Denominations, Methodism, Trumpism & Ecclesiology

In our own often impatient age of frequent ingratitude and hyper individualism, there is declining patience with durable institutions. Much of the Trump and Bernie Sanders movements wants to blow up the “system,” whatever it is, believing it is inextricably corrupt, and not caring very much about what if anything would replace it. There is the same attitude in American religion. Church membership, even for active church goers, has declined, often in favor of looser, more noncommittal community. Denominational loyalties have collapsed and are rare among the under age 50, virtually unknown among the under 40. What do centuries-old denominations mean if they are not meeting immediate needs, is the common question. Sincere and devout Christians move seamlessly across denominations and nondenominational congregations, which is where much of American Christian growth now is.  Thank God for vibrant non-denominational churches, which offer the Gospel enthusiastically in ways that more traditional churches have failed to do.  We can also be grateful for the decline of prejudice and animosity among denominations and between Catholics and Protestants.  Increasingly Christians move back and forth between what was previously a chasm between Catholicism and Protestantism.  Many traditional Catholics understandably object to treating their church, with its unique truth claims, as just another denomination in the church smorgasbord.

The cafeteria attitude towards church in favor of typically generic Evangelicalism has also divorced much of American Christianity from a sturdy sense of tradition, history or trans generational community. So church becomes about individual communities generating and sacralizing their own habits, divorced from the wider Body of Christ. They refine their own privatized beliefs, based on the Bible to varying degrees, whether in conservative or liberal ways. There is typically little interest in the accountability or authority of wider ecclesial structures rooted in tradition. Why should we listen to others when we can do as we please on our own? In this process, Jesus steps down from universal Savior to personal companion who justifies the habits, preferences and desires of the moment.

A supposed devolution of some Evangelicals towards American individualism and away from historic Christianity has been cited to explain wide support for Donald Trump, despite his own personal distance from traditional religion and ethics.  The reluctance of some Evangelical pastors to address social moral controversies is another possible fruit of post-denominational, post-institutional American Christianity. Religion has become more privatized, acceptable politically only if addressing politically correct or non-controversial causes, like opposing sex trafficking, or environmental advocacy. The leftward manifestation of American Christian trends entails acquiesce or at least silence about the deconstruction of marriage and gender in favor of LGBTQ fads.

Post-denominational attitudes by both liberals and conservatives co-exist in United Methodism, which despite losing 4 million members over 50 years, is still America’s third largest religious body after Catholics and Southern Baptists. It’s almost the last of the historically liberal Mainline Protestant denominations that have not formally surrendered Christian teachings about sexual ethics.  Liberal activists are frustrated about their 40 year campaign’s failure so far to overthrow the traditional stances. They have advocated mass disobedience by liberal clergy who celebrate same-sex rites or announce themselves to be LGBTQ. At the denomination’s May 10-20 governing General Conference, they will demand the formal overthrow of these teachings in favor of full affirmation of LGBTQ. They will do so even knowing that every denomination following that course has suffered schism and accelerated membership losses.  The Presbyterian Church (USA) now forecasts it will lose 20% of its membership just over the next 5 years. United Methodist liberal activists don’t care. Conquering another denomination for a political cause is far more important than that denomination’s health, vitality or future.

Some conservative United Methodists, with their own post-institutional attitude, have lost interest in perpetuating their denomination. Why not break up the church along ideology or geography? Some question denominational structures altogether. Why does the local church need to worry about the nuisance of denominational bureaucracy, they ask.

Methodism is historically connectional, not congregational, accountable to and in community with conferences, which in United Methodism are headed by bishops. Most major Christian traditions, even many forms of congregationalism, have an ecclesiology of accountability to a wider connection, through dioceses, synods or assemblies. Such structures and the traditions behind them are increasingly at odds with American individualism, just as Christian moral teachings about sexual ethics and the sanctity of the human body chaffe against the spirit of our age.

Unlike other USA denominations, United Methodism is global and will soon have a majority non-USA membership, thanks to dramatic African church growth. Not beholden to American individualism, the community-minded Africans may yet save United Methodism from American culture’s deification of the individual. If they do, the lesson will be instructive not just for liberal American Protestants but also for post-denominational Evangelicals.