Since I no longer am a member of the denomination nor the Reconciling Ministries Network, I am reluctant to comment on recent events. Even though I am now just an outsider, I still am biased.
After having survived 50 years of this acrimonious debate, I am glad the division is finally occurring. The political maneuvering back and forth only resulted in grid lock and a lack of focus and purpose for the denomination.
The Special Called Session of the General Conference in 2019 supposedly was to resolve the debate. Instead, the Book of Disciple not only retained the discriminatory phrases, but it added more rules to enforce them. That didn’t work when many conferences ignored the rules.
The General Conference added an escape clause that allowed individual congregations to leave the denomination with their property only if they voted to leave because of a “moral conflict.” This provided an exception to the Disciple that requires congregations to pay for properties that technically belong to the Annual Conference. This was an out for progressive congregations to leave. One of the rules was the congregations had to take a vote and have that vote approved by their Annual Conference by the end of December. When nothing happened, the Wesleyan Covenant Association created a new denomination titled Global United Methodists. That is distinct from the existing Wesleyan Church.
The North Carolina Conference at a special called emergency session met on November 18th and approved the disaffiliation of 249 churches in the Conference. They may choose to remain independent or affiliate with the GUM. This amounts to about 30 percent of the churches and about 22 percent of total members. I don’t know what plans have been made, but obviously this is going to require severe budget cuts for next year. I don’t have the numbers for other Annual Conferences. some of which have not scheduled a vote yet.
I know nothing of the plans for the Global United Methodists other than the Book of Discipline is no longer applicable. It will be a much smaller denomination, and to the surprise of the planners, several African conferences and churches have by default chosen to remain with the United Methodist Church.
Most mainline Protestant Denominations have gone through this separation progress, it just took the Methodist much longer to do it. This may be confusing to those who are not Methodists and don’t care one way or the other. But it has been a long and painful process that severely weakened one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States and worldwide. Conferences in Africa and Europe have been slower to address the issue, and the denomination has a minimal presence in South America and Asia. The Methodist Church in Great Britain is a separate denomination although it is part of the world-wide communion.
The debate over homosexuality will continue not only in Methodism but also in politics and the media. It is the lightning rod in Republican politics. It is the conflict between tradition and reason, and between dogma and evangelism. People do not easily give up long-held beliefs. We’re also a convenient bogeyman in power politics. It’s also a generational issue, and young people just yawn at the controversy. For too long the church has invested in the idea that sexuality is the lodestone of morality while ignoring the other seven deadly sins. The United Methodist Church still says that homosexual behavior is a sin. The question is whether that will change in the Book of Discipline after the split or whether the debate will continue.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.