Even in the South, the United Methodist Church Has Changed

This begins a series on the dramatically, rapidly changing nature of the American United Methodist Church in the South, formerly regarded as the denomination’s main bastion of conservatism. Part 1 below outlines big-picture trends of an aggressive new liberalism in the South, from which no United Methodist congregation, even in previously conservative regions, will be able to escape. Part 2 will document how even in the Southeast, multiple bishops are now involved in blatantly defying the denomination’s official standards on marriage and sex. Part 3 will provide all-in-one place documentation for the growing liberalism in ALL thirteen full Southeastern United Methodist annual conferences. Part 4 will document similar disobedience in the South Central Jurisdiction, while Part 5 will document the new liberal dominance of every non-missionary conference of the South Central Jurisdiction.

In the South, United Methodist bishops have generally been more open than elsewhere (with individual variations) in offering congregations unhappy with the UMC’s liberal new direction relatively later opportunities to disaffiliate.

As the United Methodist Church rapidly liberalizes on a wide range of issues, it can be tempting for United Methodists in historically more conservative areas, especially (but not only) the South, to try to tell themselves things like, “Well, the UMC’s problems are just in other parts of the country, and we can trust that United Methodists in the South will always lean conservative, just as they have throughout my life.”

However, recent developments have shattered illusions that any region can remain safe from the aggressive new liberalism now dominating what’s left of the UMC.

Yes, much of the attention on liberal United Methodist extremism has focused on the U.S. Western Jurisdiction. After all, this region’s anarchic defiance of the UMC’s official bans on gay weddings and non-celibate gay clergy has spread to the point of two of its five active bishops being openly partnered gay activists. It is the region where one bishop, Karen Oliveto, has effectively denied the full, sinless divinity of Jesus Christ, and then had the support of fellow Western Jurisdiction bishops in doing so.

But at least two prominent United Methodist bishops in the South, Ken Carter (then of Florida, now of Western North Carolina and Sue Haupert-Johnson (then of North Georgia, now of Virginia), also chose to stick their necks out to defend Oliveto after her widely decried heretical teachings about Jesus Christ.

In any case, the attitude of not caring about other regions of the denomination is a fundamental rejection of the foundational Wesleyan value of communal Christian accountability, the basic United Methodist organizing principle connectionalism, and the biblical teaching that a little yeast of sexual immorality poisonously “leavens the whole batch of dough.” Furthermore, the Western Jurisdiction has had a tradition of not fully paying for its own bishops, instead relying on subsidies paid out of the apportionments required from other United Methodists, especially in the South.

Furthermore, one of the major ways in which the leaders of the new UMC redefined the denomination at last November’s jurisdictional conferences, held concurrently across the United States, was to make clear that now there is no longer much daylight between United Methodists in the South and in the rest of America.

As noted, one prominent liberal United Methodist leader in the South has admitted that there was “a theological litmus test” (his words) nationwide, to prevent the election of any new bishops not fully committed to LGBTQ+ liberationist ideology. In practical terms, this meant that even in the two United Methodist jurisdictions in the South, highly qualified Hispanic candidates, who would have been strong candidates in earlier years, found that they had no chance of getting elected bishop, simply because they failed this one litmus test.

The perpetual exclusion of theological conservatives from the top levels of United Methodist leadership, even in the South, is now ensured.

All five U.S. United Methodist jurisdictions, including the two in the South, passed three largely identical, cookie-cutter liberal resolutions, usually by large majorities.

Perhaps the most notable of these was the resolution entitled the “Queer Delegates’ Call to Center Justice and Empowerment for LGBTQIA+ People in the UMC.” Of all the things to “center” in the life of a Christian denomination, even United Methodist leaders in the South have now officially prioritized LGBTQIA+ liberationist ideology, ahead of even making new disciples or deepening our own walks with Jesus! The Southeastern Jurisdiction saw a contentious protest by liberal delegates, some of whom reportedly “threw their credentials onstage” and stormed out of the meeting space, over the presiding bishop’s initial attempt to rule this resolution out of order. This resolution, which was ultimately adopted in the Southeast after the word “commits” was replaced with “aspires” in one place, denounces continued United Methodist disapproval of gay weddings as “harmful,” discourages enforcement of the UMC’s on-paper prohibitions of gay weddings and non-celibate gay clergy, urges church leaders to “support, empower, and amplify the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community in The United Methodist Church,” and encourages limiting elections of new bishops to individuals committed to this agenda.

Largely verbatim versions of these resolutions were then approved in numerous United Methodist annual conferences across the country, including in much of the South, last spring. Resolution votes in recent years have shown that now, even in the Southeastern Jurisdiction (previously known as the most relatively conservative region of American United Methodism), over half of its non-missionary annual conferences have now demonstrably become majority-liberal. The others cannot be too far behind.

The UMC’s connectional governance means that no conservative congregations who choose to remain United Methodist, even in the South or other previously conservative regions, can count on such liberalism leaving them alone forever. They would be compelled by an actual, pending liberal General Conference proposal to move, as a matter of formal policy, towards opening employment in their congregation to cross dressers and openly partnered homosexuals. And even relatively more conservative sub-regions cannot indefinitely escape the shifting politics of their jurisdictions’ bishops and those who elect them.

Furthermore, the United Methodist Church in the South has now already crossed the lines of bishops blatantly disregarding their duties to uphold the supposedly governing sexuality standards of the UMC Discipline. We have recently seen prominent examples of this in the Florida and (eastern) North Carolina Conferences, as well as Western North Carolina.

While some bishops are relatively better than others, no remaining active United Methodist bishop in the South has a perfect track record of upholding the Discipline.

Now that the line has already been crossed by the United Methodist Church, even in the South, of having LGBTQ activist ministers serving under appointment, we can expect growing numbers of others to follow.

In the UMC’s very hierarchical, top-down system, such ministers have a guaranteed right to be appointed somewhere, and bishops have an ultimately absolute right to appoint whichever pastors to whichever congregation they want.

No one can definitively say whether or not a gay or transgender pastor will be appointed to any particular United Methodist congregation within the next ten years.

But if your congregation is considering making the major decision of remaining United Methodist, you should be informed about the possibilities. Consider what leaders of the UMC’s newly dominant faction have been saying, again and again, to indicate their sincere belief that a congregation unwilling to welcome a non-celibate LGBTQ pastor is unacceptable bigotry, akin to racism or sexism.

While the prospect of a liberal activist pastor being appointed over a conservative congregation is upsetting to consider, we have already seen countless examples of this happening over the years, with predictably disastrous results. