Global Methodist, United Methodist Churches Split on Nicene Creed

One important divergence already seen between the two denominations emerging from the United Methodist split is contrasting approaches to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, popularly known as simply the Nicene Creed. The Global Methodist Church is committed to the historic Christian faith of the Nicene Creed, while the United Methodist Church is not committed to the Nicene Creed.

This reflects deeper differences. Of course, there are finer, less important theological questions on which faithful members of the same church can disagree. But can there be any minimal doctrinal boundaries?

As the Rev. Dr. Chappell Temple, a long-time instructor of United Methodist doctrine, history, and polity and now a Global Methodist elder, has declared, in the GMC, “there is a set of defining core beliefs,” grounded in Scripture, which denominational leaders and congregations are expected to teach.

This is simply not the case in the UMC. In United Methodism, it has become painfully obvious that there are no clear, consistent, and effective doctrinal boundaries.

Let’s be real: if you know that someone is a United Methodist, even a minister or a bishop, that tells you little to nothing about what this person actually believes.

Here is a summary of the history of this great ecumenical creed, which dates from the fourth century A.D., in a Roman Catholic magazine.

A few years ago, some helpfully nuanced analysis of John Wesley’s own relationship with historic creeds in the founding era of Methodism was offered in inter-linked blog posts by several United Methodist scholars: Joel Watts (here and especially here), David Watson, Andrew Thompson, and Kevin Watson. They challenged simplistic arguments and selective citations painting a misleading picture of the Anglican Wesley as anti-creedal.

In any case, the Global Methodist Church includes this Nicene Creed as part of its official doctrine (see ¶105 of the Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline). Global Methodism not only affirms distinctive theology of the Wesleyan Methodist tradition, but also stands together with Catholic, historic Protestant, and (for the most part) Eastern Orthodox churches around the world who have also affirmed this core of basic, ecumenical Christian faith for centuries. This is a deeper doctrinal unity than comparing completely separate statements of faith and making extended arguments about how there are substantial overlaps in some areas. Rather, on very core doctrine about the triune God, Global Methodism is unquestionably in alignment with the ecumenical consensus, dating from the fourth century, on the same carefully worded creedal affirmations of belief.

Despite being printed in the United Methodist Hymnal and valued by many who have been United Methodists, the Nicene Creed is actually not part of the United Methodist Doctrinal Standards. The Nicene Creed is not even explicitly mentioned anywhere in the United Methodist Book of Discipline. 

UMC Discipline ¶104 lists the historic Methodist “General Rules” alongside the denomination’s official Doctrinal Standards, the latter consisting of four distinct documents:

• The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church (mainly what John Wesley abridged from the Church of England’s articles);
• The Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church;
• The Standard Sermons of John Wesley; and
• John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament. 

In 2015, several United Methodists who had disagreed over other denominational matters on social media came together to petition the 2016 General Conference to add the Nicene Creed to this list.

A participant in that effort noted a weakness he saw in official United Methodist doctrine: how overwhelmingly dependent it was on one fallible man alone (as awesome as John Wesley was). Before Methodism’s 1968 merger with the much smaller EUB church, Wesley was basically the main author of all of the clear Doctrinal Standards of the main part of what is now our denomination.

However, this effort went down in flames at the 2016 UMC General Conference. The three petitions to include the Nicene Creed in the United Methodist Doctrinal Standards all died in committee, rejected by super-majorities of 69 to 72 percent (see here, here, and here). Even in a relatively conservative committee in arguably the most conservative (by United Methodist standards) General Conference in history!

So the United Methodist Church’s top governing assembly was explicitly invited to include the Nicene Creed in its Doctrinal Standards, and this proposal was overwhelmingly rejected.

Among other things, this failed United Methodist effort would have countered the widespread idea that “the United Methodist Church is not a creedal church.” That claim has been made widely by United Methodist clergy for many years. It has even been made on the denomination’s official UMC.org website.

It is often unclear what exactly is meant by this statement.

I have most often heard United Methodist ministers (even a relatively conservative pastor) declare “we’re not a creedal church” as a way of shrugging off concerns raised about United Methodist leaders, even at the highest levels of spiritual authority, denying such basic doctrines as the sinlessness or actual, miraculous bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. It appears to mean, “Oh well, it’s not that big a deal for even top leaders of the United Methodist Church to use their offices to teach against core, historic Christian doctrines, and no leader in our denomination can be stopped from doing this—that’s just how things are in the UMC!”

