Waiting “Just Not Good Enough Anymore” – Liberal Churches Finalize Leaving UMC

Last weekend, prominent liberal activist Will Green officially led his New England congregation out of the United Methodist Church.

This follows the ratification of the departure of another liberal congregation in Georgia in August. On October 13, the online session of the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference gave permission for a third liberal congregation to leave the UMC.  This week, I learned of a fourth liberal congregation whose departure is slated to be officially ratified by the Peninsula-Delaware Conference later this fall.

One of these congregations shared its thinking last month by explaining that they “respect the necessity for having rules that guide the shared life of any group” but feel they cannot be part of a denomination they judge to be insufficiently inclusive.

In February, our denomination’s specially called 2019 General Conference approved key parts of the Traditional Plan (strengthening both longstanding prohibitions of same-sex unions and accountability for clergy more generally) and a “gracious exit” to let congregations leave the denomination while keeping their property. Since then, I reported here on how at least 13 liberal congregations in seven states had moved, in varying degrees, towards leaving the UMC in protest (then not counting the congregations in Eastern Pennsylvania and Peninsula-Delaware).

The announcement of the “Protocol” peace treaty for a denominational split and then the pandemic-driven delay of the next General Conference until August 2021 seemed to pause many such developments. Among other things, the now widely supported Protocol would give these congregations an option to affiliate with a liberalized post-separation United Methodist Church (psUMC), which would move relatively quickly to achieve liberals’ decades-long efforts to remove our denomination’s ban of “self-avowed practicing homosexual” clergy and defining marrviage as a covenant “between a man and a woman.”

However, these liberal congregations have gotten anxious in waiting. Members of Brackett Memorial UMC on Peaks Island off the coast of Maine voted unanimously to leave the UMC, while those of Asbury UMC in Savannah, Georgia voted by 309 to 7 (98 percent) to do so.

The situation with Grandview UMC in Lancaster, Pennsylvania is a bit more complicated. Members there voted nearly unanimously – 174 to 5 – to pursue disaffiliation on February 10. Notably, this came after the announcement of the Protocol proposal, and also long after the United Methodist News Service reported in March 2019 that Grandview had already taken a first of two votes to pursue disaffiliation. However, even with the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference recently voting to approve the disaffiliation agreement, the congregation is reserving the right to change its mind before the agreement’s deadline of March 31, 2021. Its pastor, Andrea Brown has noted the possibility of the next General Conference not passing the Protocol or anything else of significance, “which will leave [the UMC] as a traditional denomination.”

Attendees at recent General Conferences may remember young Will Green, now Brackett Memorial’s pastor, as among the more colorful liberal activist fixtures. Given the New England Conference’s years of defying the Discipline and Green’s having been commissioned there as a provisional elder despite being openly gay and partnered, it may seem strange that he would choose this path now.

In the debate over the disaffiliation resolution, the Rev. John Lucy (like several others) expressed appreciation for Green and sadness at this departure. But Lucy agreed that “they’re making the right decision to not wait,” as after many years, “waiting is just not good enough anymore.” Before the vote, in response to multiple questions about the implications for Green, Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar correctly noted that the status of any individual minister was technically a separate matter, and expressed confidence that Green “will be in communication with the board of ordained ministry depending upon the decision of this annual conference.”

As early as 2017, Green decried fellow liberals’ professing support for protected space for pastors and congregations who disapprove of same-sex unions to remain in a denomination that allowed them, which he saw as “an attempt to create space for people to do harm and to accept that as a necessary part of who we are United Methodists.” Similarly, Brown more recently predicted that “it is also quite likely that some traditionalists will remain in the United Methodist Church, and some discrimination against LGBTQ people will continue within it,” so that “some churches that want an end to such discrimination may also split off.” Congregations like Grandview want treatment of non-celibate gay clergy to follow how the UMC already “forbids discrimination against female clergy,” without tolerating dissent. The available evidence – including how the One Church Plan (OCP) would have trampled on the consciences of any theologically traditionalist clergy and congregations who remained, and how leading OCP proponents have now apparently abandoned even the most modest conscience protections for traditionalists – indicates that after the separation, leaders of the psUMC will be far more eager to appease concerns like Green and Brown’s than those of traditionalists. 

