The Global Methodist Church on Abortion: Challenges Ahead

I previously outlined how United Methodist leaders have made clear their desire to make an extreme, far-left approach to abortion dominant in what remains of the United Methodist Church after it splits. Meanwhile the emerging Global Methodist Church will have its own challenges on abortion. 

Key leaders of the Global Methodist Church are clearly pro-life, and would like this new denomination to be as well. But for the Global Methodist Church to truly embrace the pro-life values of historic, orthodox Christian tradition will involve some serious challenges at multiple levels. 

As noted in my last article, the current transitional position of the Global Methodist Church on abortion is fundamentally similar to that of the UMC Social Principles, despite some different details (see under “Part Two | Social Witness,” then “202. Our Witness to the World,” sub-sections 2-3). Both position statements include significant pro-life elements. Only the Global Methodist Church cites any Scripture.

But both denominations also include a single vague sentence making exceptions to an otherwise generally anti-abortion position. The UMC Social Principles makes this exception for “tragic conflicts of life with life.” As also noted in my last article, the narrow failure of orthodox General Conference delegates to amend this by adding the word “physical,” to limit these exceptions to “tragic conflicts of physical life with physical life” has left the UMC with some official ambiguity. Liberal United Methodist officials have exploited this, treating the position as broadly supportive of elective abortions in which there is no unusually elevated risk of the mother or child actually dying, but the child could be disruptive for any aspect of the women’s life (emotional, financial, professional, etc.). Which is the case for any child. 

The transitional Global Methodist position on abortion, along with some strongly pro-life statements, similarly makes exception for “tragic conflicts of life against life when the wellbeing of the mother and the child are at stake.” Like the current UMC Social Principles, this is not explicitly limited to concerns about physical life.

But it must be stressed that this is part of an expressly transitional rulebook. The Global Methodist Church’s stance on abortion is not set in stone. Rather, this language serves as a placeholder until the denomination’s convening General Conference is able to meet and clarify the Global Methodist position on abortion.

The reality is that in Global Methodism’s earliest stages, most members will have only recently transferred from the United Methodist Church. To go from your denomination having a pro-life-leaning but somewhat ambiguous position to a clearly, strongly, indisputably pro-life position is a major shift. Such a dramatic change is probably best handled by the larger, representative, and more global group of the denomination’s convening General Conference. Especially if the goal is not to just have a small group rush to impose their personal preferences, but to establish a position in a way that ensures representative input from diverse constituencies and results in deeper buy-in from church members.

A main author of the transitional/placeholder statement of the Global Methodist Church on abortion recently gave me permission to share that this person would support someone proposing at the convening General Conference to add the qualifier “physical” to the “life against life” conflicts in the exception clause.

To give fair warning, as a passionate pro-lifer, I also plan to encourage removing the word “wellbeing.” Of course, we care about the wellbeing of both mother and child. But this specific term has particular significance in American abortion law. Doe v. Bolton, the less-famous but important companion case to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, used the word “wellbeing” in reference to a range of factors—“physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age”—that could be used to justify abortion for virtually any reason.

Such matters will ultimately be up to the convening General Conference to decide for the Global Methodist Church, on abortion and other issues, after annual conferences have had time to get organized and elect delegates. Hopefully, enough delegates will have learned to avoid the dangers of the UMC’s strategic ambiguity.

But the challenges facing the Global Methodist Church on abortion (and related pro-life concerns) are much greater than simply revising a few words in a document at General Conference. 

Many Global Methodists will be eager to see their denomination’s proposed Commission on Discipleship, Doctrine, and Just Ministry do what they wish their former denomination’s GBCS had been doing: advocate pro-life values and policies in society. But some will feel so burned by their negative experiences in the UMC that they will feel skittish about anything that looks to them like the denomination “getting involved in political issues.” Such tensions will need to be navigated. 

These tensions in turn raise larger questions about what will be the overall guiding values, underlying philosophy, and, very importantly, principled limits of the involvement of the denomination’s leaders and institutions (as opposed to individual lay members) in various social concerns. I and many others would argue that pro-life concerns in public policy are special in that they are clearly rooted in biblical, historic Christian values (and hopefully in what will be the Global Methodist Church’s position on abortion), and are fundamentally different from how most other political debates boil down to differing prudential judgments on the best means to advance commonly sought goals (like how to strengthen a nation’s economy). So how can the new denomination establish careful boundaries of promoting pro-life values, but without following the bad example of United Methodism’s General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) or Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA)? This example has been a pattern of using the church to advocate strong, detailed positions on every political issue from A to Z, and doing so in ways that consistently, predictably align with one of the two major U.S. political parties.

Contrary to some misinformation and projection from liberal critics, the new denomination’s emerging U.S. constituency is more politically diverse than the liberal wing of the UMC.

We also must be ever-conscious of the fact that the new denomination is not U.S.-only, which presents its own challenges and opportunities. How will this new global denomination do a better job of addressing abortion and other social concerns in a way that is fully inclusive of Global Methodists both within and beyond the United States? How might the treasure of the denomination’s global nature be utilized for Global Methodists to learn from pro-life movements in different countries? How can we intentionally break from the UMC’s bad habits of insisting on keeping Americans in charge of social-concern and other efforts, even for supposedly global projects?

And of course, pro-life concerns include but go much deeper than any sort of political advocacy. 

How can the Global Methodist Church build a genuine culture of life, on abortion as well as related beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues, at the congregational, district, annual conference, regional, and global levels? What can we learn from the successes as well as mistakes of other pro-life denominations?

It was a major pro-life victory when the 2008 General Conference amended the United Methodist Social Principles to add this sentence: “We affirm and encourage the Church to assist the ministry of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers that compassionately help women find feasible alternatives to abortion.”

But sadly, I see no evidence that this did much to shift United Methodism’s culture. Numerous local congregations partnered with their local crisis pregnancy centers before and after 2008, regardless of what General Conference said. Such pro-life ministries remain mostly ignored at the district and annual conference levels. 

Since the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling allowing more abortion restrictions, there is a disingenuous vein of commentary suggesting that pro-life Christians have only focused on making abortion illegal and have not cared about helping women and children in difficult situations. Such snark grossly misrepresents the facts. For example, one study found that “practicing Christians are more than twice as likely to adopt as the general population” and that “practicing Christians were more likely to adopt older children, children with special needs, and other children considered ‘hard to place.’”

But the need remains great. How many of us can say that our local crisis pregnancy center already has all the resources and networks it needs? And if the Dobbs ruling works as hoped, then a significant number of pregnant women who otherwise would have aborted will not do so.  But the story does not end there! What will happen to these often scared, vulnerable, marginalized, and/or impoverished women and their babies, who do not have the basic financial, family, health and other support that many take for granted? While the church already needed to step up more, the need to step up takes on more urgency when there are a greater number of (often rather young) women and babies in need. 

Being truly pro-life is ultimately much more demanding than supporting “abortion rights.” 

And at a deeper, more fundamental level, there is a need for intentional discipleship. With plenty of praiseworthy exceptions, the denomination from which Global Methodists are emerging has not formed people in a culture of life. As time goes on, Global Methodism will draw in growing numbers of new Christians who have been shaped by a culture whose values on pro-life concerns are no better than the UMC’s. 

How can Global Methodist congregations instill deep value for the dignity of women and girls as well as for the preciousness of all human life—of whatever age, race, or background—as preciously bearing the image of God?

Such questions facing the Global Methodist Church on abortion and related concerns are serious challenges, but they also present exciting opportunities.