We’ve seen this before: UMC schism and conservative power

Our friends in the United Methodist Church (UMC) aren’t so united today. They have just completed a special conference that was specifically intended to resolve their conflict over issues re. sexuality and allow them to go forward. Their polity is different than The Episcopal Church (TEC): they are a truly global denomination where votes come from all around the world. In contrast, TEC is an American church in a loose federation with related independent churches in the Anglican Communion. (And you can certainly bet that conservatives in Anglicanism and the Church of England wish they had this degree of authority over TEC.) But I digress.

The Methodist book of discipline and other church policies are opposed to recognition of same sex marriage, or the full participation of LGBT people as ministers or bishops. In the US, the UMC is as divided as any other mainline on the subject, but has moved from “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” to “Pay No Attention to the Pastor In a Rainbow Stole”. They even have an out, lesbian bishop who technically runs afoul of the rules but in actuality continues to serve faithfully.

The Bishops of the global UMC proposed a policy that would allow individual churches or affiliations to allow and accept LGBT people, marriage, and service, without demanding that all churches do so. This “One Church Plan” was promoted as a way forward. But the well-organized conservatives weren’t having any. They organized an umbrella group called the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA) and promised to leave UMC if any liberalization passed. As one wrote in advance,

You may not understand it but we will not remain in a church where pastors and bishops are free to promote and bless what we believe is contrary to Christian teaching and dishonoring to God.” We are told that we should find this plan acceptable because we will not be forced to perform marriages and blessings that we do not support. I can appreciate that progressives don’t truly understand us. But whether they can comprehend our reasoning or not, they need to hear it: It violates our consciences to be in a denomination that promotes what we believe counters God’s will and purposes. We can live in a church where there is disagreement about our church’s teaching about marriage and sexuality – we’ve done so for decades – if pastors and bishops who promised to uphold the church’s teachings actually do what they promised. What we cannot do is remain in a church with an official sexual ethic that denies the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture. Liberals don’t have to understand our thinking. But they would do well to take our warning seriously. The local option will create schism – and it is likely to be litigious, costly, and ugly.

So they proposed an alternative plan that not only did not relax the language against LGBT people, but made it more pronounced and punitive. This plan was found unconstitutional under the church’s own rules, but yesterday, the conference PASSED IT ANYWAY. It is not insignificant that there were also two plans proposed for how to divide the church property: how to leave.

And, they won.

 The traditionalists did a bang-up job of political organizing and counting the votes. The progressives were all busy talking about unity and community and listening and loving. The conservatives were on the floor getting the votes….We spent time yesterday openly discussing, “Now, how much do we have to pay to have to leave? Is a third of a property assessment OK?” It was just weird hearing us talk that way. That’s not the way we’ve talked previously. If you talk that way, it means the debate is almost moot. This may be a bad analogy, but as a pastor, when a couple comes to me and says, “We’re talking about getting a divorce. We’d like to hear your views on our marriage,” I say, “If you’ve gotten this far, you’re going to divorce. What do you want from me?” I kind of feel that way here.  https://religionnews.com/2019/02/26/bishop-will-willimon-on-why-no-plan-can-unite-united-methodists/

So, now what happens?  The WCA said it was their way or the highway, and they pulled it off.  So ....

As a committed centrist who has been working toward a compromise where all people would be welcome in The United Methodist Church, I've dealt enough with various members of WCA leadership to know that there will be no compromise. This is a matter of principle upon which they will not budge. No scenario that would permit an ordained gay and lesbian clergy or an elected lesbian bishop to be in any way affiliated with them will be entertained. 

Down the road, these same leaders I fear will become as hard-core about other issues as they are about LGBTQ exclusion. For those who stand for any "leftist" sounding cause (Health care reform? Gender equality? Compassionate immigration reform? Reasonable gun control?) or continue to call those to accountability for rejecting infant baptism, confirmation, and female clergy leadership, I have a hard time believing that eventually a target isn't going to be on your back, too. If the denomination starts heading "right," my centrist colleagues agree that LGBTQ exclusion isn't where things will end. https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/9033/why-im-not-afraid-of-the-gracious-exit

Hmmmm. This is not unlike a similar purge of the Southern Baptists in the late 80s-90s, when the liberals moderates were driven out, leaving a conservative behemoth. And look where that got us.

But it's not just theological fundamentalism. You might also want to follow the money.

The goal of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, as far as United Methodism goes, is to make the denomination so intolerable to progressives and moderates that we leave the denomination. … 

The prize is ownership of United Methodism, which despite its myriad problems is still an unfathomably valuable institution. United Methodism owns an incredible amount of real estate, hospitals, academic institutions, churches, offices, conference centers, retreats, camps, nonprofit and for-profit entities, and the incredible controlled wealth of the United Methodist Foundations. Not to mention WesPath. By purging progressives and moderates, they will lose some churches and conference centers and perhaps entire Annual Conferences, but they will retain ownership of all of the rest. http://um-insight.net/perspectives/jeremy-smith/the-wca-is-just-an-insurance-policy-in-case-their-umc-takeov/

So, the money matters.

Back when Bishop Gene Robinson was elected, there was a similar conflict between conservatives and liberals in TEC. You may have recalled the bitter vitriol that ensued. But what you may not remember is that a shadowy conservative money-group, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), was up to its elbows in dirty water. Episcopalian journalist Jim Naughton followed the threads and wrote a hugely important piece called “Following the Money” that linked the IRD to a number of conservative foundations.

