If you have followed the half century of United Methodist Church warfare over the Bible, marriage and sex — I started covering this story in the early 1980s — you know the debates have consistently contained activists in three different camps. Here’s that line-up, for newcomers:
(1) The doctrinal right fighting for enforcement of the doctrines and rules in the church’s Book of Discipline.
(2) The North American establishment that has insisted that it could find a way to tweak the status quo — doctrine would change from zip code to zip code — so that everyone could stay in the same big financial tent, including LGBTQ activists in UMC seminaries and agencies.
(3) The candid doctrinal left — think West and Northeast — that openly proclaims the need to change 2,000 years of Christian tradition to fit the doctrines of the Sexual Revolution.
These divisions only became more complex as the United Methodists evolved into a truly global denomination that included booming churches in Africa and Asia — a form of diversity that made the denomination’s shrinking North American establishment more and more nervous.
In global meetings, a small-o orthodox coalition — most of the Global South plus a conservative U.S. minority — kept winning vote after General Conference vote to defend current doctrines. However, COVID-19 prevented crucial global meetings, allowing the U.S. establishment (Camp 2) several years to steer the ship.
This brings me to a new Associated Press report that does a great job, if that was the goal, of soft-pedaling recent victories by the establishment and candid left. The headline: “LGBTQ-friendly votes signal progressive shift for Methodists.” The overture:
The United Methodist Church moved toward becoming more progressive and LGBTQ-affirming during U.S. regional meetings this month that included the election of its second openly gay bishop. Conservatives say the developments will only accelerate their exit from one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations.
Each of the UMC’s five U.S. jurisdictions — meeting separately in early November — approved similarly worded measures aspiring to a future of church where “LGBTQIA+ people will be protected, affirmed, and empowered.”
How would these aspirations come to pass?
That would, of course, involve changing the Book of Discipline to reflect a changing approach to doctrine. Thus, the story notes:
The denomination still officially bans same-sex marriage and the ordination of any “self-avowed, practicing homosexual,” and only a legislative gathering called the General Conference can change that.
But this month’s votes show growing momentum — at least in the American half of the global church — to defy these policies and seek to reverse them at the next legislative gathering in 2024.
In other words, it appears that the North American establishment is poised to win (sort of) this chess match — since the global coalition has been exiled from the bargaining table right now.
Why not state that clearly? Because that’s the doctrinal end-game that global and North American conservatives have been shouting about for decades. It would be bad strategy, at this point, to say that fears on the right have been justified.
This AP report does include voices making this argument — while presenting it in a more familiar left vs. right framework, as opposed to the three-camp structure that I described above. Read the following carefully. This is long, but essential:
Supporters and opponents of these measures drew from the same metaphor to say their church is either becoming more or less of a “big tent,” as the United Methodists have long been described as a theologically diverse, mainstream denomination.
“It demonstrates that the big tent has collapsed,” said the Rev. Jay Therrell, president of the conservative Wesleyan Covenant Association, which has been helping churches that want to leave the denomination.
“For years, bishops have told traditionalists that there is room for everyone in the United Methodist Church,” he said. “Not one single traditionalist bishop was elected. Moreover, we now have the most progressive or liberal council of bishops in the history of Methodism, period.”
But Jan Lawrence, executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, which works toward inclusion of Methodists of all sexual orientations and gender identities, applauded the regional jurisdictions. She cited their LGBTQ-affirming votes and their expansion of the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of bishops.
Jurisdictions elected the church’s first Native American and Filipino American bishops, with other landmark votes within specific regions, according to United Methodist News Service.
“It is a big tent church,” Lawrence said. “One of the concerns that some folks expressed is that we don’t have leadership in the church that reflects the diversity of the church. So this episcopal election doesn’t fix that, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, elected in the Western Jurisdiction meeting, agreed. He is the first openly gay African-American man to be elected bishop. The vote comes six years after the Western Jurisdiction elected the denomination’s first openly lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto of the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area.
The LGBTQ-affirming resolutions point “to the alignment of the denomination more with the mainstream of our country,” Bridgeforth said. “It can also help us begin to center our conversations where we have unity of purpose, rather than centering on divisions.”
These are essential voices, of course. I would not argue otherwise.
But who is missing? I would argue that the most powerful camp — in North America — appears to be missing. Where are the establishment leaders who are, at this moment, in clear control? Where are the folks who hold the institutional high ground?
The AP story, to its credit also notes:
At least 300 U.S. congregations have left the denomination this year, according to United Methodist News Service. Hundreds more are in the process of leaving, and Therrell predicted that number would be in the low thousands by the end of 2023. Overseas conferences in Bulgaria and Slovakia have ended their affiliation with the denomination, and churches in Africa are considering it, he said.
Many are bound for the newly formed conservative denomination, the Global Methodist Church.
The UMC is a worldwide denomination. American membership has declined to about 6.5 million, from a peak of 11 million in the 1960s. Overseas membership soared to match or exceed that of the U.S., fueled mostly by growth and mergers in Africa. Overseas delegates have historically allied with American conservatives to uphold the church’s stances on sexuality.
How do these numbers affect the financial prospects of the new doctrinally progressive American church, the one that will operate with a tweaked Book of Discipline?
That’s a question worth asking.
Meanwhile, let me note another story angle worth exploring. The following is from the Juicy Ecumenism weblog, which is clearly a forum (#triggerwarning) for the doctrinal right. However, there are numbers and facts here that could point to evolving concepts of “diversity” among disunited Methodists — on the left and right — as well as evolving doctrines and rules for church discipline.
The big question: Who is winning, right now, in these big North American leadership votes?
… Consider the context: official records show that despite the wider American society becoming increasingly racially diverse, our denomination’s U.S. membership has remained about 90 percent white. … (T)he jurisdictional conference decisions ultimately reflect the concerns and values of overwhelmingly white electorates.
However, whites are now a minority. After the 2019 General Conference, Sub-Saharan Africans became a majority of our global denomination. When we talk about United Methodists in non-U.S. “central conferences,” we are primarily talking about Africans.
Already by 2017, Africans accounted for over 95 percent of non-American United Methodists. African membership has dramatically grown since then. And yet, in jurisdictional conferences, American United Methodist leaders ruthlessly asserted the supremacy of their own overwhelmingly white constituency.
Yes, “ruthlessly” is loaded language. However, the AP story points toward this neutral term — "successfully.”
Stay tuned as this local, regional, national and global story rolls on.