Liberal Bishops Have Redefined United Methodist Polity

John Lomperis on August 29, 2022

United Methodist polity, or governance, is supposedly a sort of constitutional democracy, with a global as well as regional legislative conferences establishing policies via representative democracy, bishops who are bound by these policies, and an independent judiciary focused on hearing appeals to prevent violations of church law.    

This no longer describes how United Methodist polity really works today. That was how the United Methodist Church previously operated, and what its official rulebook, the Book of Discipline says “on paper.”

But the de facto reality is now very different. The liberal American leadership of the Council of Bishops (COB) have effectively changed United Methodist polity by largely nullifying the authority of General Conference and getting the Judicial Council to consistently give this group everything it requests in major policy changes. At times, this has even meant Judicial Council members disregarding their own rules and precedents.

Any non-liberal United Methodist hoping to “stay UMC” and work for reform must take a long, hard look of the recent trend of liberal bishops increasingly removing longstanding checks and balances. This extreme dysfunction has thwarted possibilities for reform. 

This trend of centralizing unchecked power in the hands of the COB leadership should alarm anyone who values good governance and accountable leadership, regardless of their position on any particular issue. Indeed, in addition to the sexuality and even theological concerns, the Traditional Plan orthodox United Methodists pushed through at the 2019 General Conference arose in direct reaction to liberal bishops over-stepping their bounds to inappropriately seize effectively unilateral policymaking power for themselves.

The recent Judicial Council decision effectively blocking uses of ¶2548.2 of the Discipline (which for decades allowed church property to be transferred to “another evangelical denomination”) was legally radical. But it is part of a wider context of unchecked power becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of liberal bishops. 

The UMC’s main legislative branch is General Conference.

As membership and votes shifts away from the United States, United Methodism’s liberal American old guard (representing an overwhelmingly white constituency) has been unwilling to share power.

So by all appearances, the liberal American leadership of the Council of Bishops (COB) did what they could to pressure a relatively narrow majority of the Commission on the General Conference (CoGC) to take the extreme action in February of preventing the already-delayed 2020 General Conference from meeting before 2024. (For details, see here and here.) In an interview, the Council of Bishops representative on the CoGC, New York Bishop Thomas Bickerton (also the current COB President), made clear his support for the majority’s blocking of General Conference.

Furthermore, the COB-aligned majority faction of the CoGC acknowledged that the same excuses cited for not having General Conference this year could also apply to 2024, and so decided, only one month after blocking General Conference 2022, to form strategy teams to address such challenges. If they ever wanted to let General Conference convene this year, if at all possible, they would have done this well before February. 

A simple majority of the COB could have gone around the CoGC’s politicized decision by calling a special General Conference session. But the fact that the COB has refused to do so is their own choice, for which they alone are responsible.

Thus, the UMC’s executives have dramatically stripped power from the legislative branch by preventing General Conference from even meeting.

Increasingly, bishops are stepping into this vacuum to do what they want, disregarding their obligations under the Discipline to uphold church laws legislated by General Conference. 

While the COB includes all bishops, much of what is done in its name, such as what they tell the Judicial Council or what position “the Council” takes on abortion, is determined mainly or even solely by a much smaller group of liberal American leaders. While the COB’s overall membership has long been skewed to over-represent more liberal U.S. jurisdictions and under-represent Africa, the COB’s six officers do not include a single non-American or strong theological traditionalist. This alone is quite a power grab in a majority-African denomination with an officially traditionalist Discipline!

We have also recently seen numerous examples of liberal bishops abusing their authority to heavy-handedly engineer their preferred policy results in annual conferences, rather than simply let these regional legislative bodies exercise their rights to make their own proper decisions.

Meanwhile, the denomination’s supreme court, the Judicial Council, simply no longer functions as an independent third branch or effective check on the COB’s power ambitions.

Its basic functionality has become very limited. It used to meet every six months, according to clear, public timelines. Now everything is much slower and less predictable. For example, a question of law from one annual conference’s 2020 session was only addressed by the Judicial Council last June, nearly two years later! The Judicial Council is not making use of its many alternate members, who could help move things along.

There have recently been a series of cases arising from the COB requesting “expedited” rulings. The COB thus cuts in line in front of people who have been already been waiting for justice, forcing “the little people” of the UMC to wait even longer.

