In February 2020, a liberal United Methodist caucus warned of the danger of trying to renegotiate how our denomination will divide: “The deal will be off, the division will rage on, and we are likely headed to court. All in the name of Jesus.” Now with many liberals bailing on the “Protocol,” the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) is predictably embroiled in a lawsuit with an ethnically diverse group of 106 congregations.
Florida’s rich, powerful, and aggressively liberal bishop Ken Carter quickly fired off a public statement against the underdogs, using sanctimonious language to paint a misleading picture. Carter (1) warns orthodox congregations currently under his domination to “not cause pain,” (2) claims that “our doctrinal standards have not changed and will not change,” (3) claims to be concerned “about fairness,” (4) claims to be concerned for protecting pensions for retired clergy and their spouses, and (5) accuses the Florida UMC congregations in this lawsuit of “haste” in seeking an “abrupt” and “an immediate disaffiliation.”
The hypocrisy of all five of these responses becomes clear when we review the facts of how these Florida UMC congregations only filed this lawsuit after a long history of Carter callously causing pain in theologically orthodox congregations, stubbornly refusing to let separation proceed more amicably, and boxing such congregations into a corner.
No one seriously disputes that our denomination is unavoidably splitting and that our sexuality disagreements reflect far deeper differences.
Carter was part of the small team that negotiated the “Protocol” plan for our denomination to have an “amicable separation.” When it was unveiled in early 2020, Carter became jointly responsible for starting irreversible processes of a major split.
The Protocol preamble makes clear that the denomination inheriting the name “United Methodist” will liberalize, while the Global Methodist Church is the denomination for those who want their church to continue what have been (and remain) the UMC’s deeply doctrinally rooted moral standards. It is highly disingenuous for Carter to suggest that standards have not changed just because General Conference has not yet directly edited them. In fact, the denomination’s effective, de facto moral standards will change and, in Florida, are already changed by Carter’s own actions, based on rejection of undisputed teachings of the UMC’s core Doctrinal Standards.
Furthermore, for United Methodists who do not want their denomination to keep bishops who openly deny the UMC’s own core doctrine about Jesus Christ, and who want a clear majority of their denomination’s American constituency to not believe that “Jesus committed sins like other people,” the Global Methodist Church is for them. The “continuing United Methodist Church” will not be. These are rubber-meets-the-road realities of the separation Carter helped begin.
The Florida UMC congregations in this lawsuit are the underdogs, and are seeking to simply continue serving God and their neighbors while remaining faithful to their church’s doctrine. As the lawsuit (whose filing can be read here) notes, the lead-plaintiff congregation (and doubtless many others of the 106) “purchased, paid for, and maintained its property without any assistance from The UMC or the Annual Conference” many decades before the UMC was even established. This is likely true for a great many of the other congregations.
Mr. Carter, in contrast, is a clear opponent of the UMC’s official doctrinal and moral standards. Under his dominance, Florida Conference leadership positions have become overwhelmingly stacked in favor of those who share Carter’s liberal views, while those who support the official moral and doctrinal standards of the United Methodist Book of Discipline have become marginalized.
Now Carter and his appointees have done so much to “cause pain” that over 100 Florida congregations in this lawsuit have found it necessary to separate from the UMC, so that they can remain faithful to the historic doctrinal and moral standards of United Methodism rather than to Ken Carter.
By any objective standard of “fairness,” those who take the painful steps to leave the denomination should be people like Carter who do not believe in the UMC’s historic, official historic standards, rather than those like these 106 congregations who remain loyal to these standards. Letting Mr. Carter take over the bulk of the conference, unchallenged, is a rather extraordinary act of costly grace on the part of traditionalists United Methodists. But rather than be grateful, Carter has thus far refused to show much grace to others who have already shown him so much more grace.
Even aside from this fundamental unfairness, Carter’s insistence on only using the disaffiliation process of Discipline Paragraph 2553 is not nearly as “fair” or “gracious” as Carter suggests.
