United Methodist Leaders ‘Further Support White Supremacy’

John Lomperis on November 18, 2022

One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who declares their supposed opposition to white racism, white supremacy, and white American nationalism more loudly than liberal U.S. leaders of the United Methodist Church. And yet, when we look past the rhetoric to the substance, we see these same leaders embracing useful forms of white supremacy and American nationalism to redefine the UMC and protect their own privileges. This included this month’s U.S. jurisdictional conferences acting to, in the words of one prominent African-American United Methodist leader, “further support white supremacy.”

Yes, these conferences featured much talk about righteously opposing white supremacy and variations of the phrase, “white American Christian nationalism.” And yes, a number of the delegates and new bishops are persons of color.

But consider the context: official records show that despite the wider American society becoming increasingly racially diverse, our denomination’s U.S. membership has remained about 90 percent white. All of the conferences from which we delegates were elected are majority white, usually overwhelmingly so (with the singular exception of the tiny Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference). Thus, the jurisdictional conference decisions ultimately reflect the concerns and values of overwhelmingly white electorates.

However, whites are now a minority. After the 2019 General Conference, Sub-Saharan Africans became a majority of our global denomination. When we talk about United Methodists in non-U.S. “central conferences,” we are primarily talking about Africans. Already by 2017, Africans accounted for over 95 percent of non-American United Methodists. African membership has dramatically grown since then.

And yet, in jurisdictional conferences, American United Methodist leaders ruthlessly asserted the supremacy of their own overwhelmingly white constituency.

The membership shifts confronted American United Methodists with the question: would we be willing to share power, or instead follow the well-worn pattern of white elites clinging to their exclusive privileges? In other words, just as white prime minister Ian Smith, declared, “I don’t believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia,” would American denominational elites similarly make clear that they do not believe in African rule in the UMC?

Consider the facts.

Of the six elected officers of the Council of Bishops (with the most recent elections happening late last year), all are from the American minority. The Council is doing its part to preserve the privileges and supremacy in United Methodism of an overwhelmingly white Americans constituency.

The politically driven prevention of General Conference convening this year prevented re-allocations of bishops and other denominational leadership positions (in which Africans are severely under-represented) to better reflect the UMC’s global majority. Leading bishops were complicit in this cynical protection of American privilege. Several new bishops elected this month were listed as public endorsers of a political pressure campaign to postpone General Conference, thus filibustering any erosion of American supremacy.

A seismic shift of the 2019 General Conference was the new assertiveness of non-American delegates, especially Africans. Liberal, overwhelmingly white American United Methodists were upset by both specific decisions made and by their sudden realization that they no longer had the same supremacy and exclusive privileges to which they had been long accustomed.

The immediate aftermath of that last major, pre-COVID United Methodist conference featured intense backlash by privileged, liberal Americans against the global church. This included many in this overwhelmingly white constituency weaponizing their financial supremacy against less privileged United Methodists, suggesting that non-American delegates’ votes were somehow less legitimate, and/or otherwise making clear their refusal to respect the decision of General Conference now that liberal white Americans appeared to be no longer in control.

The five jurisdictional conferences held this month for all of American United Methodism were the most major official United Methodist conferences since then. They continued this trend of the overwhelmingly white faction of American liberals clinging to their supremacy and refusing to respect the global church.

Among the three largely identical resolutions adopted by all five jurisdictions, usually by overwhelming margins, was the “Queer Delegates’ Resolution to Center Justice and Empowerment for LGBTQIA+ People in the UMC.” It denounced the global church’s prayerful, biblically grounded affirmations of biblical sexual-morality standards as allegedly “harmful.” It called for denominational leaders to “amplify the voices” of American LGBTQ activists who have already enjoyed disproportionately large attention, effectively urging such amplification of relatively privileged activists at the expense of already-marginalized, primarily non-white United Methodists outside of the USA. The resolution pushed American United Methodist denominational leaders to disregard the standards of the UMC Discipline set by the global church, and instead operate according to different de facto standards unilaterally decided by Americans.

Among other things, Merriam-Webster defines “nationalist” in terms of “advocating national independence” and “nationalism” in terms of “exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” So you cannot claim moral high ground against any sort of “nationalism” when you advocate the effective independence of American United Methodism from the governance of the global church, and exalt the alleged authority of American United Methodism over United Methodism in other nations and over the supranational General Conference.

