If you read most of the mainstream news coverage about chaos inside the United Methodist Church, then you know that this war centers on LGBTQ issues.
Readers who use niche websites offering the views of conservative United Methodists, in the United States and around the world, will learn that the war is about sex, salvation, biblical authority and core doctrines in ancient Christian creeds. Hold that thought.
Before we look at recent events in the divided United Methodist Church, let’s consider an important political-science term — “condensation symbol” — that journalists may want to ponder. In a 2021 post (“Queer Santa As A Condensed Symbol Of Progressivism”) — blogger Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher offered this material from a reader:
A condensation symbol is “a name, word, phrase, or maxim which stirs vivid impressions involving the listener’s most basic values and readies the listener for action,” as defined by political scientist Doris Graber. Short words or phrases such as “my country,” “old glory” “American Dream,” “family values,” are all condensation symbols because they conjure a specific image within the listener and carry “intense emotional and effective power.” … Graber identified three main characteristics of condensation symbols, as they: (1) Have the tendency to evoke rich and vivid images in an audience. (2) Possess the capacity to arouse emotions. (3) Supply instant categorizations and evaluations.
With that in mind, consider the ministry of Isaac Simmons — currently associate pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Ill. — who has been accepted as a candidate for UMC ordination. Simmons (they/them) is best known as the drag-queen preacher Penny Cost.
At first glance, it would appear that Penny Cost is a perfect example of the LGBTQ issues causing the UMC split. However, I would argue that Simmons is a “condensed symbol” of the wider concerns of the global United Methodist coalition that wants to retain and defend the denomination’s current doctrines on a host of issues.
Consider the following from The American Spectator piece with this headline: “Methodist Church’s First Drag Queen Pastor: ‘God Is Nothing’.” This is, of course, a conservative publication. However, the following passage focuses on direct quotes from a new slam poem posted online by Penny Cost:
“God is nothing,” the self-described “dragavangelist” repeats throughout the poem, adding, “the Bible is nothing” and “religion is nothing.” In the end, he concludes God and the Bible are nothing “unless we wield it into something.”
“God must be f***ing nothing,” he says, “if her boundaryless, transubstantiated bodies of color are run down, beaten, and strewn in the streets of America instead of ruling the runways of life.”
He speaks of God not as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather as the source of queerness, describing him as “nothing but a drag queen with a microphone of biblical f***ing proportions,” “nothing, but if she were, she would be ‘yes, queen’-ing her way down the runways of Paris and Montreal,” and “nothing, but if she were, she would be a seamstress of divide couture, weaving together string theory and self portraits to form the fiercest gowns of queer existence.”
This raises a question that, trust me, would create intense debate among United Methodists that could be quoted in stories about the slow train wreck unfolding in many congregations and regional UMC conferences.
Here is that question: Does the work of Penny Cost — along with the seminary educators shaping Simmons — raises issues that are broader than fights about the ordination of candidates for ministry who are sexually active outside of marriage (marriage as defined in the denomination’s “Book of Discipline”)? In other words, are there creedal issues here, as well as the newsy LGBTQ issues?
After that long introduction, consider the top of this recent Religion News Service report: “More than 100 Florida churches file lawsuit to leave United Methodist Church.”
More than 100 churches are suing the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church to immediately disaffiliate from the denomination.
The lawsuit comes amid a slow-moving schism in the United Methodist Church largely over the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members. And, according to the head of a new, theologically conservative Methodist denomination that recently split from the United Methodist Church, it likely won’t be the last.
The word “largely,” as in “largely over the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members,” is never really explained. Once again, I would argue that it’s crucial for mainstream journalists to consider the views of Methodists on both sides of this divide over the wider biblical and doctrinal issues that are in play.
Here is another question: Why are the pro-Discipline Methodists hitting the exit doors right now, instead of waiting for the final vote on the document that was supposed to allow this divorce without waves of expensive legal warfare?
