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The United Methodist Church lost one-fourth of its U.S. churches in a recent schism, with conservatives departing over disputes on sexuality and theology. Now, with the approach of its first major legislative gathering in several years, the question is whether the church can avert a similar outcome elsewhere in the world, where about half its members live. The question is particularly acute in Africa, home to the vast majority of United Methodists outside the U.S. Most of its bishops favor staying, but other voices are calling for regional conferences to disaffiliate. At the upcoming General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina,...

Last year, the United Methodist Church accepted Isaac Simmons, who regularly preaches dressed as a drag queen under the name Ms. Penny Cost, as a candidate for ordination. Since that time, Simmons, who serves as an associate pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Illinois, has challenged basic theological concepts, projecting a worldview where divinity rests not in God but in queerness. In a church preparing to split over LGBTQ issues, the drag queen pastor, who embraces queer theology while barely attempting to plaster on the basic tenets of Christian theology, has become a lightning rod. Conservatives argue that...

Allendale United Methodist “Church” is already under fire for allowing minors to attend a drag queen show during its worship service, blatantly disregarding Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s legislation that prohibits exposing children to sexualized performances. One particularly egregious instance in 2022 involved Isaac Simmons, also known as drag queen “Ms. Pennycost,” who is now an ordained “pastor” or “priestess” or whatever in the UMC. Simmons openly challenges the authority of Scripture and adopts a heretical view of God, evident through his sacrilegious writings. Simmons was notably featured at this “church” delivering a “children’s sermon” that grossly misrepresented Romans 12:2, twisting...

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, wrote, " What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace." Wesley could have never imagined how much the church he founded would not just be tolerating but embracing in 2023. Thankfully, some members of the Methodist church have decided to take a stand. According to the Christian Post, Christ United Methodist Church of Jackson, one of the largest United Methodist Church bodies in Mississippi, voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to disaffiliate from the UMC Mississippi Conference. The congregation plans to change its name to "Christ United - Jackson" on Jan. 1, 2024....

More than 6,000 congregations have been given the approval to leave the United Methodist Church over the past four years amid a schism within the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States over whether to change its rules against homosexuality. According to numbers compiled by UM News, the number of UMC congregations granted disaffiliation passed the 6,000 mark earlier this week, with 6,182 as of Thursday morning. While the number includes all churches that have disaffiliated from the UMC since 2019, more than 1,800 came in 2022 and more than 4,000 in 2023. The UM News count derives from a...

The United Methodist Church is going to split. No one knows the exact contours of the split, but everyone seems confident that it is coming. There is a gulf between traditionalists and progressives in the UMC regarding same-sex marriage, and that gulf is widening: several Methodist bishops have performed same-sex weddings, defying official UMC teaching; and Karen Oliveto was elected as the first Methodist bishop in a same-sex relationship. At the root of these divisions is the fact that the UMC has always been made up of believers with distinctly different theological trajectories. The UMC was formed as an experiment...

A United Methodist Church leader is promoting the notion that killing an unborn baby in an abortion is okay as long as the mother makes a “thoughtful and prayerful” decision first. Pastor Robert Vaughn Jr., director of the General Board of Church and Society for the UMC, told Baptist News Global that the denomination takes a “reluctant pro-choice” stance on abortion. And his board is in charge of supporting that position. “Terminating a pregnancy isn’t just a medical decision; it requires advanced pastoral care so that a person can look at the whole picture,” the Herndon, Virginia pastor said. “The...

The United Methodist Church, a denomination that sponsors thousands of Boy Scout troops, recently told congregations to consider ending or altering their current agreements with the Boy Scouts of America as the embattled scouting organization settles a major sex abuse lawsuit.The UMC’s Office of Public Information released a statement last week explaining that the mainline Protestant denomination had a long history with the BSA, dating back for more than a century.Church leadership cited the recent BSA lawsuit filed by thousands of victims of sexual abuse. Earlier this year, BSA reached a settlement with a proposed payout of over $850 million...

America's third largest Christian denomination – the United Methodist Church – is splitting as conservative pastors aim to create a new denomination that will adhere to traditional biblical teachings. Methodist church leaders have formed a new denomination – called the Global Methodist Church (GMC) – and filed for formal separation from the UMC over the latter's growing acceptance of modern teachings on sexuality and gender. "In the United States, particularly, some bishops, clergy, and churches are operating in open defiance to the teachings of the United Methodist Church," said Keith Boyette, president of the conservative Wesleyan Covenant Association and spokesperson...