Some jurisdictions went even further. The U.S. Western Jurisdiction recklessly defied the global church by electing a partnered gay activist as bishop. Many voters in the U.S. Northeastern Jurisdiction did likewise, at one point reportedly coming within 20 votes of electing another openly partnered gay bishop. My own North Central Jurisdiction subjected all delegates present to a lengthy (over two hour long!) re-education session on “the impact of homophobia, transphobia and heterosexism within United Methodist Churches,” heavy-handedly drilling into us the alleged evils of the decisions of the global church.

One major group of African United Methodist leaders has protested the trend seen in this month’s jurisdictional conferences of “selective applications of rules governing the UMC,” which “disenfranchis[es] majority membership of the church.”

But the leaders of United Methodism’s new, U.S.-dominated regime made clear that they are not interested in listening to such global voices. They were not remotely shy or humble in their attitude, as Americans representing an overwhelmingly white constituency, that they were going to proudly assert their supremacy, with absolute confidence that they knew best, they cannot possibly be wrong, and they do not need to slow down to listen to or show minimal respect for United Methodists outside of their ideologically and demographically narrow bubbles.

We also saw the well-worn colonialist and white supremacist tactic of amplifying very selective, non-American United Methodists while rudely disregarding more representative perspectives from these regions. This was prominently featured in the text of another of the resolutions adopted by all five jurisdictions, pushing to create a new, exclusively American regional conference.

Liberal leaders have publicly admitted that the “Christmas Covenant” pushed in this resolution is simply another version of a basic plan whose “different likenesses ha[ve] been before the United Methodist Church a number of times, but getting defeated at General Conference.” These “regionalization” schemes to let the U.S. and other regions autonomously set their own, conflicting moral standards on ordination and other matters have been nicknamed “global segregation plans.” When the same essential idea came before rank-and-file United Methodist pastors and annual conference lay members around the world, the United Methodist News Service reported that “voters from the central conferences in Africa were the strongest opponents,” opposing such regionalization by 94.9 percent!

But this jurisdictional resolution’s text, and the supportive speech of a prominent white liberal delegate in my own jurisdictional conference, disregarded this clear stance, instead treating a fringe minority of global-segregation proponents as exclusively representative of central-conference United Methodists.

The message is clear: non-American voices are only valuable if they say what the overwhelmingly white faction of liberal Americans want them to say. Otherwise, they are unworthy of acknowledgement.

As noted, the primary practical effects of such global segregation would be to strip non-American United Methodists of much of their current power and protect the privileges and supremacy of white American United Methodists. Such schemes would shift power on matters impacting the whole global denomination away from the global church. And, of course, the main energy driving this global segregation agenda comes from American liberals’ eagerness to unilaterally set their own direction on theologically rooted policies related to marriage and sexuality without having to listen to non-Americans.

In the Southeastern Jurisdiction, North Alabama clergy delegate Tiwirai Kufarimai, who is originally from Zimbabwe, urged rejecting this resolution. He called out its essentially telling Africans, “We don’t want you to vote on our issues!” He warned against “sending the wrong message” to young Africans watching what the U.S. conferences decide.

Shortly afterwards, North Georgia lay delegate Odell Horne, the recent longtime president of North Georgia United Methodist Men, recalled his training in “decentering whiteness” from his master’s degree in African and African American Studies from Clark Atlanta University, a historically black university. Horne connected this resolution to the history of liberal efforts to privilege European perspectives while disregarding more global Christian voices. Horne warned that “this resolution, while well-intended, will only further support white supremacy in the United Methodist Church” by preventing now-minority Americans from being “under leadership of Africans and Asians.” Instead of imposing global segregation, he encouraged embracing the “opportunity in the United Methodist Church to be submissive” to the global church.

Such concerns about United Methodist white supremacy apparently fell on deaf ears. The Southeastern Jurisdiction adopted the segregationist resolution by an overwhelming 203-115 vote. It sailed through elsewhere with less vocal opposition.

In all five U.S. jurisdictions, there are many United Methodists who stand with the global church against this new direction. But all jurisdictions also featured efforts to purge such globally minded American United Methodists from leadership, in what Korean-American clergy delegate Chongho Kim of New York called “white, liberal racism” and “totalitarianism” designed to intimidate.