There are two main problems with theologically conservative UMC congregations, like those in the Florida lawsuit, being forced to use ¶2553 (adopted in 2019 as a liberal-backed alternative to more gracious exit plans). First, it requires a two-thirds supermajority vote for a congregation to essentially remain loyal to the UMC’s historic doctrinal and moral standards. So a traditionalist congregation can become permanently taken over for liberalism, and blocked from remaining connected with more orthodox Methodists, by a mere 34-percent minority.
Secondly, ¶2553, in the name of supposedly covering unfunded pension liabilities for retired clergy and their spouses, requires massive, immediate exit fees. Depending on the conference, this can cost thousands of dollars per congregational member. Many congregations simply cannot afford such extortion, or would become severely financially crippled by it.
I do not know anybody who wants to harm retirees’ pensions.
But Carter has other options of different Discipline provisions and mechanisms (including promissory notes for pension liabilities) to let these Florida UMC congregations in this lawsuit leave under fairer terms while sufficiently providing for retirees, but without needlessly high exit fees. In previous circumstances, Carter and the conference have done so.
Carter has now simply chosen to insist on a more punitive route.
[8/1/2022 UPDATE: According to a new report, the Florida Conference, under Carter’s leadership, is choosing to add a significant additional burden on disaffiliating congregations of “requiring a form of liability insurance that is rarely available commercially, and when it is available, is prohibitively expensive.” Some annual conferences “have gone out of their way to accommodate churches wanting to disaffiliate,” others are at least “imposing a straight Par. 2553 process with no added financial requirements,” and a third category “add some requirements to the basics of Par. 2553, but those requirements may not apply to all churches or they pose a relatively modest additional cost.” But Florida’s disaffiliation policy places Carter’s conference in the fourth category of those that “are imposing additional financial and other requirements that in effect block churches from disaffiliating by making it unaffordable.”]
As for Carter’s accusation of “haste,” this Florida UMC lawsuit only comes after several years of his boxing traditionalists into a corner:
In March 2019, shortly after the special General Conference re-affirmed our longstanding prohibition of same-sex weddings, activist clergyman Andy Oliver violated this rule.
Although this process is supposed to be confidential, Carter apparently allowed the pastor who filed a complaint against Oliver to be publicly “outed.” This subjected this faithful pastor and his congregation (now among the 106 in the Florida UMC lawsuit) to a flood of negative publicity, nasty phone calls and emails, and negative online reviews from activists across the country. Then the “counsel for the church” Carter hand-picked to pursue the complaint has apparently done nothing, and completely refuses to communicate with the pastor who filed the complaint.
Carter’s failure to uphold church standards (in a process that began many months before the Protocol was signed) predictably emboldened Oliver. A couple years later, it was reported, “He has now officiated more than a half-dozen same-sex weddings at his church in the past few years,” apparently with no consequences.
So by 2019, Carter had already transformed the Florida United Methodism so that its effective standards have indeed changed, so that ministers can violate the UMC Discipline with impunity, while the only ones subject to effective punishment are those who respectfully stand up for the Discipline’s standards.
Then the Protocol’s early-2020 release by Carter and others forced orthodox United Methodists to do the hard work of preparing a new denomination, which necessarily included spreading the word among like-minded United Methodists. In May 2020, even a prominent liberal caucus leader known for sharp rhetoric publicly “invite[d] those groups that are forming a new denomination to keep doing [their] work.”
But over the next year, the Rev. Jay Therrell, as president of the Florida Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA) was subject to bullying harassment from conference officials for doing just that, which became so bad that he surrendered his ordination. Later, his car was pelted with tomatoes. All of this reflects the hostile culture Carter has fostered.
In April 2021, Therrell made a heartfelt public plea with bishops to use an alternative, less punitive option in our church law to allow congregations to depart. At the very least, Carter could have gotten such a process implemented in the Florida Conference.
In June 2021, Florida WCA leaders met with Carter to promote this same basic concern.
