Additional Progressive Congregations Leaving UMC

Last fall, we reported on several progressive congregations leaving the United Methodist Church (UMC), including a prominent liberal megachurch. Now more recently, several additional progressive congregations—three in Maine and one in Texas—have formally committed themselves to leaving our denomination, out of disagreement with its official biblical standards on sexual morality. All four are formally affiliated with the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN).

The ongoing splintering definitively answers the question of whether or not it still may be possible for all United Methodists to stay together in the same denomination: No it is not possible, because we are not staying together. Humpty Dumpty is already broken and can never be put back together again.

This new group of progressive congregations leaving the UMC has been home to some notable leadership in liberal United Methodism.

On February 21, the members of Chebeague UMC voted to leave.

Then just a few days later, it was announced that General Conference resolution of our denomination’s internal battles over sexuality and theology would be delayed by yet another year.

Then on March 21, the members of Tuttle Road UMC voted by 56-4 (more than 93 percent) to leave the UMC.

The next day, March 22, the Council of Bishops seemed to remove (for now) even the long-shot possibility of the “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation”—the carefully negotiated, widely supported plan to definitively resolve the UMC’s internal conflicts—being adopted this year.

Shortly thereafter, on March 28, the members of a congregation called HopeGateWay [sic] voted, by a reportedly “overwhelming margin,” to leave the UMC. The congregation’s leadership had already committed to this direction a few weeks earlier by the congregation’s leadership.

These three progressive congregations leaving the UMC are all in Maine, apparently all within about a 20-mile radius of New Brackett Church pastored by prominent gay activist Will Green, which left the UMC last year.

Then just this past Sunday, the large Bering Memorial UMC voted by 95 percent to switch from the UMC to the ultra-liberal United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination. Reportedly “nearly 70 percent” of Bering’s members self-identify as LGBTQ. According to last year’s Texas Annual Conference Journal (see page M-16 / 594), the congregation reports more than 700 members.

For all four congregations, this is a definitive — but not final — step in the long disaffiliation process established by the 2019 General Conference.

This newer batch of progressive congregations leaving the UMC has been spiritual home for some prominent liberal leadership, which may make their departures felt more widely. Bering has long been a prominent liberal force in the Texas Conference, and served as the launching pad for Troy Plummer before he went onto become RMN’s national executive director. The United Methodist News Service reports that HopeGateWay has become the church home of retired Bishop Clifton Ives (past president of the General Board of Church and Society and former co-president of the national Methodist Federation for Social Action) and RMN’s national communications director Ophelia Hu Kinney (who also serves as the congregation’s worship coordinator). UMNS paraphrases the latter as “see[ing] both leaving and staying as legitimate pathways toward change” – a significant statement from a spokeswoman for the main caucus that has for decades been solely focused on staying and liberalizing the UMC from within.

We reported earlier on how Grandview UMC secured annual conference permission last fall to leave, but in a way that curiously left open the possibility of them changing their minds before a March 31 deadline and staying UMC. Some local observers thought that this was just a publicity stunt, and that Grandview would not actually leave. But after our bishops punted on allowing an earlier resolution of our divisions, that deadline came, and the over-500-member congregation is now out. This Pennsylvania church now invites other liberal congregations to join its “Grandview Methodist Connection.” Its newsletter reports, “Our phones have been ringing and emails have been pinging with calls from churches around the country who are also disaffiliating or considering that step.”

Current church law imposes huge exit fees on progressive and other congregations leaving the UMC. The official record (see page 471) indicates that the $350,000 HopeGateWay reportedly must pay is nearly one-third higher than its entire 2020 expenses. The Chebeague church is similarly faced with a “the goal of raising $120,000 to ‘Keep Our Buildings,’” when its total 2020 expenses were only about $100,000.

Leaving our denomination involves more pain than just the money. As the Tuttle Road church put it, “[t]his was not an easy vote,” as many members “are lifelong Methodists and have raised generations of family in this church.” Hu Kinney described her congregation’s disaffiliation as bringing “a lot of mourning.”

In understanding choices to pay such prices, we must acknowledge the bigger picture. In May 2019, a prominent liberal leader in the Western Jurisdiction, soberly noted “the fact that the General Conference has for many decades been moving in an increasingly conservative and judgmental direction, particularly on matters related to sexual orientation.” He interpreted the special 2019 General Conference’s strengthening of traditionalist moral standards as both “simply the next logical step” of this trend and a step that “has removed any realistic hope that LGBTQIA+ persons will ever find a safe and authentic spiritual home in The United Methodist Church, at least not in its current configuration.”

Of course, I would counter that orthodox Methodism absolutely offers a loving spiritual home for interested members of the LGBTQIA+ community. But our denomination is torn between irreconcilable differences about what those words even mean.

More recently, the aforementioned Will Green similarly noted, “Since the early 1970s, the United Methodist Church has been on a trajectory to being more conservative.”

While some have made a big deal out of a progressive shift in 2019’s U.S. delegate elections, this overall shift was only among clergy and was offset by the shift of delegates away from the U.S. towards the generally theologically traditionalist Global South. I and others who track such things have concluded that it is unlikely that a majority of all General Conference delegates now favors same-sex unions. And any progressives noticing the continued shifts of membership and therefore representation to Africa hardly have the strongest grounds for optimism for the trend of future General Conferences after this next one.

As long as the UMC’s forced “unity” continues, progressive United Methodists remain part of a denomination that officially disapproves of same-sex weddings and remain affiliated with millions of others who believe and enforce such values.

