800 voting members is “massive”?
But the practical result of this principle is one on which there is no need of speculating; it works in one unvarying way. When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.
Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is “ipso facto” non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.
From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into position, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and make them skillful in combating it." (pp. 195-196)
From: “THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMATION AND ITS THEOLOGY as represented in the Augsburg Confession and in the history and literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church” by Charles P. Krauth, D.D. (1871). [Note date]
Splitters!
>> John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, wrote...
Well said for someone who’s ~275 years old.
The same split is going on in the western Pennsylvania congregations of the United Methodist Church. Forty percent of our congregations in the tri-state area have voted to disaffiliate.
Over 6,000 congregations have left the UMC out of about 30,000.
Our neighbor stopped attending the Methodist Church in our town because of this. She told me many others have left for the same reason. (One reason specifically is because of a woman Assistant Pastor.)
The church no longer can support the work via regular tithes and offerings, and relies on the income from their large thrift shop and other small efforts to supplement it. They believe it will close soon.
It used to have a large congregation, and was a stable presence in the area. Gorgeous building. Sorry of pitiful.
I gave up on the United Methodist Church over 30 years ago.
This is typically the case, that the congregations leaving the Untied Methodist Church are the largest 10% of those in the denomination. So, the number of churches leaving skews the true picture. Look at is from the MEMBERS leaving and you see a much more dramatic exodus.