More importantly, in these COB-requested decisions, the Judicial Council consistently oversteps its bounds to establish debatable policies and give the COB’s liberal American bishops every major thing they wanted. Amidst all the complex issues raised, at least some significant, consequential differences, sometimes, would be expected from a truly independent judiciary.

Seeing the judiciary’s compliance, the COB’s executive leadership has, through requests for declaratory decisions, been using the Judicial Council as its tool to establish its own preferred changes in United Methodist polity, doing end runs around the legislative branch.

Early warning signs were seen in 2018, when the Judicial Council showed extreme deference towards legally questionable aspects of the so-called “One Church Plan” pushed by the COB’s liberal majority.

But then in its rush to invalidate the alternative Traditional Plan’s proposal for enhanced accountability within the COB, the Judicial Council set a legal precedent that also invalidated certain accountability provisions within annual conferences. Since this caused administrative headaches for these same bishops, the COB asked the Judicial Council for a declaratory decision to help them. The Judicial Council could have reversed its earlier rulings to even-handedly uphold the relevant accountability provisions for both clergy in annual conferences and members of the COB. Instead, it chose to rule in a way that let the new accountability provisions for the COB (by then adopted by the 2019 General Conference) remain invalidated, but then also gave the bishops what they wanted in their annual conferences by rewriting four distinct sub-paragraphs of the Book of Discipline.

In Memorandum 1408, the Judicial Council actually declared that four previously invalidated provisions of the Discipline the COB majority faction wanted to save now “are effective with the insertion of this additional specific language,” written by the Judicial Council! This was an extreme instance of “legislating from the bench.”

For the Judicial Council to directly write its own preferred language into the Discipline was a highly inappropriate, perhaps unprecedented usurpation of the legislative branch’s authority. But this gave the COB majority faction what it wanted. By its own logic, the Judicial Council could have similarly amended and upheld validity of the newly legislatively adopted parallel provisions for accountability within the Council of Bishops. But that is not what the COB’s majority faction wanted. 

Then earlier this year, the COB asked the Judicial Council to declare that annual conferences in the United States could not vote to withdraw from the UMC unless and until the General Conference met to establish a detailed process for this (while the COB was preventing any possibility of this happening before 2024). In Decision #1366, the Judicial Council had already declared, “An annual conference has the right to vote to withdraw from The United Methodist Church.”

You can read here all the legal arguments submitted on either side, including arguments jointly prepared by myself and partners from Good News, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, and others.

In Decision #1444, the Judicial Council bizarrely ruled that, yes, an annual conference has “the right to vote” to withdraw from the denomination, but not “the right to withdraw” (emphases original). It was a logical head-scratcher. But it gave the COB’s liberal American leadership what it wanted, by blocking regional legislative bodies from being able to exercise an acknowledged right of theirs.

While this case was still pending, two Judicial Council members reportedly violated their own rules: longtime South Georgia Conference Chancellor Warren Plowden and Rev. Luan-Vu Tran of the California-Pacific Conference. Until this summer, Tran was pastor of a congregation in the California-Pacific Conference formally affiliated with the LGBTQ-affirming Reconciling Ministries Network, in open violation of the Judicial Council’s own Decision #871 (Cf. Decisions # 847 and 1200), an illegal affiliation that began before Tran’s tenure there and has continued after it. Paragraph 2607 of the UMC’s supposedly governing Discipline explicitly prohibits what lawyers call “ex parte communication”:

  • “The members of the Judicial Council will not permit discussion with them on matters pending before them or that may be referred to them for determination, save and except before the Judicial Council in session” (¶2607.1); and
  • “Prior to the decision of a case in question, members of the Judicial Council shall not discuss with any party matters of substance pending in the judicial process unless all parties are privy to the discussion.” (¶2607.2)

Section VIII.A of the Judicial Council’s own Rules of Practice and Procedure echo these prohibitions, with Section X.B further requiring: “A Judicial Council member shall avoid even the appearance of any and all impropriety and conduct all judicial and extrajudicial activities so they do not cast doubt on the member’s ability to act fairly and impartially.”

