Communique
Methodist Break-Up?
Will Growing Global Pushback on Sexuality Make Progressives Give Up & Leave?
by Mark Tooley
The United Methodist Church stunned many members and observers in February 2019 when it not only refused to liberalize its teachings on sexuality but tightened its ban on same-sex rites.
An historically liberal mainline Protestant denomination wasn't supposed to reaffirm traditional Christian teaching on marriage and sexual ethics. But United Methodism is following a trajectory different from that of liberalizing Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Lutherans.
Unlike nearly every other U.S. denomination, mainline or other, United Methodism has a global membership and is directly governed by a quadrennial General Conference, which contains many delegates from overseas. Over 5.5 million of the church's 12.5 million members are in Africa, where churches are young, growing, and theologically conservative.
Since 1972, United Methodists have been debating their church's official stance on sexuality, which declares that homosexual practice is "incompatible" with Christian teaching. The church affirms sex only within male-female marriage, requires its clergy to be monogamous in marriage and celibate if single, and bans same-sex rites.
These stances have been sustained over the last fifteen years, as other mainline denominations have surrendered, thanks to growing numbers of African delegates aligned with U.S. Evangelicals, plus delegates from the Philippines and, more recently, Eastern Europe.
In February, the United Methodist bishops convened a special General Conference in St. Louis to focus exclusively on sex, with the hope of resolving the conflict. Liberal U.S. bishops aggressively pushed a plan that would grant local clergy and churches their own choice on same-sex "marriage." Traditionalists countered with their own plan to tighten enforcement of the current
standards.
Persons both within and outside United Methodism who were unaware of the strength and resolve of the African delegates widely assumed that the liberal plan would prevail. But the General Conference adopted the Traditional Plan by a vote of 53 percent in favor to 47 percent against. National media expressed dismay at the result, as did many bishops, clergy, and activists in the church. Groups of clergy in urban areas bought ads in newspapers like The Washington Post denouncing their own denomination. And some church liberals, finally admitting that the demography of African church growth and U.S. decline was hostile to their aims, began to talk openly of creating a new, inclusive church outside United Methodism.
Contrasts Between Centrists & Progressives
In May, the Kansas pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in America hosted hundreds of church dissidents, including bishops, to plot a strategy. At a news conference afterwards they pledged resistance but failed to reveal that most participants, in a straw poll, preferred departure to resistance. The hosting pastor and other "centrists" still hope they can outlast traditionalists and cajole them into quitting the denomination.
These centrists are mostly clergy who retain creedal orthodoxy but are socially liberal. They often have suburban congregations with diverse views in red states. Quitting or seeking to divide United Methodism in solidarity with LGBTQ causes would divide their own churches.
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.ird-renew.org) in Washington, D.C.
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