Prominent Southern Theologian, Pastor Misrepresent United Methodist Division

Methodist Voices on December 15, 2022

This article is contributed by Matt Jameson, a concerned United Methodist layman from Missouri. 

The United Methodist Church split was the topic of a recent extended interview hosted by a Charlotte National Public Radio (NPR) station. The guests were the Rev. Dr. Amy Laura Hall, associate professor of Christian Ethics and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke Divinity School, Charlotte Pastor James Howell of Myers Park UMC, and Religion News Service reporter Yonat Shimron.

The program shared that it tried and failed to find a guest from a conservative Charlotte-area congregation leaving the denomination.

But conservatives’ reluctance to accept the invitation would be understandable, given the over-the-top liberal biases of the radio host, Mike Collins. From the beginning, he set the tone by contrasting “progress for LGBTQ+ individuals” with hate crimes, the latter of which he blamed on “hateful rhetoric on the right.”

Even neutrality was not good enough for him, as he insisted that “if religious organizations are not in the forefront of love and acceptance on this issue, it seems to me that you are giving permission to those who would harm gay people to do just that!” At another point, Collins confidently declared that church people who may disapprove of homosexual practice still having nuanced and loving friendships with gay individuals was “the same thing” as a hateful white racist having broad animosity against black people but saying “my maid is okay.”

If either Hall or Howell were sincerely interested in loving church unity with theological conservatives, this would have been a perfect opportunity for them to prove it, by challenging their host’s demonizing rhetoric as unfair. They could have countered that there are at least some theological conservatives who are gracious, loving, and compassionate with all people and not hateful against anyone. They could have challenged their host’s extreme lack of logic in connecting non-liberals to hate crimes (without adopting a consistent standard for left-wing violence). They could have pointed out how their host’s suggestion that disagreement necessitates hate and violence is itself dangerously poisonous for tolerance

But neither Hall nor Howell did any such thing. Instead, they focused more on defending their own “woke” credentials in this secular liberal context. 

Howell denounced the “hurtful language” of the UMC Discipline’s official disapproval of homosexual practice, sharing, “I’ve been working to change it my entire adult life.”

Hall sounded especially passionate in denouncing those who block ordination candidates unwilling to refrain from sex outside of monogamous, heterosexual marriage as committing “a sin against the Holy Spirit.” She recounted training numerous gay United Methodist seminarians who left for other denominations.

Hall’s language was especially striking considering Jesus Christ’s teaching that “people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven” (Matthew 12:32).

Shimran misleadingly claimed that “the reason for the split right now” in the UMC was simply disagreement over gay weddings and the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy, and unhelpfully avoided the important qualifier, “non-celibate.”

This, of course, ignores the far deeper issues driving the United Methodist split.

Howell claimed that congregations could have left decades ago “over some other issue.” But this ignores how before 2019, congregations were firmly blocked by the trust clause from disaffiliating over any issue. 

Hall repeatedly brought the conversation back to one culprit on whom she focused blame for the UMC split: the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and its UMAction work. The professor truthfully admitted, “They’re very transparent about their agenda.”

But Hall repeatedly painted IRD as a vast, right-wing conspiracy out to get the UMC and other mainline denominations, in partnership with others. She complained that journalists had not done more to expose IRD—declaring “it’s an actual organization”—speculating that this may have seemed “to be getting too much into a conspiracy.” She insisted, “But it’s not a theory. There have been people conspiring!”

The professor’s repeated mantra was that her fellow United Methodists leading, guiding, and supporting IRD’s UMAction were pursuing a “brilliant” effort of acting as dastardly “conduits of division” who are “using sexuality as a wedge issue, as a fear issue to divide people” in churches. And she claimed that “now” IRD-ers have supposedly “changed their messaging” to say that the split is primarily about conflicting views over salvation or Scriptural authority. 

But this is not a shift at all. Anyone who has actually followed IRD’s United Methodist work over the decades is familiar with how IRD has always stated clearly that it sees its orthodox stance on sexual morality as flowing from more important, foundational issues like the authority of Scripture and how we understand salvation. IRD has long been a leader in addressing more foundational theological challenges, from challenging radical feminist “Sophia” theology in the 1990s to protesting Chicago Bishop Joe Sprague’s denial of the resurrection of Christ in 2003.

In fact, the liberal “Uniting Methodists” caucus, on whose Leadership Team James Howell served, publicly supported the “Protocol” proposal to split the denomination long before IRD/UMAction did so. IRD’s United Methodist President Mark Tooley had earlier strongly editorialized “Against United Methodist Schism.” IRD/UMAction only came to support the sort of large-scale schism that is happening now very reluctantly, when the need for large-scale separation became agreed on by leaders of every major region and faction.