With the United Methodist Church’s recently announcing its General Conference would be rescheduled, further examples of the denomination’s rift over human sexuality are rising to the surface. The implementation of the church’s teachings and official doctrine, or lack thereof, continues to cause discomfort as camps with vastly different beliefs await an expected separation. One such case comes from the Illinois-Great Rivers Annual Conference (IGRC), which covers the state except for its northernmost portion. IGRC’s Vermillion River District Committee on Ordained Ministry (DCOM) has recently unanimously approved Isaac Simmons, an openly gay man and publicly practicing drag queen, as a candidate...

After the United Methodist Church agrees to divide, a new Global Methodist Church will form for traditionalist conferences, congregations and persons to join, it was announced today. The Transitional Leadership Team of the anticipated new denomination includes 17 persons, three retired bishops among them, plus the Rev. Martin Nicholas of the Houston area, an IRD board member who chairs UMAction. A vision for this emerging church was posted last year, with Nicholas, myself as IRD President and UMAction director John Lomperis participating. United Methodism’s governing General Conference will meet August 29, 2022. Its chief action item will be to divide...

John Lomperis and I signed this statement with United Methodist bishops and other leaders urging our denomination to move forward by ending our theological conflicts and adopting the Protocol for dividing our denomination into separate new churches: February 16, 2021 Coalition of Traditional Leaders Continues to Support the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation Over a year ago, a diverse group of United Methodist Church leaders released the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation. Never before had leading bishops, general church officials, and leaders of advocacy groups representing centrists, progressives, and traditionalists agreed on a plan for resolving...

Hopefully, by now, you’ve all heard that our denomination is headed for a major division, and that the need for this is widely agreed upon by the leaders of all major factions.Why is the United Methodist Church splitting?You may have heard that our division is because of homosexuality. There is some truth to that, but that is really a misleading way to view things.The reality is that our division has been a long time coming. The impending split is the result of an extensive history which dates back long before the present debates over sexual morality. We have a history,...

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...

Kevin Watson, a sharp young traditionalist United Methodist at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, has written insightfully for First Things about the denomination’s impending schism. His previously written books stress the importance of early Methodism’s small spiritual accountability groups and their application for today. His more recent book is Old or New School Methodism?: The Fragmentation of a Theological Tradition, which traces current divisions to the mid 19th century. I hope to review this book soon. Here’s Watson’s conclusion in his First Things article: The agonies of the United Methodist Church and their roots in Methodist history teach an...

While I am very sorry to hear of the painful divisions your denomination has been experiencing since the General Conference in 2019, I am writing to assure you that there is hope for the future through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.Delegates and bishops pray before a key vote on church policies about homosexuality during the 2019 United Methodist General Conference in St. Louis. | Photo: UMNS/Mike DuBoseAh, but what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Does it, perhaps, change with time or is it — like Jesus himself — the same; yesterday, today, and forever?The Anglican ministers who founded your...

United Methodism is increasingly likely to divide into separate traditional and liberal denominations. But even absent this division, the church was already heading towards sharp drops in funding for denominational structures, reflecting United Methodism’s ongoing drop in membership and resources. A recent memo from the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) outlined this reality. GCFA is submitting to General Conference 2020 a quadrennial budget for United Methodism’s structures of $494 million, an 18% reduction from the 2017-2020 budget. These cuts include 35% for United Methodist Communications (UMCOM), 20% for General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) and General Board of...

Our First Amendment means that, even though the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to same sex marriage, that new right applies only to the government's relationship with citizens. From Obergefell forward, to the extent states and the federal government recognize traditional marriage, they must also recognize same sex marriage. Thanks to the First  Amendment, though, religious institutions cannot be forced to change their doctrines to conform to the Supreme Court’s holding. In the case of the United Methodist Church, the church opted not to recognize (or officiate at) same sex marriages. It also has refused to ordain openly gay people...

United Methodism moved closer to formal schism with a new proposal released today negotiated with liberal and conservative groups, including bishops. The plan would divide the nearly 13 million member global denomination into separate conservative and liberal communions. The mediator for these negotiations was Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington, D.C. attorney best known as Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Under this plan, conferences (Methodism’s version of dioceses or presbyteries) could vote by 2021 to join the conservative denomination by a 57% vote. Local churches by 2024 could vote by majority. The conservative denomination would get $25 million...

A Progressive United Methodist congregation in Southern California is marking the Advent season with an outdoor nativity display featuring the holy family in cages. According to the Los Angeles Times, the depiction of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as refugees in cages likens one of the most well-known images of the Christmas season to photos that have become synonymous with criticism of the Trump administration’s border separation policies. “We don’t see it as political; we see it as theological,” Claremont United Methodist Church lead pastor the Rev. Karen Clark Ristine told the Times. “Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border...