kind of work also requires a working knowledge of legal lingo.

In the past, I have noticed that when someone is “charged” with breaking a law, that means there are debates about whether the person has committed the acts in question. In other words, officials have “charged” that a person did x, y or z, but there needs to be some kind of trial to determine if that charge is true.

With that in mind, please note the overture in this amazingly slanted Des Moines Register story — circulated via the USA Today Network — about another LGBTQ ordination conflict inside the bitterly divided United Methodist Church. Here’s the headline: “Iowa pastor facing church trial for being 'self-avowed practicing homosexual' takes leave of absence.”

An openly queer Iowa City pastor charged with "being a self-avowed practicing homosexual" in violation of United Methodist Church law will take an indefinite leave of absence, according to an agreement announced Wednesday.

A trial date had already been set when the Rev. Anna Blaedel requested a "just resolution," which focuses on "repairing any harm to people and communities," according to the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Blaedel, who identifies as queer and uses the pronouns they and them, expressed frustration and disappointment in a letter published in full by the Gazette. …

"Today we are naming together the truth that it is not currently possible for me to continue my ministry in the context of the Iowa Annual Conference, nor the UMC," wrote Blaedel, the former director of the Wesley Center at the University of Iowa. "That is not the truth I want to come to, but it has been, is being, revealed as true. ... I am no longer willing to subject my body and soul and life to this particular violence.

Now, let’s read this carefully.


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An issue that never goes away: What do U.S. religious groups teach about abortion?

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An issue that never goes away: What do U.S. religious groups teach about abortion?

THE QUESTION:

What do U.S. religious groups teach about the contentious abortion issue?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Remarkably, the abortion issue is as contentious as when the U.S. Supreme Court liberalized law 46 years ago, with new state restrictions injecting it into courtrooms and the 2020 campaign. The following scans significant teachings by major religious denominations.

The Catholic Church, the largest religious body in the U.S. (and globally), opposes abortion, without exceptions. A Vatican Council II decree from the world’s bishops declares that “from the moment of its conception, life must be guarded with the greatest care,” and calls abortions “abominable crimes.” The official Catechism says the same and dates this belief back to Christianity’s first century (Didache 2:2, Epistle of Barnabas 19:5).

Eastern Orthodox and Catholic leaders have jointly affirmed “our common teaching that life begins at the earliest moments of conception” and is “sacred” through all stages of development. However, America’s 53-member Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops acknowledges “rare but serious medical instances where mother and child may require extraordinary actions.”

A Southern Baptist Convention resolution before the Supreme Court ruling advocated permission in cases of “rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity” or damage to a mother’s “emotional, mental, and physical health.” The SBC later shifted toward strict conservatism on many matters. A 2018 resolution affirms “the full dignity of every unborn child” and denounces abortion “except to save the mother’s physical life.”

Two United Methodist Church agencies helped establish the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (since renamed Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice) to champion women’s unimpeded choice. But the 2016 UMC conference directed the agencies to leave the coalition, and voted to withdraw endorsement, upheld since 1976, of the Supreme Court’s “legal right to abortion.” The UMC recognizes “tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify” abortion. It opposes late-term abortion except for danger to the mother’s “physical life” or “severe fetal anomalies incompatible with life.”


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Washington Post channels devastated United Methodist left. Who needs to talk to the right?

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This may sound simplistic, but here goes. With most news events that involve elections, or votes to settle disputes inside an organization, there will be a winning side and a losing side.

Life is more complex than that, of course, and the “winners” of a single vote may not be the winners over the long haul. But let’s say that the winners keep winning the big votes for a decade or two.

At that point, journalists need to do one of two things. First, journalists can produce a story that, as Job 1, focuses on what the winners plan to do (since they won) and then, as Job 2, covers how the losing side plans to respond. The alternative is to write a major story about the winning group and then, to offer needed balance, to write a second story about how this outcome will affect the losing side.

With that in mind, please consider the Washington Post story that ran the other day with this headline: “U.S. Methodist leaders lay plans to resist vote against same-sex marriage.” That is one way to state the issue — looking at this from the losing side of the equation.

It would be just as accurate to say that this was a vote — the latest of many — defending the United Methodist Church’s stance in favor of ancient (thinking church history) doctrines on marriage and sex. You could also say that the key votes focused on whether UMC clergy can be required to honor their ordination vows to follow the denomination’s Book of Discipline. However, that would be the point of view held by the winners, after that special global UMC general convention held recently in St. Louis.

