Traditionalists Ripping United Methodists Apart Slowly

United Methodists have for generations been a mainstay of the American religious landscape — one of the most geographically widespread of the major Protestant denominations, their steeples visible on urban streets, in county seats and along country roads, their ethos marked by a firm yet quiet faith, simple worship, and earnest social service, Peter Smith reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: The Interchurch Center is the headquarters of the UMC.

But the United Methodist Church (UMC) is also the latest of mainline Protestant denominations in the US to begin fracturing, just as Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian denominations lost significant minorities of churches and members amid debates over sexuality and theology.

In annual regional gatherings this year, across the US this year, United Methodists approved requests of about 300 congregations to quit the denomination, according to United Methodist News Service.

Meetings in the second half of the year are expected to vote on as many as 1,000 more, according to the conservative advocacy group Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA).

Those departing are still a fraction of the estimated 30,000 congregations in the United States alone, with nearly 13,000 more abroad, according to recent UMC statistics.

The flashpoints are the denomination’s bans on same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBTQ clergy — though many see these as symptoms for deeper differences in views on justice, theology, and scriptural authority. The denomination has repeatedly upheld these bans at legislative General Conferences, but some US churches and clergy have defied them.

This spring, conservatives launched a new Global Methodist Church (GMC), where they are determined both to maintain and enforce such bans.

A proposal to amicably divide the denomination and its assets, unveiled in early 2020, has lost its once-broad support after years of pandemic-related delays to the legislative General Conference, whose vote was needed to ratify it. Now the breakup and the negotiations are happening piecemeal — one regional conference at a time.

New York Bishop Thomas Bickerton, president of the Council of Bishops, issued a statement in August denouncing “a constant barrage of negative rhetoric that is filled with falsehood and inaccuracies” by breakaway groups. In particular, he disputed allegations that the church is changing core doctrines.

But he said the denomination seeks to find a balance between encouraging churches to stay yet enabling them to go. “It’s a both/and,” Bickerton said in an interview. “We want people to know straight up front that we don’t want them to leave. We need traditionalists, we need centrists, we need progressives willing to engage in a healthy debate to discern what God’s will is.”

United Methodists are part of a global movement that traces their origins to the 18th-century English revivalist John Wesley, who emphasized personal piety, evangelism, and social service. American membership has declined to about 6.5 million, from a peak of 11 million in the 1960s.

Overseas membership soared to match or exceed that of the U.S., fueled mostly by growth and mergers in Africa. It’s too early to say if there will be widespread departures from international churches.

African churches, for instance, often combine conservative stances on sexual issues with progressive views on the economy and colonialism’s legacy. Several African bishops issued a statement denouncing conservative advocacy groups, including one called the Africa Initiative, for collaborating to “destroy our United Methodist Church.”

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