Posted on 06/16/2020 7:54:02 PM PDT by lightman
After fifty years of fractious debate over sexuality, The United Methodist Church is about to divide into two or more denominations. This division would have occurred at the scheduled May 2020 quadrennial General Conference, now postponed until 2021 due to COVID-19.
If ratified next year, this schism will be the first organized division of a major national US denomination since before the Civil War, when Methodists, Baptists, and others divided over slavery.
United Methodist traditionalists and liberals have fought ever since the denomination in 1972 declared homosexual practice “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The church subsequently banned same-sex rites and reaffirmed that clergy must be celibate if single and monogamous in male/female marriage, otherwise risking defrocking.
This traditionalist stance has been upheld at every governing General Conference since 1972. These conventions of up to one thousand delegates meet for approximately ten days every four years to set denominational policy. Evangelical and moderate institutionalists in the US church sustained this teaching for decades in sync with American culture. But when the culture shifted, the church’s moderates followed.
But the church’s evangelicals gained new allies with the dramatic rise over the last twenty-five years of United Methodism in Africa, where nearly half and perhaps more of the church’s 12.5 million membership now live. The Africans are staunch theological conservatives.
As other historically liberal mainline Protestant denominations surrendered traditional Christian sexual standards over the past twenty years, United Methodism, which is the largest mainline church, became nearly the only holdout for traditionalism. US church liberals, who had long assumed history was on their side, were exasperated and unprepared for this American evangelical-African majority bloc.
The final showdown came at the February 2019 Special General Conference in St. Louis, which was summoned specifically to settle the church’s differences on sex. US bishops, with the US church bureaucracy behind them, pushed a plan to liberalize the denomination by allowing local options on sexual standards. The bishops and other US liberals were stunned when the delegates instead tightened the church’s rules against heterodox sexual behavior. Liberals complained their church had been infected by an “Ebola Virus.” Africans told of spiritual visions they had of invisible cosmic warfare at the convention.
St. Louis helped persuade US liberals that even if history is on their side, church demography is not. US United Methodism loses nearly one hundred thousand members annually, while Africa sometimes gains twice that number every year. Later in 2019, liberal and conservative church caucus groups convened to negotiate a denominational division. A bishop from Sierra Leone chaired the meetings, which were mediated by legendary D.C. lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, former Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
In January 2020, this mediation announced agreement on a Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation, which would divide United Methodism. Liberals would inherit the church’s name and US-based bureaucracy. Traditionalists would create a new Methodist denomination that all local congregations could join by majority vote, keeping their church property (in United Methodism, church properties are held in trust by the denomination through the local conference, which is like a diocese or presbytery). Conferences, which typically follow state lines, could join by 57% vote. The new traditional church also would receive $25 million from the old liberalized denomination. There would also be smaller funding for potentially additional new denominations, which might include a radical liberationist Methodism impatient with conventionally liberal United Methodism.
Many conservative United Methodists initially reacted to this protocol for separation with indignation. Why should the global traditionalist majority “leave?” Shouldn’t US liberals who always lost the votes on sexuality instead leave to create their new denomination? But these complaints from conservatives, after reflection, have largely subsided.
The US church bureaucracy has been liberal for many decades, and few conservatives are interested in trying to reform it. It is also financially unsustainable, with the church already predicting funding cuts of 40% or more, likely exacerbated by COVID-19. Most traditionalists prefer a new denomination without the albatross of bloated church agencies.
There is also the consideration that while traditionalists are a global majority, they are only a plurality in the US. A church poll showed 44% of US church members are traditionalist, with the remainder divided between progressives and moderates. US clergy typically are more liberal than laity. A new denomination will allow traditionalist clergy to self-select into it, allowing for greater unity behind traditional orthodoxy.
The new traditionalist Methodist denomination likely will end up with larger membership than the old liberal United Methodism. About 20% of US local conferences will likely align traditionalist, with a population of about 1.5 million. Another one million or more from congregations in liberal conferences also will likely join. This 2.5 million in the US will be joined by over five million in Africa, and thousands more in the Philippines and Europe, for perhaps a total global denomination of 7.5 million or more. Meanwhile, old United Methodism will be almost totally comprised of US members, with 3.5 or four million, a number that will quickly shrink further, following the example of other denominations that liberalized on sexuality.
