I don’t understand the reticence of the UMC to take the full plunge into a mere social group with vestments and stained glass in the windows of their buildings. It’s only one small unscriptural step after another since going with women in the clergy.
Actually, I’d put its beginning at the merger with the United Brethren to become the United Methodist Church. Mid-60s - downhill ever since, although the Renewal Movement and the Confessing Movement (and Good News before that) have taken a strong biblical stance, which tracks with most of the membership. IT’s the leadership that’s off the tracks.
I don’t understand the reticence of the UMC to take the full plunge into a mere social group
that’s all any of the modern suburbanized Christian churches want to be...our Novus Ordo parish makes the local woman’s club seem like a group of acetic monks...