The final two pages of this public posting include a formal letter submitted by several individuals (but not me) protesting Tran and Plowden’s “presence and participation” in a presentation and discussion about substantial matters at the heart of this pending case with Bishops Bickerton and Cynthia Fierro Harvey (who were parties to the case) and others. There was no response to this letter. 

How can the UMC’s judiciary be considered fair or independent when there are no effective guardrails against its members openly coordinating with the executive branch of United Methodist polity against other parties in pending cases? 

Then the liberal-American-dominated COB made another extraordinary request, asking the Judicial Council to further shift United Methodist polity to allow new liberal bishops to be elected in the United States this year. Formidable church-law barriers stood in their way. But when other United Methodist leaders experienced in church law reviewed my submitted “friend of the court” briefs, their pessimistic consensus was that my legal arguments were stronger but that that the Judicial Council would nevertheless give the COB whatever it wanted. The pessimists turned out to be right.

Shortly afterwards, the Judicial Council reversed the one part of that decision where it had not initially given the bishops every significant thing they wanted. In addressing the assignment of U.S. bishops to different areas, Discipline ¶406.1 states clearly, “The date of assignment for all bishops is September 1 following the jurisdictional conference” (emphasis added). The Judicial Council had initially declined to trample over “the plain meaning of the words” just quoted, instead suggesting feasible ways the COB could work with this explicitly inflexible date of legislatively established United Methodist polity.

But the COB’s liberal-American majority faction wanted this date in the Discipline changed. So a couple weeks later, the Judicial Council dutifully gave these bishops the rest of what they wanted, making the inherently legislative decision of overriding the Discipline to arbitrarily set January 1, 2023, as the new assignment date for this upcoming round of newly elected and other U.S. bishops (a date which was more convenient for the COB).

Now the Judicial Council has just issued Decision #1449 at the behest of the COB’s liberal American leadership. Basically, this prevents anyone from using Discipline ¶2548.2—which for decades has been an unchallenged part of United Methodist polity allowing church property to be transferred to “another evangelical denomination” without requiring needless barriers—in our present season of separation. As the dissenting opinion notes, this radically redefines the meaning of the Discipline’s words and disregards how the 2019 General Conference officially adopted the understanding (actually submitted by the architects of the liberal One Church Plan in consultation with the denomination’s pension agency!) “that ¶ 2548.2 is an additional option for congregations to change their connectional relationship with the United Methodist Church.” You can read the details here.

But while this ruling disregards the plain-sense meaning of church law, it achieves the policy results that the COB requested.

Now in predicting how the Judicial Council may rule on any case on which the COB has officially taken a position, the wording of the Discipline or even decisions recently written by current Council members appear to be far less important than the simple question what are the practical results that the COB’s liberal American leadership wants, for its own factional purposes?

Thus United Methodist polity has fundamentally changed, concentrating unchecked power into the liberal American leadership of the Council of Bishops, nullifying the authority of legislative bodies to effect changes this small group of bishops opposes, with the judiciary consistently serving as these bishops’ tool.

The reality is that the UMC is now autocratically governed by liberal American bishops, with diminishingly few checks or balances. And after tasting this much power, will they ever want to give it up?

  1. Comment by E C on August 29, 2022 at 9:51 am

    What rules does this Judicial Council play by? Apparently, stare decisis means nothing to them other than cynical word play with critical issues of the church. Having the right to vote on an action does not give them the right to facilitate the results? Sigh. While I want so badly to reconcile with my lifelong denomination, how it is possible under these conditions?

  2. Comment by Kingdom of Nothing on August 29, 2022 at 10:42 am

    In the annual conference that I am a part of the bishop has spent a lot of time centralizing control of the annual conference in the conference office, and shrinking districts into nothingness . The new hires are heavily involved with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the conference web site is filled with it.

    Then the Bishop makes a short speech last week on youtube about ‘disaffiliation’, proclaiming that there is more than enough room in the tent for people of all beliefs to continue in the conference and do the work of ministry, but there are many who are not open to (in essence) new ways of doing things. It seems pretty clear that in his judgement churches should not leave and we will make sure you cannot leave.

    This bishop made it quite clear that the UMC is going in one direction whether you like it or not, so get with the program. And to those who disagree with that path, it is you who have no vision and are failing to understand the faith. Among the responses was one about diversity and inclusion and one that said: “Bishop *** is Kingdom-minded, not all will hear the shepherd’s voice.”

