To recap: Last week’s heavily-covered Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) gathering was without doubt a watershed (pun intended) for America’s largest Protestant denomination. 

The local church “messengers” gathered in New Orleans not only expelled congregations that ordain female clergy but passed a constitutional amendment (that needs second approval next year) restricting SBC affiliation to congregations that allow “only men as any kind of pastor or elder.” That blocks any suggestion that females could perform pastoral roles apart from being head pastor of a congregation.

Amid all the gender excitement — and the SBC’s struggle to cope with sexual abuse scandals — the media should not neglect decisive rejection of the long Baptist tradition to uphold shared classical Christian doctrines, such as those in the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith (.pdf), but leave most matters up to decisions by autonomous congregations.

Journalists might consider that current SBC teaching on women in the church and the home is in lockstep with the fundamentalist Baptist Bible Fellowship International of Springfield, Missouri. Yet that denomination also proclaims the old-fashioned belief that “the local church has the absolute right of self-government, free from the interference of any hierarchy of individuals or organizations.” Then again, the emerging SBC stance is similar to those of Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy and large numbers of Anglicans and Lutherans in the Global South.

Will the media now find any sizable breakaway from the SBC, as opposed to a predictable loss of some disgruntled individuals and scattered congregations? Doesn’t appear so in the early aftermath. The “moderates” have been leaving — slowly — for decades.

That contrasts with the ongoing split in the second-largest U.S. denomination, the United Methodist Church (UMC), over various issues of biblical authority and especially sexual morality.

Local and state news media have been covering the action, but The Guy thinks there’s ample room for comprehensive analysis of the over-all national and international situation. Mainstream journalists have consistently avoided covering important non-LGBTQ+ doctrinal issues linked to this war.

The establishment’s semi-official running tally posted here shows that what some called a “trickle” has become a flood, with (as this is written) 5,864 congregations quitting since 2019, of which 3,861 departed this year. The biggest totals so far are in the regional conferences of Kentucky, North Alabama, Indiana, Texas and Western Pennsylvania. Conferences in other regions loom in the near future.

Context: This is by far the biggest of the U.S. schisms resulting from “Mainline” Protestantism’s sexuality wars that began to emerge in the 1960s. Question for journalists to pursue: Is this the biggest breakaway since the Civil War cut off southern Presbyterians, Episcopalians and some Lutherans? (Baptists and Methodists had split earlier over slavery.)

The above numbers are for dismissals that were ratified by the regional conferences. But an orderly plan for departures has collapsed and congregations are bolting in various ways, as surveyed by Religion News Service. Battles in Georgia — home to many highly evangelical congregations — have been especially bitter, as shown in this Christianity Today update (“As Methodist Exits Hit 5,800, Some Churches Find Paths Blocked”).

Much more could be said about byzantine politicking these past couple years if reporters are interested.

Conservative lay leader Mark Tooley of United Methodist Action, who is partisan yet astute, posted a June 12 situationer (“How Many Methodist Exits?”) of particular interest for journalists. Some of his sources are worthy of follow-up work.

Start with the numbers. He says June regional conferences will post some further losses, followed by perhaps 500 or more congregations at 19 special regional sessions in the summer and fall, for probably “at least 6,500 exiting churches” by New Year’s Eve, and “7,000 or more churches is not impossible.” Some “with great difficulty” will depart via “property purchase, litigation, or property abandonment.”

That amounts to 22% of UMC congregations in 2020 just as COVID-19 and schism hit. Tooley thinks 25% will be gone by the end of 2024 depending on doctrinal shifts by the churchwide General Conference (mark your calendars) in Charlotte next April 23–May 3.

First, that meeting could enact an exit ramp to facilitate departures. Tooley figures that’s unlikely, but expects that UMC liberals, now facing weakened conservative opposition, to achieve long-sought changes in policy and theology linked to marriage, ordination and sexuality.

One unknown is how many individuals will vote with their feet (and wallets). He notes that a 2019 UMC poll found 44% of lay members called themselves traditionalists and many could depart if the 2024 General Conference veers decisively left, as events in many regional conferences suggest will happen. Congregations can only leave with two-thirds majority support, which means congregations staying within the UMC have many stranded conservative parishioners.

Any way you slice it, a large global evangelical denomination with easily a million members, or far more, is being born.

Then there’s the most important unknown. The UMC includes growing conferences in Africa and the Philippines whose numbers exceed the 38% of General Conference delegates they will be allotted. Most of the U.S. walkouts are joining the Global Methodist Church, whose temporary “transitional connectional officer” is the Rev. Keith Boyette of Virginia (kboyette@globalmethodist.org; other U.S. regional contacts listed here).

The new church’s name proclaims the Americans' innovative vision to merge with the large overseas population that shares conservative Wesleyan beliefs.

To what extent will that occur? Next year’s General Conference could prevent a mass loss by granting overseas Methodists a theological cutout to escape new liberal policies in the U.S. Tooley contends that “many bishops in Africa, whose salaries are U.S.-paid, want to stay United Methodist. But they will unlikely persuade many Africans after United Methodism fully liberalizes next year.”