The looming UMC split - initial thoughts

This was inevitable:

A prominent group of 16 United Methodists released a detailed proposal today calling for an amicable separation of The United Methodist Church. The group included individuals representing all the major advocacy organizations affiliated with the church and eight bishops from around the world, including Bishop Kenneth Carter, current president of the Council of Bishops, and Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, the council’s president-elect.

The distinguished attorney Kenneth Feinberg served, pro bono, as the mediator who guided the diverse group to an agreement. Among many important assignments, Feinberg is widely known as the special master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

In a document entitled “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation” the group said, “The United Methodist Church and its members aspire to multiply the Methodist mission in the world by restructuring the Church through respectful and dignified separation.” The group went on to say, “the undersigned propose restructuring the [Church] by separation as the best means to resolve our differences, allowing each part… to remain true to its theological understanding, while recognizing the dignity, equality, integrity, and respect of every person.”

The protocol agreement calls on the 2020 General Conference to adopt a process that would allow central conferences, annual conferences, and local churches to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination while maintaining control of all their property, assets, and liabilities.

“This is a very important agreement, and the most hopeful development in a dispute that has undermined the health and vitality of both local churches and the denomination in general,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and one of the 16 individuals who negotiated and signed the agreement. Boyette and Indiana Annual Conference laywoman Patricia Miller, president of The Confessing Movement, represented the Renewal and Reform groups that include their organizations, plus Good News and the Institute on Religion and Democracy/UMAction.

“Since the close of the 2019 General Conference Renewal and Reform groups leaders have engaged in conversations with other advocacy group leaders, bishops, and church officials in an effort to resolve our differences through a negotiated plan of separation,” said Boyette. “We are thankful for those who have stepped forward since that contentious General Conference to propose an agreement respecting the sincere theological and ethical convictions of Methodists across the board.”

Under the terms of the protocol agreement central conferences, by a two-thirds vote, could vote to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination, and annual conferences, by a 57 percent vote, could vote to do the same. However, central and annual conferences are not required to hold such votes, and if they do not do so, they will remain with the “post-separation United Methodist Church,” the body that will continue the name and infrastructure of the present church.

Local churches, whether their annual conferences take action or not, could also vote to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination. The local church council would “determine a voting threshold of either a simple majority or two-thirds of those present and voting at a duly called church conference [i.e., a conference that includes all church members present and voting].” According to the protocol agreement, “A vote on a motion to opt for a different affiliation would occur in a church conference held not more than 60 days after the request for such a vote is made by the church council.” Those conferences would be held in consultation with a local church’s district superintendent, and he or she would be required to authorize the conferences. Local churches voting to join a new traditionalist Methodist church would retain all their property and assets, and be responsible for their liabilities (e.g., loan repayments).

The mediation team assumed the Wesleyan Covenant Association would serve as the vehicle for creating a new traditionalist Methodist denomination. It is also assumed the post-separation UM Church would quickly move to adopt legislation creating a U.S. Regional Conference, and that conference would consider changing its sexual ethics, allowing same-sex weddings, and ordaining openly gay clergy.

There are several hoops this proposal must jump through prior to being made official, but it appears that all sides view this as the way to resolve the matter.

I attend a Methodist church - a small, rural congregation that is strongly traditionalist - but I am not officially a Methodist. On paper, I'm a Presbyterian (PCUSA), but it's been years and years since I attended a service of that denomination.

The fissures in mainline Protestantism over the last 60 years have been one of the more significant manifestations of our country's massive cultural transformation. As a 14-year-old, I witnessed what it did to the above-mentioned Presbyterians. My parents left the church then. My father took the pastor of our local congregation to lunch and told him that the final straw was the PCUSA's contribution to Angela Davis's defense fund. Years later, I immersed myself in research on the subject, as the correlation between the emptying of mainline Protestant pews over the decades since 1960 and mainline Protestantism's increasing preoccupation with secular concerns, principally US foreign policy, was the subject of my thesis when I was earning my master's degree in history. (I started writing it in the last spasms of the Cold War, when these churches were really pouring on the "peace activism" with regard to places like Central America and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Angola and Mozambique.)

But we all know what the looming UMC split is about: whether to adhere to sound doctrine on human sexuality or let some kind of vague notion of "inclusiveness" drive denominational policy. Where one comes down on that question has all kinds of ramifications for our society's foundational notions of what a family is, which is going to affect how future generations view the church's role as the bride of Christ. It's not much of a stretch to see a time when the non-traditional side of this split sees fit to abandon "bride of Christ" language as unrepresentative of the panoply of human family types.

It all gets back to how one views the Bible. Is Scripture inerrant and God-breathed, or is it some kind of human-crafted blueprint we can assume to have flexibility built into it?

This development joins other fissures within twenty-first century American Christianity - the Trumpist vs. non-Trumpist split within evangelicalism, the struggle of the Catholic Church to surmount the sex-abuse scandal -  at a time when the overall faith is in a particularly vulnerable position. Our society becomes less Christian by the day. For the deeply concerned faith-walk pilgrim - for me, anyway - it seems like the guiding question, as these things unfold, should be: Does this development reflect Scripturally revealed doctrine, or is it tainted by the fleeting impulses of this world?