    Sadly, within a short time the leftist COB will have all the control it wants, but likely their big tent will be empty.

  3. Comment by Reynolds on August 29, 2022 at 11:51 am

    Well the WCA kept talking about the Protocol instead of planning for a fight. Now, the fight is almost over and WCA plan is run for the hills not realizing the mines on the hill. You either got to fight or lose that is it. Not sure WCA has the stomach or the brains to win

  4. Comment by Anthony on August 29, 2022 at 2:43 pm

    It is time for all traditional congregations to call an off-site conference, vote for a Declaration of Independence from the UMC, cease paying apportionments (taxation without representation), cease recognizing the UMC as their governing body, go forward from there as if the UMC has no authority over them, stand their ground, refuse to vacate their buildings, and be ready to fight whatever the UMC chooses to bring. After all, Jesus cleansed the Temple instead of turning the other cheek in the midst of that corruption.

  5. Comment by Pat on August 29, 2022 at 4:08 pm

    Thank you Anthony for stating what should have been done long ago. Cut off all monies, leave the USA UMC and move on. Churches need to walk away, meet somewhere else, leave the property, upkeep, bills, to the UMC, letting them pay all costs while you are meeting in a new location. The USA UMC is going to take your property any way and make you pay, why not let them have it for free. Safe your money for a new location. So many of the church properties will be empty any way, churches will be closed and money put in their coffers. The only reason the liars keep saying their is a big tent for all, is the traditional members pay most of the tab. They know this. You cannot let them have their cake and eat it to. I know this is difficult, but if an entire traditional membership and traditional staff can’t take some drastic action, nothing will change.

  6. Comment by Gary Bebop on August 29, 2022 at 4:39 pm

    There’s indeed a forensic argument to be made for “just walking away,” but I’ve never know traditionalists to unite in an ideal way. Even though they are suffering, they will not agree to single-minded action. Traditionalists tend to be contrarians or dissidents by nature. They are a tribe of many chiefs. I’ve watched this play out in my own conference. Traditionalists often have stubborn local parties within their organizations.

  7. Comment by Rev. David Livingston on August 29, 2022 at 5:08 pm

    You know the Judicial Council was elected by the conservative majority in 2016, right? The Bishops couldn’t control them if they wanted to.

  8. Comment by Jeff on August 29, 2022 at 5:29 pm

    Hey Rev’rnd Livingston,
    I know you’re all excited for the day you & your buds can turn the pmsUMC into a network of universalist bathhouses/gender affirmation clinics. Be sure to put some money away for that day soon after when attendance, offering & apportionments dry up, ‘K?

  9. Comment by Tom on August 29, 2022 at 5:42 pm

    I do see some wisdom in the Presbyterians’ not having bishops at all.

  10. Comment by Anthony on August 29, 2022 at 5:47 pm

    You could have only posted this outrageous absurdity just to see the reactions:

    “You know the Judicial Council was elected by the conservative majority in 2016, right? The Bishops couldn’t control them if they wanted to.”

  11. Comment by Anthony on August 30, 2022 at 3:19 pm

    From the bishops meeting:

    Headline – “Bishops agree on ways to tackle church disaffiliations”

    “The bishops then heard a report from the Disaffiliation Task Force and acted on several recommendations related to matters of disaffiliation and clergy orders to create a uniform approach to how bishops deal with the process of disaffiliation as well as the manner in which they deal with clergy withdrawals.”

    1. What is this Disaffiliation Task Force and who serves on it?

    2. What ways did the bishops agree on to tackle church disaffiliations?

    3. What disaffiliation recommendations did the bishops act on?

    4. What uniform approach has been created as to how bishops deal with the process of disaffiliation?

    5. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

  12. Comment by Anthony on August 30, 2022 at 4:59 pm

    https://www.unitedmethodistbishops.org/newsdetail/bishops-against-gun-violence-church-disaffiliations-16615659

  13. Comment by Anthony on August 31, 2022 at 4:26 pm

    Dear John Lamperis,
    With relation to the August, 2022 meeting of the Council of Bishops and the release of their report of that meeting, certainly with relation to DISAFFILIATION (a rather significant issue of the UMC now), do you have any inside information regarding my questions posted earlier – reposted below? What are they talking about?

