Separation and United Methodist Agencies

There is literally a price to pay for staying United Methodist. Required denominational apportionments are a significant cost for congregations. Much of this money funds eleven of the United Methodist Church’s general agencies. (A few other general agencies are not directly funded by apportionments.)

Moderate and conservative United Methodists have long objected to being forced to pay for agency agendas they find objectionable, with there being no accepted way for them to pay only for what is necessary or good in them. There has long been little to no real accountability when official agencies supposedly for all United Methodists exclusively pander to one narrow liberal American faction. For many years, we have observed an attitude among many agency leaders of using the church’s name and resources to push whatever extreme agendas they wanted, even when this violated the UMC’s official standards, no matter how many United Methodists they alienated, and if any pastors or church members did not like it, they could leave the denomination. 

As noted, staffing has not been well representative of our denomination. Key United Methodist agency employees have not been shy about using their apportionment-salaried jobs to shape their agencies, and ultimately the UMC as a whole, in rather liberal directions.

All of this helps explain why, in negotiations over “amicable separation” proposals, traditionalist United Methodist leaders did not place the highest priority on having the more theologically orthodox denomination inherit these agencies and their employees.

We at IRD/UMAction have a long history of exposing problems within the UMC bureaucracy. What follows is a very non-comprehensive list of controversial agendas promoted by each of the 11 apportionment-funded United Methodist general agencies in only recent years.

Connectional Table (CT)

• Lobbied the last regular General Conference with several proposals to liberalize church-standards by removing longstanding disapprovals of same-sex wedding and “self-avowed practicing homosexual” clergy.
• Successfully lobbied the 2016 regular General Conference to “maintain the basic structure” of the CT, which amounted to preventing restructuring the allotment of its 28 geographically apportioned leadership slots, limiting Africans to only three (11 percent). Official statistics released later that year showed that 42 percent of United Methodists were African, and now Africans have a majority. Thus, the CT severely under-represents Africans.
• More recently, has been promoting an agenda to restructure the denomination to have each region of the church decide on its own standards on sexual morality and other issues.

General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH)

Earlier this year, Ashley Boggan Dreff, the new CEO of this previously non-partisan agency went out of her way to extensively lobby the United Methodist Judicial Council to “legislate from the bench” by effectively invalidating a church law that had been unchallenged for decades, and whose validity had been widely accepted by UMC leaders across the spectrum of disagreements. In her late attack against this option for more amicable separation, Dreff had the support of the GCAH executive committee. She and other liberal activists succeeded in cynically blocking an option for congregations to potentially leave the denomination without paying needlessly punitive exit fees and based on a simple-majority vote of the membership (rather than requiring a two-thirds super-majority) or of the charge conference. You can read the details here.

General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA)

• Since 2013, it has had UMC apportionment-funded general agencies pay to provide spousal benefits for same-sex spouses of employees, as well as for romantic partners of employees who may be in non-marital “civil partners,” just as for opposite-sex spouses. In doing so, the GCFA has effectively devoted apportionment funding to effectively support the lifestyles of denominational employees disregarding the UMC’s moral standards disapproving of both homosexual practice and, importantly, non-marital cohabitation of opposite-sex couples.
• Since last year, it has officially embraced transgenderist ideology, asking for reports of the numbers of local church members who identify as “non-binary” for their gender.

United Methodist Communications (UMCom)

• Has a long history of bias against conservative United Methodists, including it promoting a misleading video entirely devoted to demonizing IRD/UMAction.
• Its United Methodist News Service (UMNS) sometimes shows some balance. But it has also showed liberal biases, from spreading LGBTQ activists’ misrepresentations about one manufactured controversy to misleadingly amplifying propaganda demonizing and distorting the truth about conservative United Methodist efforts to help African delegates access vaccines.  
• In February, UMCom’s top executives publicly pressured that month’s meeting of the Commission on General Conference to “make the call” on whether or not to cancel the 2022 General Conference. But there was no need to “make the call” that month, as the convention was already booked. Not “making the call” then would have left the 2022 General Conference in place, and made it more difficult to cancel later. Thus, UMCom effectively helped a (successful) political pressure campaign by liberal activists to take this extreme, unprecedented, unnecessary, and destructive action.
• UMNS has also likely played an under-appreciated role in undermining support for the Protocol proposal for amicable separation. Its reporting has framed the inevitable split as a zero-sum game in which the liberalizing post-separation UMC (psUMC) stands to lose money from departures. How might things have been different if UMNS had framed its reporting around how both emerging denominations are figuring out how to move forward with their different portions of the inheritance?
• It is now actively propagandizing United Methodists to choose the more liberal psUMC rather than the GMC, including with its “#BeUMC” campaign. We would all be better served if UMCom was more concerned with helping United Methodists decide which denomination was eventually better for each of us, rather than using the apportionments of all of us to promote one side.