The RNS report does provide information that deserves way more coverage right now in national media:
The Global Methodist Church launched this year after a third postponement of the United Methodist Church’s 2020 General Conference, which was set to consider a proposal to split the denomination, allowing churches to disaffiliate with their properties to form new conservative expressions of Methodism. It now has several hundred clergy and nearly 100 churches worldwide, Boyette said.
In recent weeks, moderate and progressive leaders who helped negotiate the proposal, called the Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation, have rescinded their support. Bishops who were part of the negotiating team, including Carter, released a statement affirming the work that had been done on the proposal and trusting it to delegates who may still consider it at the next General Conference, now scheduled for 2024.
What happened? One side says COVID-19 caused the delay, period. Other voices say that the UMC establishment in America has used the pandemic as a strategic device to “run out the clock,” to use a sports image.
What does the RNS say in this piece?
… [A] deadly pandemic swept the globe, postponing the General Conference not once, but three times to 2024. Things started to come apart. After the third postponement, some traditionalists, tired of waiting, announced they were launching the Global Methodist Church.
Earlier this month, four representatives of centrist and progressive advocacy groups and one clergyperson from the Philippines — all of whom had negotiated and signed the protocol — published a statement saying they “no longer in good faith” could support the plan or work toward its adoption by the General Conference.
To its credit, the RNS ran an earlier story with more detail on this development. Once again, the cause of this split is described as “mainly the question of LGBTQ inclusion and affirmation.”
The key: It appears that some conservatives have given up and want out, no matter what the cost. Others still want a final voice on the Protocol. This RNS long RNS piece does allow one pro-Discipline voice to speak his piece:
The Rev. Jay Therrell, who recently became president of the theologically conservative Wesleyan Covenant Association, sees a denomination in chaos.
Therrell said Wesleyan Covenant members were disappointed by the Protocol Response statement and still believe the protocol is the best way for Methodists to move forward. His predecessor — the Rev. Keith Boyette, who now heads the Global Methodist Church — had been part of protocol negotiations.
“To us, it feels as though they have chosen to make what is already a very difficult situation even more so,” Therrell said.
It’s “no secret” the Wesleyan Covenant Association is an “advocate for and an ally for theologically conservative churches to depart the United Methodist Church for the Global Methodist Church,” he said — that’s part of the updated mission it adopted at its meeting earlier this year. But the new president of the organization sees that working “in concert” with the protocol, which always had the creation of a new, traditionalist expression of Methodism as its goal.
Pulling support for the protocol now is “just another ploy to send the denomination deeper into chaos,” trapping traditionalist churches, according to Therrell.
“They say that they want a big tent, but the reality is they want a tent that is big enough to take money from theologically conservative churches but not honor our theology,” he said.
Once again, note that the camp seeking what RNS calls a “new, traditionalist expression of Methodism” is the one that wants to retain and defend the teachings in the existing UMC Book of Discipline. The establishment leaders are the ones who want change in order to, somehow, seek unity in an approach that says it doesn’t matter that Methodists clergy and institutions teach — in word and deed — about doctrines on sexuality and, it would appear, quite a few other core doctrines.
If that’s confusing, consider the background material in this timeline from a Frank Lockwood piece at the Democrat Gazette in Arkansas:
The United Methodist Church, with roughly 6.3 million U.S. members, is the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination.
Unlike other major mainline denominations, it has not embraced the gay rights movement, opting to retain longstanding restrictions on marriage and ministry.
The church's Book of Discipline, which contains its laws and doctrines, states that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." Therefore "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" are not supposed to be ordained as ministers or appointed to serve.
In some jurisdictions, church leaders have ignored the restrictions, portraying them as unjust and un-Christlike.
Every four years, the concerns arise at the church's General Conference. In recent years, a majority of the U.S. delegates have favored dropping the restrictions, but a coalition of U.S. and overseas traditionalists has outvoted them.
More than half of the United Methodist Church's members live outside the United States, primarily in Africa.
Obviously, these early departures from the pro-Discipline global coalition strengthen the hand of the establishment in North America.
What is this fight all about?
Readers need to know that there is more to this than arguments about sex.
FIRST IMAGE: Broadview website screen graphic from a video appearance by Penny Cost.