Amending the UMC Protocol?

Since the announcement of the “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation,” I have sometimes heard proposals to amend its implementing legislation from various directions. Some proposals for amending the UMC “Protocol” have come from conservatives, others from liberals.

In ordinary times, it would be perfectly natural to expect any major petition to be picked apart at General Conference, with various delegates offering all sorts of amendments that reflect personal concerns about various details.

But in case you haven’t noticed, these are not ordinary times.

United Methodists across the theological spectrum feel exasperatingly stuck. There is so much pain all around.

The Protocol legislation is categorically different from any other petition ever seriously considered at a United Methodist General Conference. It will not micromanage details of any structure we expect to continue sharing.

Instead, we will be settling the separation of two main parties who have painfully realize that we have irreconcilable differences and cannot continue living together.

There were some major flaws, particularly in terms of how the 16-member Mediation Team excluded Africans strongly supportive of the Traditional Plan.

But beyond that, and given the need to keep the group size limited enough to have meaningfully deep negotiations, the Mediation Team spanned an impressively broad range. The Team included members from all five U.S. jurisdictions, each of the three “central conference regions” identified in the UMC Discipline, the general-agency bureaucracy, different liberal/centrist caucuses (including the current and former CEO of the Reconciling Ministries Network), the immediate past president, current president, and president-designate of the Council of Bishops, women and men, diverse ethnicities, and members of the LGBTQ community.

The relatively more adversarial and time-pressured setting of a much larger General Conference committee, let alone an 862-member “committee of the whole,” is simply not equipped to match the depth of careful negotiations focused on achieving consensus as happened with the Protocol.

Unlike a General Conference committee rushing through dozens of petitions in less than a week, the Mediation Team met across months, all facilitated by a world-class professional mediator, and focused solely on what became the Protocol.

The Protocol is a true compromise in that no constituency is completely happy with it, but it is carefully balanced enough that almost everyone can begrudgingly live with it.

As part of their signed agreement, under “Agreement and Commitment to this Protocol,” Mediation Team members committed themselves to treating “each of the provisions of this Protocol” as “integrated with and integral to the whole,” to “not participate in or support legislation or other efforts that are inconsistent with the principles and terms of the Protocol and the implementing legislation,” except as unanimously agreed upon by the whole Team.

In other words, the Protocol is such a delicately balanced network of trade-offs and compromises that these leaders representing almost every major constituency of our denomination agreed to urge adopting the Protocol as-is.

The liberal caucus Mainstream UMC, has publicly declared:

“The hard reality is that the Protocol cannot be amended without risking the whole deal being lost.  No, the process was not perfect and no, there were not enough people at the table.  And yes, this deal is problematic for all sides.  Nevertheless, we have a document unanimously supported by the groups that fought bitterly over the One Church Plan and the Traditional Plan a year ago.  We have a document that gives everyone a chance to move on with a blessing and without a lawsuit.”

That caucus has publicly made this further commitment: “Mainstream UMC is committed to the Protocol and will argue against amendments, even amendments we might prefer….”

I am strongly critical of the Mainstream UMC article linked to above and most everything else from that caucus. But I must admit that they are onto something in the words I have quoted.  Any sort “free for all” of unlimited amendments being proposed at General Conference, or potentially even a single divisive amendment to selfishly seek unfair advantage for one “side” at the expense of others, could unravel the whole delicate peace process, resulting in untold harm to ALL segments of the UMC. 

All of this is aside from how the General Conference delays will necessitate making a few very simple changes to the dates and timelines specified in parts of the Protocol.

Other than that, what exactly would people want to amend in the UMC Protocol? Here are perhaps the biggest areas of controversy:

1. Money

Some liberals seem obsessed over the Protocol’s $25 million settlement. But as I have explained, this is NOT a matter of traditionalist United Methodists being “given” anything. Rather this deal means traditionalists letting liberals take over perhaps about 95 percent of our denomination’s assets and merely being allowed to keep a meager fraction.