General Commission on United Methodist Men

Last summer, CEO Greg Arnold joined the pile-on of general agency leaders bemoaning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling that there is no constitutional right to elective abortion. Arnold distanced himself from pro-lifers and claimed “the lives of so many women have been potentially placed into the path of harm” by this ruling. However, there are good reasons why the United Methodist Social Principles should lead to celebrating Dobbs.

General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, aka CoSRoW

• To protest the Dobbs ruling, it issued an extended lament, framing abortion as a matter of “a woman’s rights” and restricting abortion as “women and girls be[ing] viewed as second-class citizens” while expressing no nuance or concern for unborn human life.
• Has pushed, unsuccessfully a few years ago and again for the next General Conference,  amending the UMC Constitution to establish a new foundation principle for the denomination of non-discrimination on the basis of “gender.” I have written earlier urging support for other language affirming the important value of the equality of women and men. But we have also warned about how establishing a foundational commitment to “gender” non-discrimination could effectively be a Trojan horse, which some would likely eventually use to push transgenderist ideology alleging that there are more than two genders. This could have been avoided if CoSRoW was willing to just unmistakably call for non-discrimination “on the basis of being male or female.”
• In promoting the earlier version of the “gender” non-discrimination amendment, CEO Dawn Hare explicitly stated that one reason this amendment was allegedly needed was because women “who are in polygamous relationships have been denied membership in churches across the connection.” To maintain Christian marriage standards where polygamy is practiced, the African Central Conference Edition of the Book of Discipline has three levels of church membership, and restricting full membership (and consequent eligibility for leadership) for women or men in polygamous marriages. But isn’t guarding against the normalization of polygamy in the church a good thing?

General Commission on Religion and Race (GCoRR)

• Has broadly defended elective abortion as solely a matter of “a woman’s right to control decisions about her own body,” omitting any concern for the value of human life in the womb.
• Forcefully denounced the 2019 General Conference’s upholding traditional biblical standards on sexual morality, and likened this stance to racism (see here and here).
• Since then, has promoted LGBTQ Pride Month (see here and here).
• Affirming transgenderist ideology, encourages people to “always start” conversations with new people by stating your preferred gender pronouns. What does this have to do with GCoRR’s supposed mission of fighting racism?
• Its “Antiracism 101 course” has been critiqued by a participant for, among other things, taking a very secularized approach: “I don’t remember Jesus being mentioned at all – neither were forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, restoration or healing.”

Discipleship Ministries, aka General Board of Discipleship (GBOD)

• Lobbied the last regular General Conference to repeal longstanding church rules preventing the giving denomination-wide funds “to any gay caucus or group” or any other use of “such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.”
• Has promoted a secularized re-interpretation of spiritual gifts to remove supernatural understandings of healing, miracles, prophecy, and speaking in tongues.

General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM)

Among the official objectives of this agency (UMC Discipline ¶1405.22-23) are “[t]o evaluate United Methodist higher education and professional Church-related ministries with concern for the quality of their performance and the integrity of their mission,” and “[t]o provide standards and support for and interpretation of the work of United Methodist theological schools.” But GBHEM’s standards have not stopped United Methodist seminaries from promoting theological radicalism or even alternative religions (Unitarian Universalism, Islam, paganism, and atheism).