Progressive United Methodists have found this connection hurtful to their own branding. The Houston-area gay magazine’s sub-headline about Bering “sever[ing] ties with the anti-LGBTQ United Methodist Church” surely caused much wincing. Green recently spoke of how individual congregations can “can put out our pride flags and try to create change,” but the wider denomination’s official beliefs remain “an offense to what we believe about God” and “[t]he world is noticing the United Methodist Church is so anti-gay.”

HopeGateWay lead pastor Sara Ewing-Merrill correctly observed that even in the ultra-liberal New England Conference (whose majority faction has pushed “non-conformity” with the Discipline), as long as they remain United Methodist, the possibility remains that that clergy who violate the Discipline could face charges. UMNS reported that “she has heard from gay couples who, when they think about their wedding days, feel fear about what could happen to the pastor who officiated.”

Against this backdrop, some progressive congregations have judged that leaving the UMC is worth the cost. Green, whose name no longer appears in our denomination’s list of New England clergy, recently told a reporter that his congregation’s departure “really brought us together and energized us for the future,” and so was well worth the cost. Ewing-Merrill spoke to the same reporter about “need[ing]d to be free from that system” under which she could face consequences for officiating same-sex weddings. In its own communal discernment, her congregation found that “a clear stance of full inclusion and affirmation of LGBTQIA persons is more important to HopeGateWay than remaining in the UMC.”

In a video posted Monday, Bering senior pastor Diane McGehee spoke of the pain of living for decades in a denomination whose teachings on sexuality they do not support, and spoke with excitement about now getting to affirm LGBTQ+ liberationist ideology “without ANY affiliation with those who say otherwise.” She likened her progressive congregation leaving the UMC to the end of an abusive marriage. A Grandview congregant told a reporter, “If we’d stayed (United Methodist), we’d have to change more than if we’d left.”

Such sentiments have striking parallels among theologically traditionalist United Methodists. Traditionalists also yearn for a new day of moving past our current fights and getting energized for the future. A great many traditionalists, in the America and elsewhere, are eager to be free of a denominational system that oppressively subjects them to threats and bullying from heavy-handed liberal bishops.

Nigerian Bishop John Wesley Yohanna powerfully declared that when it comes to denominational acceptance of same-sex unions, “maintaining our conservative Christian identity will take precedence above the name UMC.” Evangelical United Methodists have, similarly to McGehee, likened current United Methodist “unity” to being married to a persistently unfaithful and/or abusive spouse. For their own branding, traditionalist United Methodist congregations would love to be known for a clear commitment to biblical Christianity, without any embarrassing affiliation with those United Methodist bishops who deny Jesus Christ’s sinlessness or physical resurrection. Indefinitely maintaining our current denominational “unity” would impose more unwelcome, disruptive change on a great many congregations across the theological spectrum than a graciously managed separation.

Traditionalists can take some comfort in the trends favoring our General Conference majority. But we must also note the trends of deepening polarization and conflict. So if we keep fighting to take back the denomination as a whole, by the time the dust settled, there may not be much of a denomination left to “win.”

While there had previously been a small trickle of traditionalist congregations leaving, now we are seeing congregations across the theological spectrum quit the UMC.

Behind all such departures is great pain. The relatively smaller number of congregations whose pain has reached the breaking point are just the tip of the iceberg for similar pain and disruption experienced by United Methodists across the theological spectrum. Not to mention the deep pain of countless people, on all sides, who have been individually leaving their congregations as a result of our internal theological conflicts.

The longer United Methodists committed to fundamentally irreconcilable visions of Christian faith remain artificially locked together in a nominally “United” denomination, the more pain is imposed on members and congregations across the theological spectrum. The more we will see a steady trickle of additional congregations, conservative and liberal, have their pain reach the breaking point, and be forced to pay punitively heavy prices for leaving. Our denomination is being killed by a thousand paper cuts, in a way that needlessly amplifies the pain for those who leave as well as those who remain.

Regardless of who exactly we may want to blame, it should not be hard to acknowledge how this reality seems cruel to those across the spectrum who suffer under it.

There is a better way forward.

For all of its flaws, the Protocol proposal would both stop the slow bleeding of scattered exoduses as well as resolve what both traditionalists and liberals see as the greatest causes of harm in our denomination. It would responsibly provide for the needed support of clergy pensions (the main driver of departing congregations’ high exit fees) without forcing congregations to divert huge amounts of money and time from the ministries on which they’d rather focus. It would make it so much easier for like-minded United Methodists to be free of the different things they sincerely see as sources of pain and oppression in our current denominational “unity,” while greatly dampening the pain and costs of separation by allowing us all to still remain connected to a global denomination of like-minded conferences and congregations who are currently in the UMC.

New York Bishop Thomas Bickerton is an extremely liberal bishop with whom I often strongly disagree. But he deserves to be heard out in a sobering warning he recently offered: “The failure to adopt the Protocol would leave the church mired in a continuation of the conflict that has undermined the health, vitality, and witness of the UM Church for years. I believe that the Protocol is the best way to peaceably resolve the conflict. We have a clear choice – a continuation of the conflict that has been clearly demonstrated at the recent gatherings of the General Conference or an amicable and orderly separation that clearly witnesses to the world the Christ-like way to deal with irreconcilable conflict.”

The quicker we can get the Protocol done, the better it will be for all of us.