Furthermore, the realities of the financial big picture mean that attempts to amend this part of the UMC Protocol may very well result in traditionalists being allotted more than $25 million, while any lessening of this amount would likely primarily punish Africans already facing severe poverty, as you can read about here.

Finally, derailing the Protocol may allow liberals to initially get another $25 million for themselves, but the result would also involve them spending tens of millions of dollars more than that in the church-property lawsuits the Protocol was designed to avoid. 

2. The Default

Traditionalist United Methodists, by definition, support the UMC’s historic, official doctrinal and moral values. In principle, I absolutely agree that if anyone leaves the denomination, it should be liberals unwilling to submit to these values. Failing that, it would be at least somewhat fair to completely dissolve the UMC and let everyone decide for themselves their new denominational identity.

But while some liberals are leaving, we are simply not going to see the majority of those resisting our traditionalist standards leave without at least several more years of increasingly bitter fighting. After a decade or so, there may not be much left for traditionalists to “win.”

Simply dissolving or abolishing the UMC is just not realistic. It would involve too many practical complications, including difficult constitutional amendments.

So one side had to surrender the default and legal continuities to the other. Traditionalists agreed to make this painful sacrifice for the sake of stopping further church-harming conflict. This means the burden will be on traditionalists to take the initiative to bring votes in our congregations and conferences.

This separation is often likened to divorce. But another analogy is that the more liberal post-Separation UMC (psUMC) and the emerging traditionalist Global Methodist Church are like two siblings who have grown up together but now need to live apart. As we divide our inheritance, some things cannot be neatly divided, and so will only be inherited by one of us. Our sibling may get the family house, but that place will no longer be the home it was.

As I have noted, in some ways, the UMC as we have known it will no longer exist, so no one is truly “leaving.”

3. The Annual Conference Percentage

Personally, one thing I really hate about the Protocol is how the coming denominational alignment votes of some annual conferences are blatantly “rigged” to the advantage of the liberal side. The Protocol requires that for an annual conference to continue into the Global Methodist Church, and thus keep the UMC’s historic and still-official doctrinal and moral standards, it must vote to do this by a 57-percent super-majority. As I and others see it, this allows liberals to “take over” an annual conference for the psUMC—which the Protocol’s Preamble explicitly envisions will liberalize its standards—with a minority of 43.1 percent.

Liberals deserve to be challenged on how they can possibly insist on such a violation of Jesus Christ’s Golden Rule to treat others as you want to be treated.

But this was reportedly the most difficult part of the negotiations, with the 57-percent figure being a compromise only settled as late as possible.

So if liberals honor their end of the bargain and continue supporting the UMC Protocol as unanimously agreed upon, if traditionalist delegates “threw the first punch” by seeking to unilaterally amend this part, they could risk upending the whole structure of carefully balanced, interlocking compromises.

4. The Name

Leading African traditionalists have urged amending the UMC Protocol to allow traditionalist United Methodists separating from the psUMC to continue using the phrase “United Methodist” and some version of iconic cross-and-flame logo, with distinguishing modifications, at least in Africa.

This is not part of the Protocol that I and others across the spectrum have committed to supporting.

But it is worth observing that this is not a new or exclusively traditionalist idea.

Leaders of the UMC Next caucus include some of the most prominent American liberals in our denomination. Before the Protocol’s release, I strongly decried their multi-part General Conference proposal.

Yet even this aggressively liberal plan (see the bottom of page 18) included provision for a new traditionalist Methodist denomination “to make its own use of the words ‘United Methodist’ or protected United Methodist insignia (including the Cross and Flame), provided care is taken to impose requirements or conditions needed to prevent confusion and that preserve The United Methodist Church’s ability to protect its intellectual property rights.”

Now UMC Next, like others, has abandoned its plan for the Protocol. 

But the fact remains that this basic idea has been promoted by some of the most prominent liberal bishops and LGBTQ activists, even in an arguably more bitterly divided time. I have not seen any liberal leader articulate why they could no longer support an olive-branch idea they rather recently, publicly promoted.

