May 2, 2024
by Rev. Dr. Scott Field, President of the WCA
Take a Victory Lap…Mission Accomplished!
This was in the MainstreamUMC blogpost Tuesday (April 30)
Today we ended the LGBTQ funding ban! Finally. It was on the consent calendar and passed without a peep. The funding ban was the issue that indirectly launched what would become Mainstream UMC.
I (Rev. Dr. Mark Holland, Executive Director of MainstreamUMC) went to the microphone (2016 General Conference) to ask the Bishops to lead us out of this mess before the church fell apart. Out of that came the Commission on the Way Forward and the One Church Plan. We founded Mainstream UMC in 2018 to run a campaign to pass the One Church Plan. Our belief in unity in Christ fell 50 votes short in St. Louis and the mean-spirited Traditional Plan passed instead.
Today on the consent calendar, 7 different pieces of the Traditional Plan were repealed along with the funding ban. We have come full circle.
(Read the entire blogpost at https://mainstreamumc.com/category/blog/)
It is widely reported that the UMC General Conference is removing all restrictions related to homosexuality, approving a broad LGBTQIA+ agenda, and moving far beyond the provisions in the original One Church Plan that attempted to make room for progressives and traditionalists coexisting in one denomination. The legislation being approved during the current General Conference makes it abundantly clear that, as Bishop Bickerton said in his opening address, traditionalists that can’t get with the NewUMC agenda should leave.
Despite spurious MainstreamUMC allegations about attacks by the GMC or GMC “acolytes”, these changes, as Brother Holland has noted, are passing “without a peep” from conservatives. Indeed. Though MainstreamUMC has castigated us as villains attempting to undermine the General Conference and the UMC, our only legislative agenda has been extending disaffiliation to African UM congregations in Central Conferences. That effort has been convincingly stonewalled by the General Conference. The chair of a legislative committee dealing with disaffiliation told the plenary session that paragraph 2553 (the disaffiliation provision) should be denied so completely that it would never, ever actually be printed in the Book of Discipline. It was included as a separate sheet after the 2019 Special General Conference. I’m wondering now if the word disaffiliation will be added to the NewUMC lexicon of hate speech. Perhaps it is becoming the word that shall not be spoken.
So, take a victory lap!
I know, I know: many/most of the traditionalist delegates have moved on from the UMC anyhow and, yes, 25% or so of the African delegates are missing. Nonetheless, despite the other team having largely walked off the field or been ruled ineligible to participate, you have a win. The NewUMC is born!
So, Will MainstreamUMC shut down soon?
Based on the above description of MaintreamUMC’s origins, it seems clear that the organization’s mission is accomplished. Perhaps it is time to turn the swords into plowshares and be a fully supportive part of the NewUMC. Maybe an emerging characteristic of the NewUMC will be “unity” rather than a collection of caucuses and advocacy groups jostling and competing with one another.
The 2016 threat that the UMC might fall apart which prompted Brother Holland to appeal to the bishops, noted in the MainstreamUMC post above, has been met and overcome. The current resolution of the longstanding UMC internal conflict is far different from what many imagined, however.
One observer described the contentious 2019 Special General Conference as two churches attempting to be born. And so it is. Though the Global Methodist Church is just a toddler, it is, like most toddlers, growing and developing rapidly. The NewUMC, as the current General Conference indicates, is no longer contending with the traditionalists, conservatives, and others attempting to moderate the denomination. Certainly at least some on the MainstreamUMC Board of Directors are ready to quit fighting and start building. Mission accomplished!
….except for one pestering thought…
MainstreamUMC has a recurring, predictable theme in all communications: attack, condemn, and disrespect from a position of presumed righteousness. For example, today’s attacks (May 2) on duly elected General Conference delegates, one a laywoman and another an African leader, are, sadly, standard-issue MainstreamUMC output. This points out, in my humble opinion, not only that traditionalists are unwelcome in the UMC, but also the larger, simplistic, and familiar progressive worldview that all people, organizations, nations, and movements can be divided into victims and villains.
So, a question hangs in the air.
Now that many traditionalists have left the UMC (and those traditionalists who are duly elected GC delegates are acceptable targets for MainstreamUMC public attack)…
And now that both the WCA and Good News are not advocating for anything beyond a fair disaffiliation pathway for Central Conference congregations, particularly in Africa…
Who are the victims and who are the villains now?
Since disaffiliation has been denied by the General Conference to African congregations that may, after prayerful discernment, choose to leave the UMC, it seems to me that traditionalist African UMs are now the victims, which leaves the UMC as the villain.
Without doubt, this is an historic General Conference. It has declared new freedoms for United Methodists overall while reaffirming discrimination against United Methodists in Central Conferences.
That is not the end of the story, of course. African believers are strong, resilient, and deeply committed to the Lord Jesus and the authority of the Bible. Africa will rise up, despite the historic UM General Conference.