General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM)

• GBGM helped found and later fund the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, whose stated goals have included “comprehensive divestment” against Israel and “[t]o isolate Israel economically and diplomatically.” A few years ago, GBGM co-sponsored an anti-Israel conference that promoted singling out the nation for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). One speaker at the event defined BDS as “boycotting all things Israeli.” GBGM’s promotion of BDS has been a fundamental betrayal of trust, considering how recent General Conferences (both before and after this event) have consistently, overwhelming rejected proposals for even more moderate anti-Israel divestment. As documented, this 2014 GBGM-sponsored event veered dangerously close to outright anti-Semitism. One speaker absolved Hamas of responsibility, declaring “it is not Hamas’s rockets,” and “it is not Hamas’s underground tunnels” that were responsible for “why we don’t have peace right now.” The next year, the GBGM’s “Advocacy Coordinator for the Middle East” (also affiliated with the GBCS) actually took her anti-Israel zeal to the point of calling for boycotting Holocaust museums!
• GBGM’s CEO until 2020, issued a rather irresponsible, pacifist-tinged reflection on the 9/11 terrorist attack, faulting the United States for responding militarily, and portraying subsequent U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as an unmitigated disaster (as if an additional 20 years of Taliban rule would have been preferable).
• The whole GBGM board has submitted a proposal for the next General Conference to adopt an extensive stance on Afghanistan with a similar perspective. This resolution (beginning on page 133/717) extensively criticizes the United States while minimizing the Taliban’s faults. This lengthy resolution (likely to be eventually adopted as the UMC’s official stance) finds nothing positive about the establishment of democratic self-governance, protection of rights of women and minorities, and limited freedom for Afghan Christians made possible by the U.S. military before its withdrawal. The resolution also includes several embarrassing inaccuracies, from misrepresenting statistics on troop levels and drone strikes to claiming that NATO stands for the “North American Treaty Organization”!

General Board of Church and Society (GBCS)

• Under the leadership of its previous CEO, Jim Winkler, its promotion of extreme, far-left stances in society (including in political lobbying) and harmful, doctrine-distorting effects on the UMC itself were rather infamous. But aside from a relatively strident tone, it is not clear how much has ultimately improved under the current CEO, Susan Henry-Crowe, who took over in 2014.
• The GBCS has continued to routinely lobby the UMC to liberalize its standards on sexual morality, and decried the 2019 General Conference’s upholding traditional biblical standards.
• Has even broadly opposed state bills seeking to protect the religious liberty of those who do not subscribe to LGBTQ liberationist ideology, and promoted the anti-liberty “Equality Act.”
• Lobbied for taxpayer funding of America’s largest abortion provider.
• Submitted a proposal to next General Conference to, among other things, liberalize the UMC’s official stance on abortion by deleting from the UMC’s current stance statements wanting lower abortion rates and declaring that “we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother and the unborn child.” In decrying the Dobbs ruling, Bishop Sally Dyck, president of the GBCS board, made no reference to the UMC Social Principles the GBCS is charged with promoting. 
• Henry-Crowe has used her position to publicly claim, “Our denomination supports open borders,” which disregards how part of the official UMC stance on immigration recognizes that “All nations have the right to secure their borders” (Resolution #3281).
• Among the many agendas it worked to simultaneously impose on the whole denomination at the last regular General Conference, with some success, were financial divestment against democratic Israel, promoting economic investment in totalitarian North Korea, and urging unqualified decriminalization of prostitution and all drug use while also broadly opposing any “[d]iscrimination against people with criminal records,” with no exception for childcare settings.
• At the 2016 General Conference, conservatives succeeded in amending the GBCS’s official responsibilities to add a mandate to promote prayer and advocacy for persecuted Christians. They hoped they could thus work through the system to redirect the GBCS towards more common-ground causes. But the GBCS has largely ignored this reform, and refused to make this issue a priority (as we have observed here, here, and here).
• Its board meetings have featured such bizarre rituals as godlessly praying to the Earth and greeting “Mother Earth” while calling the four winds “our grandfathers.”

In the post-separation United Methodist Church, we can expect that liberal agendas such as those documented above will become more prominent, as increasing numbers of moderate and conservative church members decide to leave the denomination rather than stay and fight against such radicalism.

The Global Methodist Church is increasingly providing a home for those who wish to remain connected with many of those with whom they have been connected in the UMC, but without being forced to send their offering-plate money to pay for any of the above agendas.