Even having this month’s jurisdictional conferences in the first place was a triumph of United Methodist white supremacy. There were very strong church-law reasons why such “regular sessions” of jurisdictional conferences should not occur until General Conference happens. Among the legal arguments I submitted to the UMC Judicial Council was noting how electing only new American bishops would be extraordinarily unfair to non-Americans, especially in Africa, where the need to elect new bishops is clearly much greater. But the liberal U.S. leadership of the Council of Bishops  (COB) successfully urged the Judicial Council to disregard such concerns, as they offered their assurance that “Central conferences can elect bishops in special sessions, and the COB anticipates that will occur in the same time frames as the regular sessions of jurisdictional conferences to elect bishops in the United States.” (Lonnie Brooks has shared all arguments submitted in that case.)

This assurance turned out to be misleading, at best. While some central conferences are indeed meeting this month, this is not happening anywhere in Africa, where the need is most acute.

So while the denomination’s membership has become more global than ever, the denominational bureaucracy is increasingly determined to privilege Americans above others. Americans can replenish their roster of bishops but Africans cannot.

One notable African vacancy is the bishop’s office in Sierra Leone. After the untimely death of Bishop John Yambasu, the American-dominated COB imposed as interim bishop the very liberal American retired Bishop Warner Brown of San Francisco. Brown has not responded to repeated invitations to set the record straight, if needed, about reports I have seen counting him as among those supporting preventing the election of new African bishops and pledging to abuse his authority in a shockingly totalitarian way to “not allow or entertain any activities” of either the Africa Initiative or the Wesleyan Covenant Association in his part of Africa.

UPDATE: After this article was published, I finally received a response from Bishop Brown. In his on-the-record reply, he (1) said that he “essentially agreed with the statement” pledging to heavy-handedly “not allow” traditionalist caucuses to operate, (2) was unable to cite any basis in church law for a such heavy-handed crackdown against freedom of speech and freedom of association, (3) declined to directly answer if he ever took a similar stance as the California-Nevada bishop of “not allowing” activities of the LGBTQ+ liberationist Reconciling Ministries Network or other caucuses there, (4) when asked directly if he was aware of the U.S.-dominated COB discouraging the election of any new bishop in West Africa this year (to fill with an elected African the vacancy he is currently filling), he simply indicated that the COB was supportive of the decisions to not elect new bishops in Africa this year while electing new bishops in America. Some context for that last question is that while some key African leaders have also opposed electing new African bishops, liberal Americans in the U.S.-dominated COB have seemed to follow the old colonialist model of treating certain dependent African leaders as regents who are expected to dutifully facilitate the agendas of Western sponsors, even when these agendas are opposed by the majority of the people in these regions. It remains unclear what pressures liberal U.S. officials may have brought against electing new African bishops, but there could be much more transparency. 

How is it not neo-colonialism for the U.S.-dominated COB to appoint over an African annual conference an American bishop, who then abuses his authority to heavy-handedly silence representative African leaders and work with others to questionably extend his own “interim” reign by two years?

In an interview with me 15 years ago, Bishop Tim Whitaker challenged how theologically progressive United Methodists “seem to presuppose that certain assumptions embedded in modern Western societies and cultures represent reality, and they don’t recognize how ethno-centric those assumptions can be.” It appears that few have listened to such concerns since then.

This month’s U.S. jurisdictional conferences showed us what the United Methodist Church has now become. This is what we can expect from its leaders for the foreseeable future: sanctimonious rhetoric about opposing racism, arrogant nationalism, white supremacy, and ethnocentrism in others, combined with being perfectly happy to use all of those as tools to protect their own privileges and power.

  1. Comment by Anthony on November 18, 2022 at 6:03 pm

    Beating the powdered bones of a dead horse — when will traditionalists declare 2553 and the trust clause null and void, as their liberal brethren have selected their portions of the BOD to do so, and leave?

  2. Comment by Gary Bebop on November 18, 2022 at 6:58 pm

    Here in the west, there is a carefully curated hierarchy of influencers with power and place. Ostensibly there is an antiracist initiative regulating this. But long experience in the west reveals the ideological filter that rewards the compliant and excludes the defiant. This is a system rife with tokens and favorites. Traditionalists, regardless of minority identity, have “no place” here. The broom has stiff bristles and sweeps clean.

  3. Comment by Robert Cooper on November 22, 2022 at 12:32 am

    How can we as” United Methodists “ subject ourselves to the tragedy of being exclusive and not allowing the largest population of United Methodists to represent the Church?

    I would like to express my disdain of political leadership of our church when our leaders are out of touch and not responsible as to Christian Spiritual Leaders we are called to be – this is a travesty and a perverseness that needs to extricated from our leadership.