By December 2021, amidst tensions from liberal bishops violating our church’s standards, bullying traditionalists, and refusing to allow truly amicable separation, Therrell warned:
I hope progressives realize what they’re doing. Rapidly, they’re boxing traditionalists into the place where we will have no choice but to come out swinging. We don’t want to do that. It’s not a good Christian witness, but it’s rapidly becoming our only choice.
We simply want to be let go to pursue the vision we believe God has given us. We want to bless progressives to do the same. It’s not too much to ask that traditionalist congregations be allowed to leave with the assets we and our ancestors invested in. (And let’s be clear, our ancestors would have been overwhelmingly traditionalist.) We’re not asking for anything else.
Then in March 2022, Therrell decried new “intimidation tactics” by Carter and his representatives. Therrell publicly pleaded with Carter, “Just let us go.”
Instead, Carter used his superior prominence to publicly disparage the Florida WCA and sanctimoniously declared, “I do not understand the need for closed meetings.” At best, this was extraordinarily insensitive to pastors who wanted to explore their options but were understandably fearful of retaliation.
Especially since last year, Carter repeatedly, pointedly declined heartfelt pleas to provide some brief for-the-record statement to offer any “calming re-assurance that [he does] *not* intend to bully or punitively change the appointment situation of any Florida Conference elders, deacons, or licensed local pastors SOLELY because of their being affiliated with the WCA or supportive of the Global Methodist Church, and that [he does] not want Florida’s district superintendents, board of ordained ministry, or district committees on ministry to do so either.”
Then on May 18 and 19, webinars on separation were held, apparently organized by Northern Illinois Conference treasurer Lonnie Chafin and other annual conference officials from across the country. Speakers included Carter’s own cabinet dean Cynthia Weems, whose actions reflect on her boss, and Florida’s new liberal, gay activist co-lay leader Derrick Scott III. These webinars were advertised to many General Conference delegates, but then numerous delegates were blocked from or kicked out of these webinars, for apparently no other reason than that we were known to be conservative.
Rules for thee but not for me?
Then at last month’s Florida Annual Conference session, Carter’s heavy-handed actions escalated tensions even beyond his earlier “abeyance” of complaint processes. After the liberal-stacked board of ordained ministry (BOOM) illegally approved ministry candidates who do not meet the UMC Discipline’s sexual-morality standards, Carter violated the Discipline by refusing to rule the unqualified candidates out of order, and then prevented clergy from voting on each candidate separately. Carter also took the highly inappropriate steps of praising the rogue BOOM (which he appointed), and the rejected candidates (as if the clergy session had no right to not approve them).
Later at the same conference session, Florida WCA treasurer Chris Akers publicly pleaded for Carter to, “in the spirit of the Protocol which you helped create,” let the over 100 orthodox congregations who had already indicated their desire to separate to be allowed to do so under more amicable terms than ¶2553, in order to “end the conflict and let us go with your blessing.” Pastor Akers added, “We don’t want to fight.”
Last week, it was reported that the Florida UMC congregations in this lawsuit “tried to settle this matter with the Florida Annual Conference” but that, “Speaking for the Annual Conference and Bishop, the Chancellor categorically refused any pre-suit negotiations forcing the plaintiffs to seek relief from the court.”
This lawsuit was not filed in “haste,” but only after trying to work in a more amicable way with Carter, over several years, and repeatedly seeing heartfelt pleas go nowhere. It is Carter who chose to block other, more reasonable options.
As the lawsuit notes, Carter is trying to force these 106 Florida UMC congregations into “the unconscionable choice of remaining with The UMC when it has admittedly stopped enforcing the doctrine” of its own Discipline¸” “giving to The UMC all of their property which was purchased and maintained—in some cases for decades if not more than a century—by their own employees, parishioners, and donors; or paying to The UMC an arbitrary, onerous, and often prohibitive sum of money determined in the sole discretion” of annual conference officials.
Please pray that Bishop Carter would learn to show a “heart of peace.”
