United Methodism’s Tomorrow?

on July 30, 2013

By Mark  Tooley @markdtooley

Florida United Methodist Bishop Ken Carter recently delivered a long, thoughtful statement over United Methodist LBTQ controversies.   He didn’t dispute the current Disciplinary prohibition on same-sex marriage or ministers sexually active outside male-female marriage.   He sympathizes with Adam Hamilton’s failed proposal at last year’s General Conference that the church profess disagreement over sexual morality. He implies that the Discipline’s description of homosexual practice as “incompatible” with Christian teaching is at odds with “generous orthodoxy.”  But importantly, he declares:

In our denominational discernment around issues related to human sexuality, we would do well not to replicate the recent experience of the mainline churches of the United States. In each case, the result has been schism, with devastating legal and financial consequences and diminished resources for mission. It also seems clear that movement toward a more liberal political stance regarding human sexuality will not necessarily strengthen our denomination.

Bishop Carter also writes:

So where do we go from here, as a denomination?   Our increasingly global church will certainly continue to shape our polity, even as sexual practices in other regions of the world that are not affirmed by the Discipline go unexplored. At each successive General Conference since 2004 we have witnessed an increase in voting membership among our brothers and sisters beyond the United States. Gathering as a global church, which is a gift, has had the unintended consequence of masking the decline of United Methodism in the United States.

And Bishop Carter concludes that “our future mission is not one of condemnation, but of invitation.”

Some interesting points.   But Bishop Carter, like most of the debate within United Methodism, omits that the differences are not ultimately over the sexual behavior of 2 or 3 percent of the population but over scriptural authority, Christology, soteriology, anthropology, the understanding of fallen human nature, the authority of the universal church, the historic Christian cosmology rooted in the creation story that starts with male and female, and the constant metaphor in both Old and New Testament that likens God’s faithfulness to His people to a marriage between bride and groom, with Christ as the eternal groom, and the Church as His eternal bride.  Postmodern secular Western culture insists on radical individual self-autonomy that claims the absolute right of self-definition.   Christian cosmology counters with a Providentially ordained fixed reality premised on individuals as image-bearers of God who are collectively part of God’s created human family and, if Christian, intrinsically a member of the Body of Christ.  In the natural order, confirmed by revelation, reality is exterior to the individual, not internally created.  Much of United Methodism rejects that order, preferring a postmodern consciousness.

Bishop Carter’s statement doesn’t directly address the ecclesial reality that global United Methodism, because of African church growth and U.S. decline, almost certainly will not legislatively redefine its understanding of marriage.  If the church stance is fixed, what should ardent liberal dissidents do?  It will be hard for any bishop to answer this question, as bishops are by nature focused on striving for consensus, however unlikely.  But the reality is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Under current trends, United Methodism in the U.S. will lose another 2 million members over the next 20 years, adding to the 3.5 million already lost over the last 48. Thousands of churches in the U.S. will close. Annual conferences will have to merge, and the number of U.S. bishops will decrease.   The Western Jurisdiction, already shrunk to the size of a large annual conference, will be deconstructed.  Several seminaries will need to close.   Several more general church agencies will need to merge or close.  Another whole generation of clergy will retire before the U.S. church is likely to stop hemorrhaging.

Meanwhile, the Africans will become a majority of our denomination in about 10 years.  Well before then they will demand and receive proportional representation on church agency boards and perhaps influence over church seminaries.  Their numbers of bishops will grow, if not as quickly as their population would justify, because of financial concerns. We can pray that the Africans will deploy their new authority to redirect the U.S. church towards the evangelistic habits that have served them well.

But the U.S. church can’t be passive.  U.S. United Methodism will have to shed its decades-long habit of synchronizing with secular U.S. society.   Echoing rather than transforming has been a disaster.  We also have to stop pretending that all of Christianity is in crisis in America.  Much of Christianity is thriving in America.  It’s mainline/oldline Protestantism that is dying.  Even the much vaunted socially liberal Millennials are attending thousands of lively churches that are, ironically, pretty conservative and orthodox, many of them Calvinist or Anglican.  Orthodox Roman Catholicism is also robust.

Can the Millennials and the generation beyond be reached with a Wesleyan message?  Some growing United Methodist congregations already are while sometimes minimizing their United Methodist identity and looking outside the denomination for spiritual nurture.  In 20 years, will our denomination in the U.S. more cohesively proclaim the Gospel, even if confronted by a more hostile culture?  Let’s pray and hope and work for that outcome.

  1. Comment by Jenny on July 30, 2013 at 9:50 pm

    Good article sir, I hope and pray the UMC comes around. What do you think of the Charismatic movement through Aldersgate Renewal Ministries? The more I am learning about what the Charismatic movement actually is all about the more I am liking it and thinking this might be an avenue the the Spirit uses.