So the Post team doing? The headline states the editorial approach: This is a feature story built on the reactions on the losing side in St. Louis, the plans of the left-of-center establishment that has long controlled UMC life in the United States. That’s it. That’s what readers get. Thus, the overture:

When the United Methodist Church voted to uphold its ban on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy last month, Methodist pastors and churchgoers across America were devastated. A majority of American delegates had voted against the plan, though they were outvoted by more conservative delegates from Africa and other continents.

In the weeks since, several small but powerful cadres of pastors and bishops have begun plotting paths to overturn or undermine the decision.


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USA Today: So 100-plus Tennessee clergy oppose 'anti-gay' bills. How newsworthy is that?

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I realize that I told the following Colorado war story last year.

But I’m going to share it again, because it perfectly describes one of the concerns that a journalist/reader raised in an email the other day about a USA Today story that ran with this sweeping headline: “Clergy in Tennessee take a stand against slate of anti-LGBT legislation.”

Focus on the word’s “Clergy in Tennessee.” The lede then describes this group as 100-plus “religious leaders.” Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

OK, the setting for this mid-1980s war story is a press conference called by the Colorado Council of Churches, announcing its latest progressive pronouncement on this or that social issue. Here’s that flashback:

If you look at the current membership of this Colorado group, it's pretty much the same as it was then — with one big exception. Back then, the CCC was made up of the usual suspects, in terms of liberal Protestantism, but the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver was cooperating in many ways (although, if I remember correctly, without covenant/membership ties). …

So at this press conference, all of the religious leaders made their statements and most talked about diversity, stressing that they represented a wide range of churches.

In the question-and-answer session, I asked what I thought was a relevant question. I asked if — other than the Catholic archdiocese — any of them represented flocks that had more members in the 1980s than they did in the '60s or '70s. In other words, did they represent groups with a growing presence in the state (like the Assemblies of God, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)?

In other words, I asked (a) what percentage of the state’s clergy were actually involved in the religious bodies that had, allegedly, endorsed this political statement and (b) whether the churches involved were, statistically speaking, still the dominant pew-level powers in that rapidly changing state. Note: Colorado Springs was already beginning to emerge as a national headquarters for evangelicals.

I thought that I was asking a basic journalism question, in terms of assessing to potential impact of this CCC statement. I will, however, admit that I was questioning the accuracy of the group’s “diversity” claims.

This brings us to the current USA Today story here in Tennessee. Here is the lede:


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Journalists may want to ask: When will United Methodist left decide that enough is enough?

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Journalists may want to ask: When will United Methodist left decide that enough is enough?

Way back in the 1980s, as the sex wars in the Episcopal Church really began to heat up, I heard a conservative priest tell a joke that gently mocked many of his Anglo-Catholic colleagues on the doctrinal right.

The whole point of the joke is that it is really hard to cut the ties that bind, when people have invested decades of their lives in religious institutions and traditions. And then there are the all-too human, practical details that come into play. In the end, it may be easier to edit the Apostles Creed and modernize the prayer book than it is to split the clergy pension play or divide a denomination’s trust funds.

Which brings us back to that joke that I have shared once or twice in the past. I have left the time-element in the first line intact. Like I said, it’s an old joke.

The year is 2012 … and two Anglo-Catholic priests in the back of National Cathedral are watching the Episcopal presiding bishop and her incense-bearing lover process down the aisle behind a statue of the Buddha, while the faithful sing a hymn to Mother Earth.

"You know," one traditionalist whispers, "ONE more thing and I'm out the door."

Right now, in the multi-decade United Methodist Church civil war, things may be close to reaching that point for LGBTQ clergy and their supporters on the denomination’s doctrinal left. What will it take for these believers — who are sincerely convinced that 2,000 years of Christian doctrines on marriage and sex should be changed — to decide that enough is enough?

That’s the key question that I asked during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. (Click here to tune that in, or head over the iTunes.) What would this old “ONE more thing” joke look like today, if you turned it around — doctrinally speaking — and looked at it from the point of view of United Methodists on the left?

Maybe you would have two United Methodist pastors from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver — long a safe haven for the left — standing at the back of a global General Conference that is being held in a United Methodist stronghold in Africa. They are watching an African bishop walk down the aisle with his wife with his hands in the air singing an evangelical praise song. The service ends with the Rev. Franklin Graham giving an altar call.

One more thing and I’m out the door?

Then what? That was the other half of the equation in this podcast. Follow me through a few “ifs” here.


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