UPDATE: The Florida WCA is now inviting endorsements of its “Let Us Go Proclamation,” through which you can stand with orthodox Florida UMC congregations and call on Bishop Ken Carter to not act like Pharaoh: https://www.letusgo.world
Comment by Steve on July 20, 2022 at 2:53 pm
“in the name of supposedly covering unfunded pension liabilities for retired clergy and their spouses, requires massive, immediate exit fees.” You are aware the GMC, the denomination these churches say they want to join, requires the exact same thing to disaffiliate? They just don’t call it a “trust clause.” They place a “lien” on church property. A lien that must be paid in order to leave the GMC. It doesn’t seem like these churches have read the GMC’s traditional BOD. Not a smart move for churches who want control of their church property.
Comment by John Lomperis on July 20, 2022 at 3:10 pm
I am sorry, Steve, but your information is simply wrong. The GMC has no trust clause, and you will not find the word “lien” anywhere in its latest Doctrines and Disciplines:
https://globalmethodist.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Transitional-Discipline.2022041289-1.pdf
An earlier version did talk about a lien, but that ONLY applied to a narrow circumstance of a congregation taking on debt from the UMC and trying to unfairly dump it all on the GMC. I understand that subsequent developments have rendered this a moot point.
Comment by Gary Bebop on July 20, 2022 at 6:43 pm
Thanks, John, for pointing out the examples of official dissembling in Florida. The bungling in Florida and the attempt to whisk it away with circumlocutions manifest an astonishing bullheadedness at work. Surely there is just cause to seek relief.
Comment by David Livingston on July 20, 2022 at 9:08 pm
Steve, John has mislabeled the earlier draft as referring only to when a GMC church takes on debt from the UMC. He is correct, though, that the lien is no longer part of the GMC’s BODD. It has been removed because their retirement program is now defined. It is strictly a defined contribution plan (pastors and churches pay in and pastors receive that amount) instead of a more traditional pension program. With that system, it’s not possible to have an unfunded pension. It also means pastors who are paid less during their time of service will receive significantly less in their retirement than pastors who were better paid. That raises a justice issue that both the GMC and UMC should consider.
Comment by Pat on July 20, 2022 at 9:17 pm
Traditional church members have watched this on-going battle take place by UMC church leaders on both sides of the issue for years and when, during the 2019 special conference, the current Book of Discipline was affirmed, the liberal UMC leadership in the USA UMC church simply decided to ignore and do what they wanted with regard to enforcing the Book of Discipline, destroying the UMC. We, as church members affirm our loyalty, prayers, service and offerings to support the UMC when we join the local Methodist church. Unfortunately, liberal leadership long ago abandoned those very principals, we as members pledge when joining a Methodist church. It is no wonder many church members are leaving and are not waiting for the new GMC.
Comment by MJ on July 20, 2022 at 9:38 pm
¶2553 reminds me of when congregations attempted to leave the ELCA following 2009. Many were successful, but because of the 2/3’s vote required to leave, there were also many failed attempts. So the “losing majority” often left without their property and the “winning minority” experienced the pyrrhic victory of inheriting a property they couldn’t afford.
Comment by Tim Puckett on July 21, 2022 at 8:23 am
You must understand where Leftists are determined to move this country culturally. Conservative congregations are just in the way. They’d rather have liberal churches or no churches- no other choice.
Comment by SW on July 21, 2022 at 10:01 am
What MJ alluded to is exactly what I see happening. Conservatives will leave the UMC and join other conservative local churches and denominations and the UMC will decline in membership and financial stability.
Comment by Steve on July 21, 2022 at 10:18 am
Thanks, David. My response to John seems to have been deleted. The GMC’s BOD as recent as May 31, 2022, where it stated under “Property” “#903” regarding pension liability of the GMC for churches disaffiliating: “If a local church chooses to disaffiliate from the Global Methodist Church, it must satisfy the lien in full before doing so.” You can find it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220531034447/https://globalmethodist.org/what-we-believe/
So, when the organizers told congregations “you can keep your property” they clearly were not being honest up until their recent change less than two months ago. Or at least playing word games preferring a lien on property rather than a trust on property with both having the same outcome – denominational ownership of property.
