Matters of religion, like family and politics, sit particularly close to the heart.
For many people, their religious tradition is the cornerstone and foundation of their lives, helping to instill them with a sense of belonging, meaning, and purpose. When fissures start to form in the familiar doctrines and trusted religious institutions, a question emerges: How do you move forward?
That is a question that at least some within the United Methodist Church may be confronting this year, following a proposal put forward in 2019 to split the church into at least two distinct denominations: the UMC as it currently stands and a new “traditionalist” Methodist Church. With 13 million members in the US and 80 million abroad, the proposal casts a shadow of uncertainty over the second largest Protestant denomination in America.
The proposal will be discussed at the denomination’s general conference in 2020. Important to keep in mind until then, however, is that, until May of 2020, no final decision has been reached in regard to the issue. Methodism may undergo a schism, but it does not have to.
Most centrally, the issue at hand is how open the church will be to persons who identify as LGBTQ+. The issue is not, as some have believed, whether such persons can be members of the UMC, but whether or not those who are “openly practicing” can be ordained ministers or have same-sex unions blessed by the church.
To understand the issue a bit more clearly, I first talked to Dr. Daniel Pigg, a professor of English here at UTM who also teaches religious studies and is a member of the Episcopal Church.
“The last 40 years has seen some significant changes to how mainline Protestants have regarded the role of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church,” Pigg explained.
“As with lots of denominations, there are books of rules [by which] the denomination is governed. For United Methodism, that is the Book of Discipline. The language in the Book of Discipline states that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, therefore the Church has specifically said they cannot have ‘practicing homosexual persons’ in ordained ministry, and the Church will not marry persons of the same gender.”
“Those rules have been overlooked by, in particular, some churches in the United States. As a result, Methodism has become a patchwork of those…conferences which are welcoming and those that are not,” Pigg further elaborated.
As Pigg went on to detail, many churches in America see a role for gay and lesbian members in the clergy as well as openly celebrating their relationships. This has become a difficult position to hold as Methodism has, like many mainline denominations, shrunk in the United States while growing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The churches springing up in the global south, while outnumbering the churches in America, are also much more “theologically conservative,” so to speak.
Thus, to make both sides happy, the split was proposed and will likely be ratified. One of the advantages that the current proposal has over similar efforts like it in other denominations is that it provides at least an imperfect solution to justly distributing church property. Congregations will vote on whether they intend to stay within the UMC or leave to join the more conservative offshoot, taking their property with them.
Yet, complicating the idea of a smooth separation is the fact that most Methodists go to a particular church, not for ideological or political reasons, but because they have deep spiritual or familial ties to a particular church. Many clergy are at odds with their parishioners on these topics and, likewise, most parishes are not homogeneous in their theological opinions.
As you might imagine, Methodists have mixed feelings about the proposal. I reached out to a few local clergy and students to ask them what they thought about the matter.
Rev. Randy Cooper is the pastor at Martin’s First United Methodist who represents many within Methodism that do not see the potential divorce in a positive light.
“Some United Methodists regard potential separation as a gracious and reconciling path,” he said. “Other Methodists, will regard such division or separation as a grievous ‘schism.’ I am among the latter. Yet I realize that we may not be able to do any better than this.”
Rev. Cooper noted also the effects that he has seen in his congregation. “As a whole, we are deeply concerned and sometimes fearful,” but, he added, “…our main work is not to be burdened by fear and to love each other and to be one family in Christ.”
That seems to be the prevailing attitude, one of Christian hope in the face of a difficult separation.
Rev. Amanda Crice who works with the Wesley Foundation here at UTM, evinced a similar sentiment, saying, “The people on both sides of this conversation in the UMC have a bumpy road ahead of them, but eventually, this could also make things clear. We are a people who believe in resurrection. Right now we are experiencing a death. I have hope for what Christ can do in this death and that through Christ the church will be resurrected to more wholeness.”
As for the question of what the future holds for United Methodism and American Christianity in a more general sense, there is perhaps no better barometer than the attitudes of the young adults within the denomination.
Danielle Harstin, a junior Animal Science major and Religious Studies minor from Bethel Springs, Tennessee, grew up within the United Methodist tradition. Her father is a Methodist pastor, and she is currently a parishioner of the Fulton FUMC.
When asked about the attitudes of young Methodists, for example, whether they tend conservative or progressive theologically, she told me, “Most of us consider ourselves Progressives (or at least lean Progressive on this topic); we want the Methodist church to be a safe place and a home for everyone.”
“Jesus called us to love one another,” she added. “We believe that you cannot truly love one another through exclusion and injustice.”
Miss Harstin seemed to view the separation as a welcome change. “To me, the future of the Methodist church is bright.”
To which she added: “This is a good thing, and I believe the Methodist church will be my denomination for a long time, regardless of what happens at General Conference.”
I sincerely hope Miss Harstin is right, that Methodism has a bright future ahead of itself, but I have my doubts. While I myself am a Roman Catholic, it is without a trace of schadenfreude that I lay out serious doubts for the future of Methodism.
To be clear, all of American Christianity is in a relative decline. The culture is rapidly secularizing and no church is immune. The future of Christianity in general is shifting towards Africa and Asia and away from the West. Therefore, it is not a matter of feast or famine, but rather how bare the cupboards will be.
If the character of the schism is the same as it is laid out in the protocol, the United Methodist Church would become the de facto “liberal” wing of Methodism, while the new church would be the “traditional” wing.
Much of the contemporary research seems to suggest that, while more conservative churches are more likely to stay steady or, in some cases, grow over time, liberal mainline Protestant churches tend to decline in adherents. To present an example, a Canadian study emerging in 2015 spawned headlines in, of all places, The Washington Post proclaiming: “Liberal churches are dying. But conservative churches are thriving.” For an illustration in numbers, the Episcopal Church’s own statistics show a 24.9% decrease in average Sunday attendance from 2008 to 2018.
The traditionalist wing would not be without its own problems, especially if more than one breaks off from the UMC. Demographics certainly would not favor them, as young Methodists seem unlikely to leave in large numbers. It may also run into some of the same problems that my own Catholic Church has faced in Latin America, namely a loss of parishioners to Evangelical Christianity and the Pentecostal Movement.
The decline of Methodism, a tradition with millions of members connecting people of different races, classes, and political affiliation under the same roof, would certainly impoverish the religious landscape of America.
But I still hold out hope that some good will come of the separation, and a decline comparable to that suffered by the Episcopal Church is by no means a foregone conclusion. Methodism, to my mind, still retains much of the dynamism that John Wesley originally infused into it when he started his revival movement within the Anglican Church over 200 years ago.