Of course, as this division rolls through thousands of congregations, it will not always be clean and amicable. The debate may cripple and perhaps ultimately kill many divided local churches. But overall, United Methodists have the opportunity through this organized division to avoid the chaos inflicted on other mainline denominations, where departing conservative congregations often lost their properties amid millions of dollars in litigation.
The new global Methodist Church will have the opportunity to revive the Wesleyan witness in America, in solidarity with its international members, who will be the denominational majority. Liberal United Methodism has lost more than four million members in America over 55 years and is virtually incapable of planting new churches. New, orthodox Methodism can reach cities, the West Coast, the Northeast, immigrant and nonwhite populations, and young people whom liberal mainline Protestantism largely cannot.
There is also the opportunity for a Wesleyan intellectual and theological revival. After many decades of liberal control of United Methodism’s seminaries, orthodox theologians have long operated as a minority but robust resistance. They will have the chance to shape a new global denomination with classic Methodist theology. Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, which is not officially United Methodist but produces more clergy for the denomination than any other school, will be the leader. United Seminary in Ohio, the church’s only mostly orthodox school out of thirteen seminaries, will also play a large role.
Orthodox United Methodist theologians are prominent in the Wesleyan Theological Society, where the more liberal voices are typically from evangelical denominations like the Church of the Nazarene. At the society’s recent meeting, I heard friends discuss a core group of forty-to-sixty orthodox United Methodist thinkers who could resource the new church. It was exciting to hear.
Just prior to the Wesleyan Theological Society, a group of traditional US and international bishops, pastors, and renewal caucus group leaders, including myself, convened to agree on principles for the new global Methodism. There was an encouraging spirit of unity and hope.
As a lifelong United Methodist who has spent my whole adult life (more than thirty years) laboring for church renewal, I confess I had not hoped for or expected schism. But I now believe that United Methodist division is the best course forward, and I look forward to great days ahead for traditional Methodism in America and globally.
“...divide over trivial differences...”
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You put yourself in God’s place sir. Does God agree with you that these differences are trivial? I see from the wording of your comment that you trivialize the doctrine of water baptism. The structural and theological differences between Baptist Presbyterian and Methodist are also trivial in your estimation, but only because of your gross ignorance.
This proposed division that you speak of will happen when God Himself judges the world, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As a life-long Lutheran, I departed the ELCA back in 2004, when I realized that it was becoming a liberal cult.
I joined the LCMA and was very comfortable there. I believe I could also be comfortable in the new, conservative Methodist Church.
As liberals and homosexuals take over establishment churches, they lever Christ out of the churches. What is left is a cesspit of depravity, wrapped in a respectable wrapper.
Then it’s a editing problem (I get those too, in fact my motto as a writer is “the last edit you do is one edit too few”) because you quoted something and then appeared to disagree with it (“It isn’t.” indicates disagreeing).
“Yes, it isn’t.” would have been a form clearly agreeing with the quote.
/grammarfussbudget
As one of the many good examples, I'll follow up on baptism. I don't trivialize the important rite of baptism, just the emphasis on the quantity of water. I cannot imagine anyone thinking it's important to use just a sprinkle (as my church does). If other Christians who believe the Bible is the literal word of God consider immersion important, I'm more than happy to unite in one church with full immersion as part of that church than it is to keep a separate names on the two (or more) church communities.
Structural differences? Do we really care about the differences in how the clergy for a church are selected? Couldn't we meet, discuss what works and what doesn't, and come to a consensus on how that choice could be made? None of the major Protestant churches have a structure that is clearly wrong as I read scripture.
I'm more than happy to unite with the Baptist Church where my niece was baptized (and I know a whole lot about them), just not with a nearby woke social club - Presbyterian Church (USA) - that held a ceremony in front of the cross to celebrate the "union" of two men. Christians are facing pure evil, and those forces are on the move. I would love to unite God's church as much as possible, with the only limit being that we all follow God's Word rather than editing out and correcting what the Left considers God's mistakes.
Computer in the shop—don’t have any of my voluminous pinglists. If you have any umc lists that may supplement lightman’s, spread the word. This is a very hopeful essay.
I think the new church should be called the Wesleyan Revival.
I love the part of the essay dealing w seminaries, and there being opportunities for orthodox Wesleyan theologians. It’s what the UMC has been sorely lacking.