  2. Comment by cleareyedtruthmeister on July 31, 2013 at 2:28 pm

    More great insights from Mark.

    Bishop Carter, like so much of United Methodist leadership, is ignoring reality. He is under the illusion that we can continue indefinitely with leadership fundamentally at odds with laity and things will be fine. Lost is the idea that leaders in a Christian denomination should, first and foremost, be Christians themselves.

    But the truth is that man cannot serve two masters. You cannot simultaneously appease Christianity and secular culture.

    Soda cannot coexist with vinegar. Sooner or later there will be a reaction. Why not go ahead and split before the inevitable explosion occurs, avoiding needless collateral damage?

    Why not allow the small minority of people–which includes a disproportionate number of leaders–who are the genesis of the conflict go their own way?

  3. Comment by Marilyn Rozelle on August 5, 2013 at 7:56 am

    From all that I observe in Northeastern Pennsylvania, you are right on. Sorry to say, all that you predict is happening here.

  4. Comment by Sarah Flynn on August 5, 2013 at 1:27 pm

    I am somewhat amused by your article. Decades long accomodation to culture means that most likely the UMC, following the Millennials, will have to become inclusive of LGBT people— in spite of African homophobia. And that will happen simply by ignoring the policies opposed to their inclusion. An occasional trial will result in minimal penalties vs huge uproars and disruption when penalties are heavy handed. Which do you think most bishops would prefer?

    And the Africans, if they do become a power in the boards and agencies of the UMC may not like gays and lesbians, but they will surely like the UMC to be even more progressive and generous in helping to solve poverty in Africa, something that will not go down well with IRD’s deep pocket supporters. So bring it on, Mark Tooley. UM Doomsday may be less comfortable than you think it will be for your conservative kin.

  5. Comment by Greg Paley on August 5, 2013 at 5:48 pm

    That’s one of the silliest posts I ever read on this site, and believe me, the competition is stiff. The Africans try to hold the church to Christian standards, but the left spins that as “African homophobia” and “they don’t like gays and lesbians.” What does “like” have to do with anything, except to those who see the church as a club for boosting the self-esteem of so-called “victims”? The UMC put itself in a fine spot: push for “inclusive” and “multiculti” for decades, then reap the fruit: Christians from a different culture put the brakes on the secularization done by the white overclass. Too funny. They made their multiculti bed, now let them lie in it.

    I’m betting on the Doomsday scenario. Conservatives in America will continue to flee the UM, leaving the most liberal types, facing off with the Christian delegates from Africa. May the best side win.

  6. Comment by Adrian Croft on August 5, 2013 at 6:15 pm

    Blame the left-wing seminaries and the clergy they turn out. I was reading the story of some goofball who did the male-to-female thing and is now an ordained minister, and he/she/it is so typical of the clergy who drive the UM: committed not to Christ and his church, committed to their own personal agenda, using the church as their own political tool. People like this can’t lead people to Christ, they don’t even know Christ themselves. A handful of their fellow ideologues may remain in the UM, but people looking for spiritual nurture are looking elsewhere. I’m totally with the African UMs on this. This weird creepy American seminary culture must seem totally foreign to them, and understandably so. They must wonder why clergy with a lot of personal demons (to put it mildly) are in charge of the American churches. “What? The Americans ordain women who used to be men? They push for marriage between two men? What is wrong with these people? Don’t they wish to please God?” I’m so glad I bailed out of the UM 23 years ago. The path out of that liberal septic tank is well-worn. until they get some godly clergy – which they won’t get from the seminaries as they now exist – the faithful will continue to flee

  7. Comment by Robert Thomason on August 6, 2013 at 2:14 am

    Sad, but true.

  8. Comment by Frank on September 3, 2013 at 3:59 pm

    All your talk of Christ, and yet you refer to another human being as “it.”

  9. Comment by John S on August 8, 2013 at 7:48 am

    The LGBTQ lobby claims historical inevitability (note Sarah’s post) while the traditional lobby claims gospel imperative. The question is, to whom, do you give your loyalty? The UMC in America will most likely split from the global UMC or simply shrivel. Then, one day, the missionaries from Africa will come to America and Europe to evangelize both areas.

  10. Comment by Frank on September 3, 2013 at 3:56 pm

    “Even the much vaunted socially liberal Millennials are attending thousands of lively churches that are, ironically, pretty conservative and orthodox, many of them Calvinist or Anglican. Orthodox Roman Catholicism is also robust.”

    Those Millenials are also attending socially and theologically liberal congregations. Sometimes at new church starts with multiple campuses, and sometimes serving as the driving force behind the revitilization of older churches that hadn’t welcomed a new member in years.

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