I and others have disputed this claim, pointed out how at least on paper, the UMC has the Doctrinal Standards mentioned above, and per Discipline ¶336, all ordination candidates are supposed to be asked if they will “preach and maintain” these doctrines. 

But the de facto reality of United Methodist doctrine and morals has become very different from the dead letter of the words printed in the Discipline. Even in the UMC’s arguably most conservative Midwestern annual conference, Indiana, District Superintendent Saneta Maiko sent an apparent mass email on April 27, 2022, in which among other things he declared, “I am a United Methodist because our doctrines are not mandatory for clergy to preach and maintain. I am not interested in policing doctrines but asking God to redeem people when fallen s[h]ort of God’s glory.” (emphasis added)

We must not under-estimate the profound effects of erasing even minimal doctrinal boundaries, at every level of the UMC, have come from so many ministers for many years being taught and teaching others that the UMC “is not a creedal church.” This oft-repeated slogan serves to intentionally, pointedly declare that United Methodism is NOT like those other denominations who actually have a clearly defined core of creedal doctrine which at least top leaders are expected to actually believe and teach.

Some United Methodist leaders express open hostility to the idea of any creeds in general and the Nicene Creed in particular. For example, in March 2021 under the leadership of Bishop Frank Beard (by far the most relatively theologically conservative active United Methodist bishop in the northern or western United States), the official magazine of the Illinois-Great Rivers Conference published an article (see page 2/3) lamenting:

“You see, we are currently pressing toward an Orthodoxy reminiscent of the age of the Nicene Creed in 325 A.D. Prior to Christianity becoming the religion of the state under Constantine, Christianity flourished in diversity. Not everyone believed exactly the same thing.”

This anti-creedal editorial, which also disparaged fellow United Methodists involved in IRD/UMAction, was authored by someone Bishop Beard appointed in 2018 to be one of his top deputies and representatives, as a district superintendent. To be fair, the magazine’s editor agreed to publish a subsequent response from me (see page 3).

At the congregational level, the Global Methodist Church expects its doctrine to actually be taught in every Global Methodist congregation, so that lay members will have a common minimal understanding of what their denomination believes. 

That is a huge contrast from how United Methodist denominational officials have largely not cared much about the theology of whatever is preached in their congregations, at least as long as these congregations pay their apportionments, keep their people happy, and do not create extra work for annual conference leaders.

The UMC’s laissez-faire approach to doctrine has sometimes gone to such documented extremes as United Methodist congregations being allowed to formally merge with a non-Christian religion, host “a witch leading worship,” or “practice their own pagan-inspired rituals at services.”

Even under Bishop Jimmy Nunn, probably the most theologically conservative active United Methodist bishop in the South Central Jurisdiction (again, a very relative standard), we have seen such doctrinal indifference. Last Easter Sunday, one of Nunn’s Oklahoma Conference ministers (who is also a member of the University Senate charged with oversight of UMC seminaries) issued a widely noticed public teaching claiming “We should be extremely cautious and hesitant about taking these [biblical] accounts as an accurate history of the events surrounding Jesus’ execution,” challenged belief in “the physical resurrection of Jesus,” and attacked the doctrine of salvation through the shed blood of Jesus. This man’s teaching has been shared directly with Bishop Nunn, who is apparently fine with allowing those set apart as ministers to so publicly attack key parts of the UMC’s nominal Doctrinal Standards (even though guarding the church’s faith and doctrine is central to bishops’ job description, per Discipline ¶403.1). At the same time, Nunn has heavy-handedly tried suppressing the basic free speech of United Methodist laity who want to meet and discuss information about the denominational split and their options related to disaffiliation. (As of this writing, I have received no response to several invitations to Nunn to address this contrast.)

It is characteristic of despotic, dysfunctional regimes to neglect to perform some basic functions of governance while going to great lengths to silence citizens who offer honest critiques of present rulers.

