May 22, 2024
By Rev. Dr. Scott Field
From the perspective of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, the outcomes of the UM General Conference (April 23 – May 3, 2024) were understandably discouraging. However, as one Filipino observer put it, the decisions of the General Conference drew a bright red line. A number of previously contested matters have now become clear. That metaphorical line explains the underlying reason so many Methodists are choosing to leave the UMC behind.
Last week the President of the UMC Council of Bishops, Tracy Smith Malone, issued a press release to clarify the relationship between the United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church. It includes, in part, the following:
“Likewise, the mission of the church is harmed by the denigration of one body at the expense of another. To that end, we call upon the members of the Global Methodist Church to formally recognize The United Methodist Church as an authentic and valid denomination and to cease all efforts to coerce members of The United Methodist Church to join their fellowship. Likewise, we commit ourselves to the same standard of respect and grace.” (Bishop Tracy Malone comments on relationship with Global Methodist Church)
Bishop Malone indeed recognizes that there is a dividing line, but seems to suggest, apparently, that we discount the significance of the division or disregard it entirely. I do not speak for the Global Methodist Church, though I have withdrawn from the UMC and am an Ordained Elder in the Global Methodist Church (Senior Status). But I believe I am on solid ground affirming what any and all, Christian or not, Methodist of any variety or not, think about the United Methodist Church: it is indeed a denomination; that is, the UMC is a subgroup within a religion that operates under a common name, tradition, and identity.
Ah, but Bishop Malone wants a deeper recognition about the identity of the United Methodist Church. The distinguishing qualifiers she wants recognized are that the UMC is an “authentic and valid” Christian denomination. And that is the more significant concern, isn’t’ it? Here is where that metaphorical red line becomes a matter of great significance.
Again, I am not a spokesperson for the Global Methodist Church. I am the President of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. The WCA is not a denomination, but a network of laity and clergy who inform, assist, and advocate on behalf of those congregations seeking to know, discern, and decide the future trajectory of their mission and ministry. Part of that learning, discerning, and deciding involves, in many cases, whether they will remain part of the United Methodist denomination or not.
Primary Commitments Underlying Secondary Issues
As I’ve noted before (May 7), the headline issues from the General Conference are the approval of same-sex weddings and marriages in local churches, the regionalization of the denomination so that, as one result, Africans, for example, have no voice in the moral standards of the UMC in the USA, training at all levels of the church in gender fluidity and the intersectional discrimination of whiteness, homophobia, transphobia, and heteronormativity, preparation for local churches to receive the appointment of gay/lesbian / transgender / nonbinary pastors, a re-statement of possible chargeable offenses against clergy that removes the expectation of “celibacy in singleness and fidelity in marriage”, and a closing off of any further congregational disaffiliations in either the USA or internationally.
I hope those of us who regard all of this as “predictable and expected” can be excused for rolling our eyes at the breathless accounts by UM Bishops and delegates about the “unity” of the General Conference. When most of the conservative advocates had left the UMC already through disaffiliation and 25% of duly elected African delegates were left wondering why they weren’t invited to the conference in the first place, what would we expect? There wasn’t much left to do but get on the Love Train and conga line on into the New UMC.
All of this, however, is secondary.
Already more than a quarter of UM congregations in the USA have left their former denomination behind. Yet now, though the happy, united General Conference slammed the door on providing any further disaffiliations, a wave of separation efforts among UM churches in the US and other countries is underway. Make no mistake: leaving the UMC is deeply unsettling and often very costly. Something deeper must underlie the decision to leave.
Crossing the Red Line
The metaphorical red line noted by our Filipino brother is a dividing line. We might say it is the point at which personal integrity and Christian conscience is on the line.
A recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal (May 9) by Carl Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, describes on how the decisions of the United Methodist Church have crossed the line to separate the denomination from the ancient, orthodox, ecumenical, biblical Christian faith:
The Methodist church adopted a (revised) statement about marriage. It affirms “marriage as a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith (adult man and adult woman of consenting age or two adult persons of consenting age) into a union of one another and into deeper relationship with God and the religious community.” But what does “sacred” mean when divorced from the traditional theological and ethical beliefs that underpin Christianity? The description is nothing more than an aesthetic gloss to conceal what’s transpiring: the reduction of marriage to an emotional bond rather than the mysterious union of a man and woman that would normatively lead to the most sacred and godlike of events, the creation of new life.
For all the pious language, the UMC’s decision doesn’t represent a commitment to Christian orthodoxy. It is an affirmation of current middle-class sensibilities. The church shies away from the logic of its own position—a logic that would lead to the legitimation of any sexual act or arrangement as long as it concerns consenting adults. In short, it has chosen to embrace the liberal Protestant specialty: baptizing the dominant values it sees as informing the culture, no more, no less. In our times, when the values change with breakneck speed, the church that seeks to accommodate the latest moral tastes will always be at least a day late and a dollar short. As any progressive teenager might say, gay marriage is so 2015.
There is an alternative. It is to heed… (the) challenge and hold to a historic form of Christian faith that doesn’t affirm the predilections of the surrounding culture. That will come at a cost, but then so does sanctifying the sexual revolution. The UMC this year ratified a budget about 40% lower than what it approved in 2016. The faithful have voted with their feet and pocketbooks. Don’t be surprised if the world to which the UMC has sold its soul fails to make its payments.
Dr. Trueman describes what many see: the red line that divides commitment to Christian ecumenical, orthodox, biblical Christianity from accommodation to the current cultural trends in the US and Europe. And they are choosing fidelity to the Christian faith over accommodation to contemporary culture.
It is also notable that while the recent General Conference affirmed a proposal for full communion with the Episcopal Church (USA), its decisions more generally, separates the UMC from the ecumenical community of the Roman Catholic Church (1.38 billion), the Orthodox (260 million), Evangelical Protestantism (386 million), and the Anglican Communion (80 million). This calls into question the integrity of the UMC commitment to ecumenical relationships, even as most Christians understand themselves to be part of a larger redemptive and missional movement of God, under the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, for the redemption of the world through the atoning death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. The call to Christian discipleship is a call to a missionary faith based on the love of God and the love of others. The Christian gospel, as others have said, is true for everyone everywhere whether they believe it or not; or it is not true for anyone anywhere, no matter how many believe it.
The decisions of the United Methodist General Conference are perhaps perceived by its delegates and leaders to bring the time of disaffiliation and departure to an end. Things are now, as they may believe, “settled.” Many others still within the UMC, however, see something else. They see the “handwriting on the wall”; a biblical reference (Daniel 5, esp. vv. 25-28) that infers the UMC, for them, has been weighed in the balances and does not measure up; it has been tried and found wanting.
Whether the UMC is, as Bishop Malone affirms, a “valid and authentic” Christian church remains for scholars and historians to parse. But for many United Methodist clergy and laity, the decisions and direction of the UM General Conference have answered that question already.