A Microcosm of the UMC’s Struggles with Global Inclusion, Representation

The recently-concluded Global Young People’s Convocation and Legislative Assembly (GYPCLA) in the Philippines offered a snapshot of the United Methodist Church’s struggles to be a truly global church. The once-in-four-years gathering was organized by the General Board of Discipleship’s Division on Ministries with Young People (DMYP)

At GYPCLA, as elsewhere in the life of the UMC, fully including non-American members in the life and decision-making of our global denomination proved to be much easier said than done.

At one point, it was reported that at the first DMYP board meeting of this quadrennium, in which officers were elected, at least some African and Filipino members were unable to attend due to problems obtaining travel visas.

GYPCLA was designed to have six working languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. For the sake of those offering simultaneous translation (most of whom did so on a volunteer basis, despite the rather long hours), participants were repeatedly exhorted to speak slowly.

However, the inclusion of non-Americans was far from complete. All ten of the petitions considered during the legislative portion of the assembly were submitted by Americans. (I was told there were additional petitions submitted but never considered due to their not being in the proper format.)

When we say members from around the world are welcome to participate, but 100 percent of the duly submitted petitions come from Americans, something is not working. Of course, the percentage of General Conference petitions originating in the U.S.A. is not much lower. Clearly, we have not succeeded in creating an accessible, level playing field for non-American members to widely participate in the same way that Americans do.

What was supposed to have been the first legislative session was derailed after a savvy Bulgarian delegate, Mihail Stefanov, took to the microphone to protest that German translations of the petitions had still not been uploaded online, thus excluding many delegates from full participation in the process. Then another delegate, from the Ivory Coast, shared that the French translations were incomplete. Many people, including Americans, expressed outrage that the petitions, whose submission deadline was in December, had still not been fully translated. Delegates unanimously endorsed Stefanov’s motion to table all discussion of petitions until full translations of all petitions into all of the conference’s working languages were available.

Furthermore, one of the petitions dealt with the extremely complex geopolitical situation in Israel. This petition which presented a very incomplete, one-sided narrative, citing some official entries in the United Methodist Book of Resolutions Nobody Reads, to largely caricature the world’s lone Jewish state as the villain while largely ignoring Israeli concerns. Having an informed, intelligent opinion of the six-page resolution would have required time for delegates to do their own research. Which many African delegates had no chance to do, since they were not given French translations of the resolution until the last minute.

Rev. Dr. Mike Ratliff, the General Board of Discipleship’s Associate General Secretary for Young People’s Ministries, told IRD/UMAction the following: “The goal was to have translated legislation available to delegates thirty days in advance. Unfortunately this did not happen.”

In the legislative session, it soon became clear that African delegates were not nearly as familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order as American delegates. This obviously put the former at a strategic disadvantage. But for basic fairness, and preventing the potential for biased leadership from whoever is presiding, it is essential to have a specific, pre-determined set of rules for governing how any legislative discussion goes. And while I would have loved to have heard from all the African and Russian-speaking delegates that lined up to speak against the homosexuality-related petitions, in excess of the number of speeches allowed for each side, limiting each side to an equal, democratically accepted number of speeches is a matter of basic fairness.

But liberal Americans were far from perfect in their responses to those African delegates who tried to challenge liberal homosexuality-related petitions by asking substantive questions (some, but not all, of which were rhetorical questions) after the maximum number of negative speeches had already been made. At times, liberal white Americans responded by rather loudly shouting down or motioning for technicians to mute the microphones of these African delegates. At least a GYPCLA official informed delegates, with what seemed like dramatic understatement, that shouting someone down, even if s/he is out of order, is considered rude in many cultures.

There were also clear cultural differences in how issues were addressed. I know that the American delegates were not a liberal monolith. But it was no surprise that orthodox young Americans did not eagerly rush to the microphone to condemn homosexual practice. After all, they have grown up in a culture that increasingly stigmatizes open expression of our Christian values as they relate to homosexuality. And as I have already noted, the open liberalism of some of the adult workers likely did not help whatever negative peer pressure dynamics were already at work.

On the other hand, as at General Conferences, African delegates were rather bold in defending biblical, historic, and official United Methodist standards for sexual self-control, speaking much more strongly than many American evangelicals would dare. At GYPCLA, they were joined by just as outspokenly orthodox Russian-speaking delegates. There were times when I frankly wished some of the central-conference delegates were more winsome in how they defended stances with which I agree.

Furthermore, it needs to be admitted that this gathering, like so many UMC leadership bodies, was far from being as representative as possible of the church as a whole, or even young United Methodists.

First of all, each of the denomination’s twelve large global regions were offered equal representation. But they are not equal. The five U.S. jurisdictions range in size from nearly three million members (the Southeastern Jurisdiction) to about 340,000 members (the radicalized Western Jurisdiction). The seven overseas central conferences range from over 2.6 million members (the Congo Central Conference) to less than 12,000 members (the Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference).

Yet the Book of Discipline ¶1210.3 entitles each region, regardless of size, to 12 delegates: five youth, five young adults, and two “adult workers with young people.” Each region can additionally send an unlimited number of non-voting delegates, who have voice but not vote.

We have documented elsewhere on this site longstanding problems with how the UMC systematically privileges the radicalized Western Jurisdiction in leadership bodies while under-representing the more orthodox Southeastern Jurisdiction and African central conferences.

Secondly, there was very uneven turnout. The airfare and registration fee are greater barriers for people in some parts of the world. The DMYP does get credit for having a fundraising effort to enable the attendance of central conference delegates.

Each of the U.S. jurisdictions sent a full delegation of 12 voting delegates. The lone exception was the North Central Jurisdiction (NCJ), which sent nine.  No central conference sent more voting delegates than the NCJ, although the Congo, Germany, and Philippines central conference each also sent nine. From the other central conferences came eight voting delegates from West Africa, six from southern and eastern Africa, another six from Central and Southern Europe, and four from Northern Europe and Eurasia.

Thirdly, we should not automatically assume that the American delegates were representative of the young people in their home regions. All those from the Southeast and South Central Jurisdictions who spoke out on the sexuality debates did so for the liberal side. Yet this view is rather demonstrably unrepresentative of Southern United Methodism. And the vote totals show that the rejection of the marriage-redefinition agenda had to have included some votes from quietly conservative American delegates.

Nevertheless, from a couple of the floor speeches, it was evident that the outspokenness of some American United Methodists for the homosexuality-affirming cause has misled some central conference members into thinking that these loudest voices are representative of the denomination as a whole in this country.

Of course, the vast majority of United Methodist youth and young adults likely remain blissfully unaware that GYPCLA occurred, let alone that they ever had a chance to apply to become delegates. The fact is that these types of events tend to attract certain subsets of United Methodists, with certain key personal connections, that are simply not representative of the whole.

As more than one person mentioned, a basic problem is that if an American congregation has the sort of mentoring and financial resources in place to send a young person to GYPCLA, it would be more likely to prefer devoting such limited resources to sending that young person on a mission trip. This means that liberal congregations who see the church’s mission primarily in terms of “taking stands for social justice” would be disproportionately more likely to sponsor a young activist’s ticket to be a GYPCLA delegate, while more evangelical congregations would be more likely to steer their young people elsewhere.

All of this shows that GYPCLA was in a way very representative of the UMC as a whole, in that it served as a microcosm of our denomination’s wider struggles with representation and global inclusion.