But neither Hall nor Howell admitted the possibility they or their ideological allies might share any responsibility for the division.

The professor’s repeatedly scapegoating IRD as uniquely guilty for “dividing people around issues of sexuality” raises several questions. Might it be possible that her fellow United Methodists defending biblical sexual ethics sincerely believe they are important values? When the UMC’s core disapproval of homosexual practice was adopted in 1972, years before the IRD was founded, and really dates back to Scripture and the writings of John Wesley, how was that an IRD conspiracy? When liberal United Methodist clergy promise to uphold the church’s prohibitions of same-sex unions and then cause great disruption by choosing to break their promises, how is that all solely IRD’s fault? Hall did not offer much clarity.

Instead, Hall promoted the 2007 inaccuracy-laden video, “Renewal or Ruin?,” devoted to demonizing United Methodists in the IRD. Some years ago, Howell also promoted this video. IRD has long ago refuted this Hall-supported and Howell-supported film’s distortions of the truth.

But the professional Christian ethicist’s misrepresenting the United Methodist division did not stop there. At one point, Hall bizarrely claimed that small, rural congregations have somehow been cynically seduced into disaffiliating from the denomination and “do not realize that what they are leaving is a guaranteed appointment of somebody to come and serve them communion and baptize their babies and bury their loved ones.”

How could a longtime United Methodist seminary professor really be that ignorant of the realities of United Methodist polity?

First of all, the UMC’s guaranteed appointment is a guarantee for clergy, not for congregations—a guarantee which liberal bishops have been the main ones pushing to abolish.

Secondly, the reality of the UMC is that due to clergy shortages, there are numerous rural United Methodist congregations that do not currently have an appointed pastor.

Thirdly, it is beyond absurd to believe that any congregation has gone through weeks or months of discernment about disaffiliation without ever realizing that if they leave the UMC, the UMC will no longer send them a pastor. Any other denomination they may join will have its own system for clergy deployment. The Global Methodist Church’s quicker process for ordaining clergy may very well result in less of a clergy-shortage problem than in the UMC.

Collins asked if there was any Scriptural basis for churches teaching people to “not act upon certain sexual impulses.”

Hall dodged the question by pivoting to a straw-man argument. Reframing the question of if there was a biblical basis for saying that “queer people are in particular a menace to holiness,” she answered, “Absolutely not! Absolutely not!”

When pressed, Howell admitted that he “can’t name a marriage in the Bible where it’s two men,” and that there are “a handful of verses that, read at a thin, superficial level, seem to condemn homosexuality.” The pastor tried explaining these away with, among other things, juvenile arguments citing other Bible verses that Christians don’t follow. In doing so, Howell appeared to be unfamiliar with the relevant biblical passages as well as with the distinction the UMC’s own official Doctrinal Standards make between the moral, ceremonial, and civil categories of Old Testament law.

Howell further suggested reliance on Scripture’s consistent, explicit disapproval of homosexual practice was part of the universal practice of “cherry-picking” to confirm our own prejudices. He did not consider the possibility of anyone having a liberal position on same-sex unions and then changing their mind to follow Scripture. 

Collins more broadly asked Hall, as a professor of Christian ethics, about what ethical concerns she saw in this debate and split. Hall expressed no ethical concern about bearing false witness, sexual morality of any sort, liberal clergy lying in order to infiltrate leadership positions, church leaders breaking the rules they promised to uphold, or the possible influence of greed in liberal United Methodists’ severely limiting how much traditionalists can share of denominational assets. 

Instead, Hall oddly focused on how, in her home conference in Texas, a key youth ministry “went to somebody” who had theologically orthodox views on sexual morality, and that over time this shifted the culture of the conference. 

And speaking of ethics, Howell at one point claimed that United Methodists “thought we were going to have a conference and we were going to separate, but that conference has been put off” because of COVID. This skipped over a rather major part of the story of why this split is taking place as it is. It is simply false to claim that General Conference did not meet this year because of COVID.

Other major international assemblies were able to meet safely this year, including the World Council of Churches Assembly (which met with more people, including many United Methodists, in dates overlapping with those scheduled for the UMC General Conference). As documented, the unprecedented blocking of General Conference this year was a cynical power play by a liberal, mainly American faction to try to seize more and more assets for themselves and away from others. Howell was among those listed as supporting a partisan pressure campaign to accomplish this.