As I recently documented, the “we’re not a creedal church” ethos has taken the UMC’s lack of clear, consistent doctrinal boundaries to such extremes as:

• Bishops, those elevated as top spiritual authorities and entrusted with guarding the church’s faith and doctrine, spreading such unorthodox teachings denying the authority of Scripture and attacking such core orthodox doctrine as the resurrection and sinlessness of Jesus Christ, with one new bishop calling for “heretics” to “lead the church forward,” and another declaring that in the UMC, “it is not important that we agree on who Christ is”;
• Several apportionment-funded United Methodist agencies actively promoting a demoted view of Jesus Christ at odds with the historic, biblical faith of the Nicene Creed;
• Apportionment-funded United Methodist seminaries undermining the historic, biblical doctrines of the Nicene Creed while actively promoting alternatives to following Jesus;
• Widespread unorthodox beliefs among American United Methodist clergy and laity as a whole, from devaluing the authority of Scripture to rejecting a high view of Jesus Christ.

Whether or not we ever see much traction for any proposal to actually delete any part of the UMC’s on-paper Doctrinal Standards (such as what is implied by the plan of the prominent liberal bishops and large-church pastors in the UMC Next caucus) is beside the point. The regime now running the UMC has already ensured that these widely neglected doctrines have little to no binding authority at even the highest levels of United Methodist spiritual leadership. 

United Methodists opposed to the historic doctrines of the Nicene Creed have now become well-entrenched in the leadership of the denomination. Despite the attempts of many orthodox believers to work through the UMC’s established channels, there has been no effective doctrinal accountability for the false teachings by top denominational officials noted above.

The sad reality the matter is that the UMC’s lack of inclusion of the Nicene Creed in its Doctrinal Standards does not mean that the denomination is simply neutral. United Methodism is sometimes openly hostile to the faith of the Nicene Creed. It is simply a fact that in many cases, people who come under the influence of a United Methodist bishop, United Methodist seminary, or United Methodist congregation are wooed by this influence to reject key doctrines of the Nicene Creed! 

With the denominational split, the majority of United Methodist leaders most committed to defending the doctrines of the Nicene Creed are leaving the UMC.

Most of those remaining United Methodist leaders who say that they support the doctrines of the Nicene Creed have shown no appetite for doing the hard work of actually seeking accountability for seminaries, bishops, and other denominational officials who betray the orthodox doctrines found in the UMC’s on-paper Doctrinal Standards. Such individuals are unlikely to begin meaningfully promoting doctrinal accountability when they will have fewer allies left for such efforts.

And so at the top levels of the denomination, United Methodist bishops, seminaries, and denominational agencies can expect even fewer restraints on their ability to attack core orthodoxy.

At the grassroots level, we can expect there to continue to be little encouragement for United Methodist congregations to do much to teach the UMC’s on-paper Doctrinal Standards. So widespread lay ignorance of this historic doctrine will continue in United Methodism.

In contrast, the Global Methodist Church highly values historic creeds as “sure guides enabling us to articulate what we believe” which “open us to the profound truths, mysteries, and joys of our faith.” While committed to the primacy of Scripture, the GMC also intentionally “stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before us in the faith” and “honor[s] them by remaining committed to, preserving, and continuing this heritage of faith they delivered to us.”

The Global Methodist Church’s official doctrine, including but not limited to the Nicene Creed, is not just a dead letter. Its leaders are actually committed to both this doctrine and an ethos of accountability to this doctrine. Global Methodist congregations are expected to actually teach this doctrine. 

In the Global Methodist Church, denominational employees are required to “subscribe to the doctrinal and moral standards of the Global Methodist Church and give evidence of the same in their life and ministry” (see ¶704.5 of the GMC’s Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline). In the UMC, a proposal to similarly require full-time denominational staff to be “church-attending Christians” committed to some of the minimal moral standards required of clergy was overwhelmingly defeated in committee at the 2016 General Conference. So was another proposal which did not mention homosexuality but would have required United Methodist missionaries to at least be committed to the ethic of “fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness.”

The UMC may continue to keep its historic Doctrinal Standards as neglected, ineffective museum artifacts, but United Methodist leaders will be increasingly free to dissent from these doctrines. 

In contrast, when you meet a minister or leader in the Global Methodist Church, you can be reasonably confident that this person believes the historic faith of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

He suffered death and was buried. On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic* [universal] and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.