These foundations have provided millions of dollars to the IRD which, in a fundraising appeal in 2000, said it sought to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" Protestant denominations and to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence."

Importantly, this was not limited to TEC, but also targeted the Methodists and the Presbyterians.  HMMMM.  (Our Blog Father, Father Jake Stops the World, also has a summary about the TEC experience).

Fortunately, the IRDs efforts to overturn TEC didn't work.  The contentious fights in the Episcopal Church from 2006 on eventually led to the broad acceptance of LGBT ministers and marriages (with some holdouts). The fiercest conservatives left to form their own group, ACNA, which has never been formally recognized by the Anglican Communion.

Blogfather Fr Jake makes an excellent case in his latest post for the IRD being deep in this Methodist mess.

 Meanwhile, lots of people are hurting. The arguments on Twitter were passionate and in some cases, cruel (aside: Twitter is a cesspool, but is invaluable for following breaking action. It’s also like eating a large bag of potato chips entirely in one sitting: you know it’s not good for you, and you will regret it, but you can’t stop).

 There’s a tendency of Episcopalians to want to bring these hurting liberal and LGBT Methodists in. But as someone said, they are grief stricken and have just lost a loved one. Don’t try to set them up on a date just yet.   Listen, be present, and recognize they may simply need a sabbatical before going back to fight. They may want to try to keep the church they love intact.  They'll need lots of support to do so.

Is a global church possible?

By now you have heard that the Roman Catholic Church has released a survey.  Among the questions, for the first time, are queries about "non-tradiational" families.  Are there same sex families?  How does the Church connect to them, or their children?  Now, I don't for a minute believe that the RC church is in any danger of changing doctrine on sexual morality issues.  But the body of the faithful continues to drift far away, and I think they are trying to figure out how to hang on.

From Religion Dispatches, the author of a new poll of UK Catholics reinforces what we already know: there's a striking gap between what the Church teaches and what the people believe.

.... in showing just how far adrift they are from where the church thinks they should be, we can see what is surely the single most important issue prompting the Vatican survey: the Church’s growing awareness that there’s a serious gulf between official teaching and what Catholics really think and do. 

What the Church may not have realised, however, is just how yawning the gap has become. ....Marriage has ceased to be an essential element of the family in most Catholic minds, with only a quarter disapproving of unmarried couples raising children, almost 90% agreeing that an unmarried couple with children is a family, and two-thirds saying that a same-sex couple with children is also a family. ... 

The result is a Britain in which “faithful Catholics” according to official teaching are now a rare and endangered species.

None of that is a surprise, necessarily, but this one I found amazing :

Likewise, only 36% of Catholics say that the Church is a positive force in society, and when those who take the opposite view are asked their reasons, the most popular are: that it discriminates against women and gay people; the child abuse scandals; that it’s hypocritical; and that it’s too morally conservative

Wow. A majority of UK  Catholics do not agree that the Church is a force for good !  And couple that with the fact that they disagree with the Vatican's take on "pelvic issues":

...[M]ost Catholics don’t think the teaching is too hard, they think it’s wrong. They’re not convinced the church should be sticking its nose into the bedroom at all, they’ve embraced many aspects of the sexual revolution, and they endorse the moral revolution which has advanced the equal treatment of women, children, and LGBT people. Some priests and even bishops have made this moral transition too. But no-one is admitting it.

And how did this happen?  (My emphases)

The problem is that a series of fatal decisions have made it almost impossible for the Church to change direction—even if it’s heading towards a cliff. The option to swerve was last opened up in the late 1960s, when a commission was convened to examine the Church’s opposition to contraception—an opposition formulated by Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930), which had in turn been influenced by the fact that the Church of England had made a decision to allow contraception earlier the same year. 

In that commission a minority group, which included the man who would become Pope John Paul II, argued successfully against the majority who argued for a relaxation of the ban. Part of their reasoning was that a change of mind would undermine authority, and make it look as if the Spirit had been blowing through the Anglican rather than the Catholic Church. Paul VI agreed, and the result was a reaffirmation of the Church’s sexual teaching in Humanae Vitae (1968). The door to change slammed shut. Since then the Church has insisted that its sexual teachings are “irreformable.” 

Assuming that the Pope and the Vatican confirm these views of sexual morality, views with which the majority of western Catholics do not agree in good conscience, what then the RC church?  Certainly the Western  church will continue its decline (remember, "ex Catholic" is one of the largest groups of religious identification in the US).  The Global South continues to be a strong hold.  Is there an inevitable schism between West and Global South?

Let's take a look at the Methodists, and the recent trial of Frank Shaefer.  The reason the Methodists are lagging behind so many other mainline denominations in issues of sexual morality is that their church has a polity that includes the voices of the Global South.  While on its own, the American Methodists would probably liberalize along the lines of the Episcopalians or Lutherans, there are enough conservative voices from the Global South to keep them where they are. And acts of disobedience and defiance from those whose conscience feels otherwise, will continue.

So:  is it possible to have a truly global church?  We've already seen a splintering of the Anglican Communion. Given its bonds are much lighter, it may be possible for the tent to stretch enough to keep some people in.  But with the more rigid ties of other churches, well, I'm not sure the Methodists or the Roman Catholics are going to hold it together.