    1. What is this Disaffiliation Task Force and who serves on it?

    2. What ways did the bishops agree on to tackle church disaffiliations?

    3. What disaffiliation recommendations did the bishops act on?

    4. What uniform approach has been created as to how bishops deal with the process of disaffiliation?

  14. Comment by Mike on August 31, 2022 at 6:57 pm

    After the latest power play by the corrupt COB (in tandem with the now “bought/crooked” Judicial Council), any traditionalist congregation (and pastor) that doesn’t make haste and use Paragraph 2553 to disaffiliate is truly lost.

    The bishops are doing what they’ve always done: abuse power and find ways to control the money of the UMC. While I’m so angry over this injustice that I want to see them “get theirs”, I know the only reasonable thing to do is walk away – and watch the money dry up and the people die off over the next 10-20 years.

    Then let God deal with these people when they stand before him in judgment. He can make hell a lot hotter for a lot longer than any earthly person or body can.

  15. Comment by Rev. Dr. Lee D Cary (ret. UM clergy) on September 4, 2022 at 9:24 am

    The ordeal involving the soon-to-be dissolved UMC can be viewed in a much wider context.

    The credibility of omnipotent bureaucracies, regardless of the venue, is being challenged by those over whom it aims to rule.

    In what was the UMC, the self-defined magisterium of the COB has, over time, driven a stake into the heart of the denomination. It was facilitated by the hydra-headed bureaucratic structure of the “Boards & Agencies”.

    The bell tolled in the 1960’s. It’s taken 60 years for the rigor mortis to fully engage the body.

    It began when the UMC ceased to be the Body of Christ, and became a quasi-ecclesiastical business, post WW2. The shift didn’t happen overnight.

    Liberal progressives gradually captured the denomination’s Board & Agencies as candidates for Bishop executed dime store versions of state-wide political
    campaigns. Selection of Bishops ceased to be a theological function and became an ecclesiastic-politico one.

    In the ‘80’s, I was in a conference level meeting when the speaker, a professional lay clerk in the conference bureaucracy, said, “The purpose of the local church is to support the denomination.”

    That foretold the future.

  16. Comment by Anthony on September 4, 2022 at 5:54 pm

    Rev Cary,
    Exactly. Looking back all the way to the 1970s for me, I now ponder how did so many liberal delegates got elected to the Jurisdictional Conferences by our Annual Conferences over these years who, in turn, elect all these liberal bishops? The breakdown in the system for me was reliance on TRUST starting with my local church Charge Conference. It certainly looks like that over time, local too many local church Charge Conferences “elected” too many liberal delegates to Annual Conferences, too often as a courtesy to the local pastor-in-charge. It is now obvious that more and more liberal seminary pastors who wanted to liberalize the denomination essentially hand picked liberal delegates to Annual Conferences who also wanted to liberalize the denomination. So, off they went as they worked the system to a tee in order to bring in liberal bishops who have now essentially seized the denomination in 2022.

    As a traditionalist, I TRUSTED the system, certainly our delegates to be the very people who would adamantly defend church doctrine and legislation passed by the international General Conference. I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Well, in hindsight they took me to the cleaners while gladly accepting my offerings in the name if “missions”. Shame on me in that I’ve been fooled more than once. But, no more as I now target my tithe and await transferring my UMC membership to a Global Methodist Church asap.

  17. Comment by Bruce Willis on September 6, 2022 at 9:22 pm

    This liberal garbage is the reason I’m a Nazarene pastor now.

  18. Comment by Rev. Dr. Lee D Cary (ret. UM clergy) on October 10, 2022 at 1:37 pm

    Welcome to the after-party party, John.

    That which Liberal Progressives are unable to persuade to their position they opt to destroy, so as to recreate an entity formed in their own image.

    That is happening throughout America today. Division is clearly the collective goal of the self-righteous.

    The psUMC will march behind the cross-and-flame logo into 21st Century America. But for how long? And how deep? With how many followers?

  19. Comment by John Smith on December 9, 2022 at 3:46 pm

    So given this example why is the GMC so eager to recreate the same machinery? Window dressing like fixed length terms are going to change anythng?

  20. Comment by DA on April 5, 2023 at 9:47 pm

    Conservatives sure know how to whine and blame.

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