    Granted I speak not as a well versed or even educated compared to these who are making such decisions but speak from the heart, love and mercy. God have mercy when we treat our African brothers and resist their leadership in the Global Church. If this article is true, it is no wonder many are leaving the Church rather than fighting for Spiritual authority, righteousness, and holiness!

    How can anyone justify these actions. The darkness of the sin within is causing our blessed Church to implode! O that I would rend these clothes and cry out with dust and ashes as my garments! Repent and turn from our wicked ways and injustices. Include our brothers and sisters and place them in Leadership. Their people are winning lost souls not to join an organization but to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and fire. They are redeeming the lost and condemning sin and we in the American Church had better repent and turn from our wickedness to restore the Church as God fearing, radical Discipleship, and see the World turned upside down! God have mercy, Christ have mercy!!!

  4. Comment by Anthony on November 25, 2022 at 9:04 am

    Off topic some, is the PROTOCOL is dead for 2024? Once a handshake was a seal. Today, a signature means little even to some who profess being Christian?

    ARTICLE VII: The Signatories to the Protocol

    The undersigned persons, after voluntarily participating in multiple confidential mediation sessions with mediator Kenneth R. Feinberg, agree to the terms of this Protocol and will collectively and individually work to support adoption of the Protocol, including the development of all legislation necessary to implement it.

    December 17, 2019 Signature:

    Bishop Christian Alsted, Nordic-Baltic Episcopal Area

    Rev. Thomas Berlin, representing UMCNext, Mainstream UMC, Uniting Methodists

    Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton, New York Episcopal Area

    Rev. Keith Boyette, representing The Confessing Movement, Good News, IRD/UM Action, and the Wesleyan Covenant Association

    Bishop Kenneth H. Carter, Florida Episcopal Area

    Rev. Junius Dotson, representing UMCNext, Mainstream UMC, Uniting Methodists

    Bishop LaTrelle Easterling, Washington Episcopal Area

    Rev. Egmedio “Jun” Equila, Jr., Philippines Central Conference

    Bishop Rodolfo Rudy Juan, Davao Episcopal Area, Philippines

    Janet Lawrence, representing Affirmation, Methodist Federation for Social Action, and Reconciling Ministries Network

    Rev. David Meredith, representing Affirmation, Methodist Federation for Social Action, and Reconciling Ministries Network, member of UM Queer Clergy Caucus

    Patricia Miller, representing The Confessing Movement, Good News, IRD/UM Action, and the Wesleyan Covenant Association

    Dr. Randall Miller, representing Affirmation, Methodist Federation for Social Action, and Reconciling Ministries Network

    Bishop Gregory Vaughn Palmer, Ohio West Episcopal Area

    Bishop John K. Yambasu, Sierra Leone Episcopal Area

    Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, Louisiana Episcopal Area

    In addition to the above signatories, the following individuals participated in the initial meeting convened by Bishop John Yambasu and other Central Conference Bishops in July 2019 and consulted with the mediation team during the process:

    Rev. Dr. Maxie Dunnam

    Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli

    Rev. Adam Hamilton

    Rev. Dr. Mark Holland

    Bishop Mande Muyambo, North Katanga Episcopal Area Karen Prudente

    Rev. Rob Renfroe

    Rev. Kimberly Scott

    Rev. Jasmine R. Smothers

    Mark Tooley

  5. Comment by Rev. Dr. Lee D Cary (ret. UM clergy) on December 1, 2022 at 7:25 pm

    In 1971, I entered Perkins School of Theology at SMU. I was three months out of the US Army in the Mekong Delta of, what was then, S. Vietnam. Still had some tan.

    Among the freshman class I was surprised to see one black student (a former USMC Cpt who was a Baptist) and no women. Everyone else was a white male. Most fresh from undergraduate college.

    When the Church & Society Class showed a short video of male homosexuals in action, I went to the DEA and tried to join. They weren’t hiring. So, I stuck it out and made the Dean’s List. Subsequently transferred to Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University IL. when a sick relative needed me back. There I stayed for 6-years.

    In Vietnam, I served under a white Major, an Inuit Indian Captain, and three Black Senior Sergeants. ) was a white Buck Sergeant They were fine men and all professional soldiers (AKA: ‘lifers”) The best men I ever worked with. It was the last non-racially biased organization I worked for until I retired and got a job in the public sector.

    What’s that tell you about the history of the UMC?

  6. Comment by JoeR on July 12, 2023 at 1:11 pm

    Now we are into the middle of 2023 and the UMC is a disaster picking up steam and rolling downhill!

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