In this interview, Howell presented himself as more moderate than he has elsewhere. But his claiming to have “deep grief” over the split, think “we are better together,” and want to “listen to one another,” clashes with the realities of how he has actually treated less liberal Methodists. After the 2019 General Conference, Howell posted a video blatantly misrepresenting basic facts about the Traditional Plan adopted there, and by extension, bore false witness about the intentions of its supporters.

Then he was part of a political machine that rather systematically excluded traditionalists in his Western North Carolina Conference from representation in its General Conference delegation. It is easy to talk sanctimoniously about wanting to listen to everybody after you have first made sure to exclude from the room those to whom you do not want to listen. Then in 2021, Howell posted a video making the inflammatory, false claim that those on the conservative side of the denomination’s split “do not wish for LGBTQ people to be in the church.”

Hall and Howell have made clear their willingness to misrepresent the truth about conservative fellow United Methodists, their unwillingness to defend them from unfair demonization, and their viewing them as causing unacceptable harm in the church. Hall also spoke of wanting the denomination united as a strong supporter of social-justice causes. She even suggested that it was some terrible breach of ethics to hire a single theological traditionalist for a conference ministry position and that United Methodists who don’t support non-celibate gay pastors are guilty of unforgivable sin!

This makes it hard to trust that such liberal United Methodists leaders are being truthful when they claim to want traditionalists to stay in the UMC—at least for any reason other than paying denominational apportionments. 

Both Hall and Howell alluded to concerns in North Carolina about United Methodist liberalism in other regions. But the liberalism of Hall and Howell cannot be dismissed as a radical, Left Coast fringe. Both are located in the heart of historically more conservative North Carolina, in the historically more conservative Southeastern Jurisdiction. Howell pastors one of the largest United Methodist megachurches in the country. Hall is a John Wesley Fellow, whose early career was supported by a foundation dedicated to “the renewal of theological education in a more evangelical direction.”

Traditionalist United Methodists once took comfort in reports about the radicalism of UMC seminaries like Iliff and Claremont by noting how they educated very few of the denomination’s new pastors. But Hall is a prominent, longtime fixture at Duke Divinity School, which has at least previously educated more United Methodist ordination candidates than any other.

Both Hall and Howell may soon qualify as relatively conservative, by the standards of what is left of the UMC. 

We can be probably confident about at least two things: (1) Neither Hall nor Howell will ever issue a genuine retraction or apology for their misrepresentations, and (2) if you publicly say that such false witness of theirs crosses a line, you are likely to find no place for yourself in the leadership of the post-separation UMC. 

  1. Comment by David S. on December 15, 2022 at 8:39 am

    Sadly, this is just another example of why I no longer listen to National Propaganda Radio. For a service that is supposed to be “public”, there is no longer any attempt to try to provide some modicum of balance.

    That said, not surprised by the guests’ actions. I see the same thing in the PC(USA). In that case, a similar tone is being set at the very top of the denomination by the current Stated Clerk, Mr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, and his senior staff.

  2. Comment by E C on December 15, 2022 at 4:42 pm

    I’m afraid we could not expect anything else from NPR. I am disappointed to find out that I could not expect any more from my fellow congregants and ex-pastors who spout the same nonsense.

  3. Comment by Reynolds on December 15, 2022 at 5:43 pm

    And you thought the Protocol was going to voted on. Why did you ever think they were going to allow you to leave freely.

  4. Comment by Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth on December 15, 2022 at 6:29 pm

    Near the end of the conversation, the interviewer, Mr. Collins, hit the foundational matter at hand: The Word of God. Since The United Methodist Church could not clarify the Word of God (regarding human sexuality) and order its life according to that clarification, a church split (or separation) became necessary.

  5. Comment by Dan W on December 16, 2022 at 8:11 am

    Hall and Howell are irrelevant – the blind leading the blind.

  6. Comment by Anthony on December 16, 2022 at 5:00 pm

    Reynolds,
    You have been saying that for a long time. Your prediction looks spot on now. Liberals have taken complete control of the denomination by one of the shrewdest coups in church history. And, the ruling of the Judicial Council – no new election of delegates for the 2024 General Conference — was done for one reason – to freeze out or neutralize the African delegates so the libs can go ahead and make their coup official plus pass their regionalization plan to lock it in for all time at this conference. Traditionalists have been taken to the cleaners, and now they’re kicking the rest of our teeth out us as we attempt to exit under 2553. No winners or losers with an amiable separation was the early cry — of which liberals must have rolled in the isles laughing as traditionalists fell hook line and sinker for that line.