As that conflict was being called out by many, they were forced with choosing to harm congregations with their “lien” in place of a “trust” wordplay or harm clergy with a disproportionate retirement system. They first chose the congregation. Now it’s the clergy.
So instead of these churches going from one denomination to another that owns their property. They are going from one denomination to another that has disingenuous leadership.
Comment by Gary Bebop on July 21, 2022 at 12:26 pm
Steve seems to be saying that churches should be allowed to skip out on paying their share of a liability. He conflates terms (trust and lien) in order to make the argument. If you take your car to a body shop but refuse to pay the bill, that may trigger a lien on your vehicle until you clean up the debt. Most of us understand this and pay up. A lien is a temporary hold. This is not the same as the UMC trust system, where the conference owns everything down to the last hymnal.
Comment by Bud on July 21, 2022 at 2:13 pm
Keep it up folks and very soon you will find our membership declining even more rapidly than it has been. This is what happens when you put wierdos in charge. All the “normal” folks go elsewhere.
Comment by Phil on July 21, 2022 at 4:45 pm
Have these 106 congregations taken a formal vote to disaffiliate? I can somewhat understand the objection by some traditionalists to the 2/3 rule, but can you confirm that at least a majority of members in each of these congregations have declared their wish to leave? I’m only asking because Mt. Bethel in Georgia never took a formal vote and instead turned the decision over to its church council (which would be illegal under both the current BOD and the protocol).
Comment by Steve on July 21, 2022 at 5:29 pm
Gary,
Yes, a trust and a lien are not exactly the same but they do require the same in order to gain control of your property: payment of money. For example, in my UMC annual conference, they are requiring payment of unfunded pension and two years apportionments to disaffiliate and gain control of church property. The GMC, up until at least a month and a half ago, required payment of unfunded pension to disaffiliate and gain control. There is a small church that disaffiliated in my conference that had to pay (rounding) $1500 two years of apportionments and $8,000 unfunded pension. The GMC’s leadership would have been ok with requiring that church to pay $8,000 in unfunded pension to keep their property. Not the same as the UMC’s $9,500 but still a required payment of thousands of dollars to keep their own property. This requirement was in effect when the GMC leadership was telling people they could keep their property. They didn’t mention that they would also have to pay for it like the UMC requires.
My point is the problems facing the UMC are going to follow churches leaving to go to the GMC. The problems are social and cultural problems that are affecting every Christian church and denomination. More so churches and denominations with weak and disingenuous leadership, like the UMC and GMC seem to have. Running away to another church or denomination will not solve the problem. Fighting back will. There are denominations that have already started the pushback. Traditionalists in the UMC need to follow their lead. Traditionalists outnumber the progressives.
Comment by David Livingston on July 21, 2022 at 5:51 pm
Steve, yes, and what many still do not realize is that even today a church can join the GMC and a group of 17 people can rewrite the rules. The Transitional Leadership Council has complete authority.
Comment by Anthony on July 21, 2022 at 8:12 pm
The UMC hierarchy, a just and loving lot, can place the trust clause and 2553 in the same bucket with ordination standards and marriage – essentially setting aside all as a package deal, and both sides can go their separate ways.
Comment by Gary Bebop on July 22, 2022 at 2:02 pm
Trying to paint a rosy picture for the fighting chances of traditionalists in left-careening United Methodism is a denial of the historical record. GC2019 was a sample of the church’s inability to correct its course. The comments of David Livingstone here are illustrative. He’s well known for attacks on WCA and GMC formation. But his posts betray tactical silence on the breakdown of discipline and doctrine which have generated the church’s present predicament. He conceals to advance a narrative.
