If you have followed United Methodist warfare for the past 40 years or so, as I have, you know that this is a local, regional, national and global story that is only getting more complex now that it has reached pews in local churches.
For years, the key battles were between activists in the global UMC majority (primarily growing churches in Africa and Asia) and the North American UMC establishment (rooted in agencies, seminaries and shrinking blue-zip-code flocks).
At the moment, the fiercest battles are in parts of the Midwest and the Bible Belt where doctrinally conservative churches (usually rural and suburban) will square off with establishment leaders based in big-city-friendly regional conferences. You can see this drama in a recent Tennessean story: “As United Methodists in Tennessee navigate schism, 60 churches leave denomination.” Here’s the overture:
As 60 churches in West and Middle Tennessee leave the United Methodist Church, churches in East Tennessee are so far sticking around but passionately debating denomination policies.
The departures and disagreements were features of recent annual meetings for Tennessee’s two UMC conferences, illustrating the regional variation of the ongoing schism in the UMC.
In May, the split within the UMC solidified when a new "traditionalist" denomination splintered from the UMC for churches with more conservative theological and cultural views, including on sexuality and gender.
When the new Global Methodist Church launched, the pace of churches leaving the UMC was expected to intensify.
Yes, there is that problematic word once again — “schism.” In this recent post — “In terms of church history, should the United Methodist break-up be called a 'schism'?” — I argued, for several reasons, that it’s more accurate to call what is happening a “divorce.”
Without repeating all of that, the crucial point is that group given the “traditionalist” label is, in fact, the majority in the GLOBAL denomination that has, for several decades, won tense votes defending the doctrines in the UMC’s Book of Discipline. The group seeking to change these doctrines is the entrenched North American establishment. According to the Tennessean framing, the majority is creating the “schism,” while the establishment minority represents the doctrinal heart of the denomination.
Instead of a “schism,” many in the denomination — a coalition on the doctrinal left and right —negotiated is a “divorce” plan that could save years of additional pain and millions of dollars in legal fees. That plan is the “Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation” protocol, which remains in limbo after establishment leaders twice delayed the vote, citing COVID-19 fears.
This Tennessean story never mentions this important document. It also never mentions the growing fears, in many churches, that some — repeat SOME — UMC leaders are trying to stall the protocol, run out the game clock and hang on to as many powerful Sunbelt and Midwest churches as possible. Hold that thought.
Before we go further, let me note that it’s crucial to understand that this isn’t a simple battle with two sides — left vs. right. As I mentioned before, there are three crucial camps. Let me update the language from that earlier post. These are:
(1) The Global Methodist Church that wants to maintain the denomination’s current doctrines, as stated in the Book of Discipline. It does want to make it easier to enforce current ordination vows affirmed by UMC ministers in which they promise to follow church doctrines.
(2) The North American church establishment that wants to find a way to change current doctrines, making teachings on marriage and sex optional. The goal is to keep as much of the existing church structure intact as possible. Doctrines would change on a zip code by zip code basis.
(3) The candid UMC left that doesn’t want to compromise and seeks a clear break with the old UMC orthodoxy. For example, see the homepage for the Liberation Methodist Connexion.
Journalists will want to note that these fault lines on the UMC left are explained quite well in a series of MainstreamUMC.com posts. Here is crucial material linked to the second and third camps I mentioned:
Question 3: What is a Progressive Incompatibilist? Only willing to be in a church with others who fully embrace LGBTQ ordination and marriage. Anyone who is against it or unsure should be in a different church. …
Question 4: What is a Progressive Compatibilist? Fully embrace and celebrate LGBTQ ordination and marriage, but willing to be in a church with those who do not fully embrace it, or are unsure, so long as there is no harmful language and LGBTQ ordination and marriage is allowed. Uncomfortable with compromise, but willing to join a broader coalition. …
Question 5: What is a Centrist? Accepts LGBTQ ordination and marriage and seeks to end the harm caused by the exclusionary language. Actively seeks compromise for unity and for the broadest expression of Methodism. …
Thus, the “centrist” establishment leaders have been willing to delay making doctrinal changes, but also have opposed efforts to enforce the current vows taken by clergy.
Readers can see this in the following passage from the new Tennessean report. Read this carefully:
Holston Conference delegates asked their bishop to withhold disciplinary action against people who violate UMC policies on sexuality, but weren’t willing to say those policies are discriminatory, according to votes on two resolutions.
The votes point to the split among churches in the conference, which is based outside Knoxville and encompasses East Tennessee and parts of Virginia and Georgia. …
The UMC Book of Discipline says LGBTQ clergy cannot be ordained and that clergy cannot perform same-sex marriages. However, some bishops are not enforcing those policies. The lack of enforcement is a frustration among traditionalists and has contributed to the formation of the Global Methodist Church.
Actually, the Discipline forbids the ordination of clergy — gay or straight — who are sexually active outside of Christian marriage, while affirming 2,000 years of Christian tradition on the meaning of “marriage.”
This passage describes a pre-Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation strategy that journalists will be able to see elsewhere in the Midwest and the Bible Belt. Step 1: Leave doctrines in place, but do not enforce them. Step 2: Make the doctrines optional, hoping — somehow — to retain as many churches as possible in the post-protocol North American church.
Meanwhile, UMC traditionalists — easy to find on social media — are complaining that establishment leaders have started efforts (while delaying a vote on the protocol) to punish conservatives and, thus, to hang on to major churches properties and assets.
This reality didn’t make it into the Tennessean story either, even though some of the hottest battles have been, and will continue to be, in the Southeast. For example, consider the full-page advertisement (posted above) that ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
This is not a new development. As a Christianity Today report noted last summer, concerning a battle in the largest church in the North Georgia Conference:
Regional leaders of the United Methodist Church (UMC) took control of an 8,000-member congregation in suburban Atlanta earlier this month after a lengthy conflict over who should pastor the church.
The North Georgia Conference seized assets of Mount Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta on July 12, a move that has sparked tensions already roiling over the denomination’s ongoing conflict around same-sex marriage and LGBT ordination.
Back in April, North Georgia Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson reassigned Mount Bethel’s conservative pastor, Jody Ray, to a role in the regional office involving racial reconciliation and said a new pastor would be sent to the church.
Ray turned down that assignment and left the denomination. …
Such a move by a regional conference “has never happened with a church of anywhere near this size or for this reason,” said Rob Renfroe, a UMC pastor in Texas and president of the Methodist publication Good News Magazine.
Need an update? Three weeks ago, the Journal-Constitution reported:
East Cobb’s Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church must pay $13.1 million to the Methodist denomination in order to leave and become an independent church, lawyers involved in the case confirmed.
The price tag for Mt. Bethel to disaffiliate from the UMC with its property and other assets intact is part of a settlement agreement that will resolve a high-profile legal battle between Mt. Bethel and the North Georgia Conference, a regional body which governs nearly 800 UMC churches.
Wait! How would this expensive, painful separation have been handled under the Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation protocol, assuming that a vote is ever allowed to occur on that compromise plan negotiated by liberal and conservative United Methodists?
The protocol wasn’t mentioned in that Journal-Constitution update, as was the case with the new Tennessean report.
Why are so many United Methodists in the Bible Belt, it would appear, assuming that it is hopeless to wait for an up-or-down vote on the protocol plan for a peaceful divorce? Is the establishment bleeding the traditionalist camp in order to kill the protocol?
You know, there may be a story there.