  7. Comment by Jeff on December 17, 2022 at 2:56 pm

    [Heb 10:28-31 NIV] 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

  8. Comment by John Smith on December 19, 2022 at 6:04 pm

    Part of me thinks they see the writing on the wall and the impending irrelevance of the UMC rump once the orthodox are gone and the capital funds spent on liberal crusades. It looks like a justification/defense of the implosion that most of the world and their liberal cohorts will shrug their shoulders about and then ignore. The liberals don’t care about the religious except to neuter and disenfranchise them.

  9. Comment by binkyxz3 on December 27, 2022 at 3:03 am

    These one-sided PUBLIC encounters are akin to struggle sessions out of Maoist China. The silent traditional church at-large is the target. It will continue until someone stands up to them.

  10. Comment by Palamas on December 28, 2022 at 10:27 am

    The ease with which these people lie–egregiously, repeatedly, knowingly, and slanderously lie–is truly astounding. They really are no different from any 20th century totalitarian, for whom power justifies absolutely anything.

  11. Comment by Anthony on December 29, 2022 at 12:45 pm

    Read this LIE — it’s in the running for “Lie Of The Ages” award:

    12/28/2022

    Dear North Georgia United Methodists,

    As we approach the window set by the appointive cabinet to receive disaffiliation requests using Book of Discipline paragraph 2553, it has become clear that there is a need for a pause in this process for our conference.

    It is the responsibility of conference leaders to ensure that the disaffiliation process, put into place by the conference board of trustees, is carried out with integrity and grace.

    In its report to the North Georgia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church in June 2021, and again in June 2022, the conference board of trustees affirmed its commitment to the concept of the gracious exit. In particular, the trustees affirmed a desire for disaffiliations to be handled in a fair, transparent, uniform, and good faith manner that affirms the one universal church in service to Christ and honors the mission and ministry of all Christians.

    The board of trustees, in consultation with the cabinet, the annual conference treasurer, the annual conference benefits officer, the director of connectional ministries, and the annual conference chancellor, worked diligently to develop, update, and implement a disaffiliation process that would fulfill the requirements of the Book of Discipline and the stated aspirations of the Conference Board of Trustees and the Annual Conference.

    However, the cabinet has discovered and observed that many local churches have been misled about the disaffiliation process and have been presented with information about the process, and about The United Methodist Church and its leadership, that is factually incorrect and defamatory. We have significant concerns about this misinformation and are well aware that it has the potential to do irreparable harm.

    This information presented to members of local churches about disaffiliation has been outside the bounds of normal and acceptable civil discourse. It has not only been false and misleading but has been antithetical to the concept of a gracious exit or a commitment to honoring the mission and ministry of all Christians.

    As a result of the misleading, defamatory, and false statements and materials shared with local church members by certain organizations as well as clergy and lay members of various churches and outside groups, we do not have confidence in the validity of upcoming church conference disaffiliation votes. After lengthy periods of discussion and consultation involving the cabinet, the board of trustees, and appropriate conference leadership, we have agreed that our Annual Conference cannot rely upon such votes for purposes of negotiating a gracious exit.

    The ultimate step in the disaffiliation process is the ratification of disaffiliation agreements by the Annual Conference. However, because of the issues observed, the conference board of trustees is no longer confident it could recommend in good faith disaffiliation agreements to the Annual Conference at this time.

    The appointive cabinet is therefore amending its previously presented policy and will not accept disaffiliation requests at this time nor will the conference board of trustees negotiate disaffiliation agreements.

    The appointive cabinet, board of trustees, and bishop recognize the significance of this action.

    We reaffirm our commitment to honor and uphold the Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church.

    We commit to walking alongside the clergy and laity of the North Georgia Conference as we together take this opportunity to re-set our focus on the mission of the church, to commit to deepening our focus on discipleship, and to get to know our incoming episcopal leader.

    With just 15 months until the next session of the United Methodist General Conference, which will be held April 23 to May 3, 2024, in Charlotte, North Carolina, this pause will allow churches to gain more information about the real, rather than the false or hypothetical, future of our church.

    We give thanks for all North Georgia United Methodists in all our varied contexts. We stand beside you knowing that pause and uncertainty is hard. We pray for you and your ministry daily as together we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

    Yours in Christ,
    Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson
    The Appointive Cabinet
    The Conference Board of Trustees

  12. Comment by JR on May 22, 2023 at 11:54 am

    This is a standard example of gaslighting. Theological, emotional, psychological gaslighting, and manipulation to distort the truth. Very sad. NPR has been having LGBTQ guests in prime time when parents are dropping off kids or picking up after school. Church has to deal with people who’s been indoctrinated 24/7 with such media during the week, and you only have less than 20 minutes to talk about, which also is limited by what you teach each Sunday. Not even a game. It’s David vs Goliath. Only God can bring victory.

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