Remember, now roughly half of United Methodists are Africans, and observers across the spectrum have admitted that African delegates were near unanimous in supporting the 2019 Traditional Plan. Yet the exclusion of African Traditional Plan supporters was perhaps the most indefensible flaw of the Protocol’s formation.

So I wonder if there might not be any willingness by delegates across the spectrum to accommodate at least some concerns of African traditionalists. Especially when this would not fundamentally differ from what liberal caucus leaders already proposed. Especially when some African leaders say that lacking such accommodation could potentially hurt some of their vital ministries.

If anything could be worked out, I suppose it may be a matter that traditionalist Africans could try to negotiate ahead of time with primarily white, privileged American liberals.  I would obviously love to see the latter show a more gracious, less vengeful attitude towards the former.  But I am not their spokesman.

5. Zambia Amendments

In March 2021, before the first call for postponing General Conference, the Zambia Annual Conference in central Africa met and called for amending the UMC Protocol.

Two amendments are particularly noteworthy because of how they are categorically different from the other four issues listed above. These two amendments are entirely within the original spirit and intent of the Protocol. They would not fundamentally re-negotiate any major or controversial provision, nor seek a big, new advantage for one side over others. They simply seek to ensure good governance, minimize conflict, and bring greater trust to the implementation of the Protocol.

One would amend the UMC Protocol by adding these words: “No bishop, district superintendent, or pastor shall prevent or unduly delay a central conference, annual conference, or local church from taking a vote of alignment when the prescribed process of this ¶ 2556 is properly followed. No bishop or district superintendent shall suspend, withhold an appointment, or otherwise penalize a pastor or layperson due to that person’s position or decision on alignment under this ¶ 2556.”

While the Mediation Team was disproportionately dominated by Westerners, this contribution from Africa would inject clear affirmation of the anti-colonialist principle of self-determination. As conferences and congregations prepare to decide which denomination to continue their ministries within, this amendment simply asks us to treat each other as we want to be treated and avoid needless bullying, abuse, intimidation, or harm in attempts to coerce anyone’s choices.

Note that this amendment cuts both ways. Yes, this would protect traditionalists considering the Global Methodist Church. But it would equally protect congregations and individuals who wanted to choose the psUMC even if their annual conference chose Global Methodism, as well as leaders in psUMC-minded annual conferences within a GMC-minded central conference.

One key step in the Protocol petition, in ¶2556.2a, is that after General Conference, those forming a new traditionalist denomination must “register their intent” with the Council of Bishops. The Council is then supposed to grant conditional recognition to this emerging new denomination. This in turn allows United Methodists to begin transferring into that denomination (something that they cannot do before such recognition is granted). Another Zambian amendment would amend this section of the UMC Protocol with a simple phrase, by making clear that the Council of Bishops must grant this recognition and let the new denomination move forward “within 14 days of receiving application.”

This frankly reflects the need for greater trust, and deep pain over broken trust.

If traditionalists set up our new denomination, with all the painful prices and sacrifices demanded of us by the Protocol, then amending the UMC Protocol in this way would make clear that we could indeed move on from our conflicts, without the Council of Bishops unreasonably blocking or filibustering the actual enactment of the peace treaty.

I really cannot fathom why anyone who otherwise supported the Protocol would oppose these two Zambian amendments, unless their Protocol “support” was offered only in bad faith, and they were cynically planning and/or supporting efforts to mistreat and betray traditionalist believers. Or perhaps such opponents may be committed to an old-school mindset of wanting such major decisions to remain unfairly dominated by Americans and Europeans representing predominantly white constituencies, and do not believe theologically traditionalist Africans are worth hearing out.

These two amendments would encourage at least a minimal level of trust and help the Protocol work in bringing peace along the lines of what Protocol endorsers across the theological spectrum have said they want.

Next year, my fellow delegates and I will be entrusted with the awesome responsibility of bringing a sustainable peace to decades of increasingly bitter denominational infighting. Or instead, we could short-sightedly abandon the spirit of compromise and consensus, derail the peace treaty, and unleash upon our churches a whole new level of destructive chaos and conflict.

Let’s not mess this up.