Comment by Steve on July 22, 2022 at 4:11 pm
Gary,
Traditionalists won in GC2019. The Traditional Plan passed when everyone said it wouldn’t. The leadership of the WCA and now GMC who negotiated the Protocol sold us out. (oddly, they are the ones who receive the power and financial benefit of the new denomination). However, now that the African church grows and the US church decreases in membership (progressives are leaving the UMC too, btw), there are more traditionalists in the UMC today than there were in 2019.
The Pope just released a statement pushing back against German progressives in the Catholic Church. The SBC is facing challenges with pastors marrying same-sex couples and now pushing back. Every denomination is facing these issues. Running from them is not going to make them go away. Just delays the fight to when it reaches your denomination or church. It will. Time to push back.
Comment by Gary Bebop on July 23, 2022 at 2:44 pm
Dressed up as a victory, GC2019 has been portrayed as securing the future for conservatives in the UMC. That’s the narrative on the campaign flyer from “centrists” and bishops trying to block the exits. But outside the campaign bubble, the reality on the ground is different. Persecution and repression of conservatives has only increased since GC2019, not decreased, because determinative power is wielded by the episcopacy and their janissaries, not by General Conference fiat or by scattered local churches, no matter how fervent. The one-hundred-and-six in Florida will have their day in court.
Comment by Anthony on July 24, 2022 at 9:09 am
Gary, you say — “Dressed up as a victory, GC2019 has been portrayed as securing the future for conservatives in the UMC. That’s the narrative on the campaign flyer from “centrists” and bishops trying to block the exits.”
I’m not understanding what you’re saying here. First, and I’m not trying to be disagreeable, I can find no evidence that there are “centrists” in that those who self describe as such ALWAYS side with the progressives when forced into a position. Second, I see the blocking of exits for traditionalists is all about MONEY and preserving the INSTITUTION. There is a concentrated effort underway by these so called centrists and their progressive colleagues to FOOL traditionalists with their bait-and-switch tactics with this ‘big tent’ malarkey that traditionalists will be welcomed and respected in this coming circus under that big tent. The only thing that will be welcomed and respected there will be their MONEY.
Comment by Gary Bebop on July 24, 2022 at 12:14 pm
The conversation is down in the grain here, but to Anthony’s question: the “centrists” (those influencers who portray themselves in this favorable light) are peddling the narrative that “nothing has changed” in the UMC as a talking point. But it’s manifestly clear that reality for many traditional clergy and local churches has changed, and the welcome mat is being used to swat traditionalists who speak out. I think you get the picture: the middle ground is now a progressive sink hole.
Comment by John Smith on July 24, 2022 at 1:49 pm
And we already know the Bishop’s strategy for the coming battle; we’ve seen it elsewhere.
We must destroy them to save them. When this is over only the lawyers will have won but the heretics must be punished.
Comment by Anthony on July 26, 2022 at 4:05 pm
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause requires states to practice equal protection. If our US Constitution guarantees this in our civil society, the UMC should at least match that in church society. Progressives AND traditionalists should be treated equally under church law – YET ARE NOT. If ordination standards, bishop concentration standards, and marriage standards can be set aside for progressives, then certainly the trust clause and 2553 can be set aside for traditionalists. Equal treatment demands it.
The lawyers in this case must argue that the civil court see the UMC Book of Discipline as it sees the US Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment, and rule that since UMC officials are already practicing the arbitrary setting aside of church law, then these traditional congregations receive equal treatment under that same BOD law. They should be allowed to set aside the trust clause, set aside paragraph 2553, and granted the right to a negotiated fair and equitable disaffiliation from the UMC, or be granted an outright disaffiliation from the denomination with their properties and assets.
Comment by Anthony on July 27, 2022 at 11:42 am
bishop consecration standards
Comment by Ed Biggers on August 8, 2022 at 7:24 pm
I know very little about all the reasons why those of The United Methodist Church. In reference to Bishop Carther I attended our Annual Conference this year and found the discussion concerning those churches who have chosen to leave the UMC was very gracious. Just saying. I am a member of the western conference of NC