This op-ed was originally published here in full by Religion News Service (RNS).
In 1992 for the first time I attended the United Methodist Church’s governing quadrennial General Conference, meeting that year in Louisville, Ky. There were only a handful of delegates from African countries. Liberal church leaders from the U.S. seemed to dominate. American evangelicals, with whom I volunteered, seemed like a besieged minority.
Nobody there 24 years ago, including me, could have imagined our church’s transformation from a nearly U.S.-only mainline Protestant denomination to an increasingly evangelical and global body of over 12 million in which Americans will soon be the minority.
The results of that transformation were evident at the most recent General Conference, held May 10-20 in Portland, Ore. Thanks to African delegates, who now represent more than 40 percent of the church, United Methodism left in place its traditional definition of marriage and sexual morality (proposals for change were referred for study), quit its 40-plus year membership in an abortion rights coalition and support for Roe v. Wade, rejected anti-Israel measures, and also declined divestment against fossil fuels.
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