Brackett Memorial, Asbury, and Grandview are all formally affiliated with the LGBTQ-affirming Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN). Pastor Billy Hester estimates that over one-third of Asbury’s membership identifies as LGBTQ.

But key details of these departures make clear why some version of the Protocol is needed, and why current church law is inadequate for congregations, on any side, who want out from our denomination’s internal theological battles. 

Firstly, current church law has not prevented less gracious annual conference officials from heavy-handedly imposing additional, draconian burdens, beyond the requirements of the UMC Discipline, on any congregation wishing to separate. That is exactly what the New England Conference did, with a policy that forced Brackett Memorial to host numerous community meetings, go through an eight-month-long process, and jump through several other hoops that seemed designed to intimidate and badger congregations away from leaving. The Protocol would prevent annual conferences from imposing such needless, harassing burdens. 

Secondly, current church law requires the annual conference session to approve any congregation departing. This means that there is always the potential for a congregation to be suddenly prevented from leaving with its property at the very end of very difficult discernment and negotiation processes. There was no more than token opposition to Asbury UMC’s departure at the South Georgia Conference’s mid-August online meeting. But at the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference’s meeting, the proposal to respect Grandview UMC’s right to choose its own way was described as “controversial” and opposed by nearly 20 percent.

In New England, the process of eventually ratifying Brackett Memorial UMC’s departure (effective at the end of the year) by a large margin took over forty-five minutes (beginning around the 2:10:20 mark), with various discussions and three speeches against. After the congregation had been forced to jump through so many hoops, with its members unanimously declaring their intent, it was striking to hear speech after speech urging the conference to not respect their free will but try to forcibly prevent them from leaving, at the last minute of a process begun over a year ago. This was not just a fringe sentiment. Among those speaking against the disaffiliation resolution was the Rev. Leigh Goodrich, a delegate to last year’s General Conference and a reserve delegate to the next one who has recently had prominent leadership roles in social justice efforts at the conference and denomination-wide levels. Speeches against alluded to protecting the annual conference’s prerogatives and spoke of wanting to keep Brackett Memorial’s liberal voice. Goodrich declared, “we need them so badly,” and said she was “horrified” at the thought of a congregation leaving “because they’ve lost hope in what the United Methodist Church can be.”

The congregation was forcefully defended by the Rev. Effie McAvoy, a delegate to the next General Conference. In response to those wanting the congregation to stay to help the rest of the conference, she declared, “As a black lesbian in the conference, I find that statement somewhat jarring” and offensive. She pointed out that to “leave the connection” is “not leaving Christ,” and expected that with ecumenical sensibilities, New England United Methodists may be able to better work together with Brackett Memorial after the latter became “free from out under the bondage of the oppressiveness that the United Methodist Church holds on them.”

No one knows for sure whether or not those seeking disaffiliation from the Peninsula-Delaware Conference will be allowed to do so until that conference meets later this year. Again, without any version of the Protocol, congregations lack a firm right to separate and keep their property if others do not want to be gracious to them. 

Thirdly, without the Protocol, disaffiliating now is a very financially costly decision for these congregations. Paying immediately for Brackett Memorial’s pro rata share of the conference’s unfunded pension liability plus an extra year’s worth of apportionments, as required by current church law, has meant that the tiny congregation, which averaged only 33 worshippers in 2018, has to quickly pay about $209,000, nearly twice its total expenses in any recent year. That amounts to requiring each member (including inactive ones) to pay an average of over $2,200, or each member who actually voted for disaffiliation to pay over $8,700. Asbury’s exit fee was reportedly some $280,000, nearly twice its total expenses paid in 2018. The Peninsula-Delaware is actually presented with four disaffiliation resolutions from congregations of different theological perspectives, whose respective total exit fees to the conference range from over $130,000 to over $225,000. 

There has been a trickle of a small number of conservative American congregations leaving the UMC for some years. Liberal congregations now leaving is a new development. 

These departures reflect much wider discontent across the spectrum with our different factions remaining forced to be caged together in conflict rather than set free to pursue their contrasting visions of ministry. But the above-noted burdens current church law punitively imposes on congregations parting ways are too prohibitive for most local churches. 

The more we can move towards a more gracious and less punitive agreement for denominational separation, and the quicker we get there, the better it will be for all of us.