The problem is that those who are consciously trying to pull people away from Christ (as opposed to those who are simply cluelessly apostate) will act orthodox enough to get into orthodox congregations. Tares are social chameleons.
That is a good point. I forgot. I expect people to be honest, and I’m a slow learner when dealing with pure evil.
Thank you for your kind response which was decent and honorable and allows the discussion to proceed. You are a credit to the forum here, thanks.
You cannot maintain that the amount of water is trivial and maintain the importance of the rite. If, as the Baptist church believes, the rite, like Communion, is purely symbolic, then the mode of Baptism picturing His death burial and resurrection is as important as the rite itself. IIRC it was Chuck Colson who wrote about having communion on the beach using pizza and colas (cannot confirm this). Pat Boone baptized people at his home swimming pool. Could he have spit on his fingers and touched someone’s forehead and called it baptism?
What if a church decided that the water really needed to be mixed with cow’s blood and poured on a person’s naked ribs? I say these things to awaken you to the realization that you do indeed have ideas about modes of baptism. Perhaps you would say that there must be some religious something or other that has something or other to do with water or something, then you must see that that itself is a religious belief that is not trivial at all.
(To say that the rite conveys grace in some way is the farthest thing from trivial that I can conceive. To say that baptism is “essential” for salvation as does the church of Christ is the farthest thing from trivial that I can conceive. You will agree that these doctrines are not trivial, but will say that the amount of water is trivial.)
Sprinkling is of course connected with infant baptism. The RC church claims that when they sprinkle an infant that it washes away original sin. To die unbaptized by the RC church is to go to Hell if adult or to limbo if a child. The mode is intimately connected to the doctrine behind it. Furthermore their claim to final authority is crucial to their use of sprinkling. If that church has the final say, or if you do my FRiend, then the Scripture does not, and that is also the most untrivial thing.
The Presbyterian church holds baptism to be the NT counterpart to circumcision, therefore it is completely unnecessary to reserve it for believers! To them, or at least to some of them, baptizing an infant is no issue at all, as to them the only issue is unconditional election so the fact or mode of baptism is complete trivial. A Presby said that sprinkling children of believing parents is “believer’s baptism” because Paul said to the Phillipian jailer, “...and thy house.” Those kids are elect therefore they are believers even if they aren’t believers yet.
BTW in passing, it would be unethical for you to unite with a Baptist church while holding your position which is contrary to the historic Baptist faith, and I know you would never do that and that is not what you meant by what you said.
As to church government, the Baptist view of congregational government is directly connected to the priesthood of the believer and the perspicuity of the Word of God which are the two foundational doctrines of the Baptist faith. Not trivial at all. Your idea of getting together to discuss is a Baptist idea. The Presbyterians would not let you have any say unless you were an elder. The Methodists will choose your leader for you whether you like it or not. Are you talking about a church council to decide this? That was done and the decision was that there is no church except the Roman Catholic Church!
You may have the last word and I am out on your final. I do not meant to correct you, I just think the idea you expressed should be countered. You have many good things to say and I thank you for that.
Thanks. That is very helpful.
Just taking the selection of leadership, I have served several times and for extended periods on the committees that deals with new ministers for our church (long ago as a Presbyterian and now as a Methodist, with the change due to the Presbyterian Church leaving scripture behind). I've even taught our adult classes on what it means to be Methodist. Nowhere have I seen even a hint that our way of choosing a new minister is biblical or mandatory. It's just what we do, and we could certainly change that by a simple vote. Of course, we're Methodist and many of us think we could change whether homosexuality is okay by a simple vote. The idea that internal traditions can change does does not bother me at all. The idea that those changes can include rejecting scripture is a major issue.
The other points I'll address in research, prayer, and thought. I could chat more, but this is not the time. The bottom line is that I do not approve of changing, adding to, or deleting the words of scripture unless (as happened with Jesus) God tells us directly. So long as two churches follow that simple rule, I think we can and should work together more closely.
I am not certain what will come out of the covid shutdown and reschedule for this denomination.
I sense a different level of energy. Perhaps it’s just enthusiasm on the shelf until a later date. My fear is that it’s apathy.
As always, time will tell.
You hit that nail on the head—where it all went wrong. I wonder how long ago the first Methodist conference crossed that line. I was raised Methodist Episcopal, which was a solidly Biblical church until it merged ito become the UMC in the mid-60s.
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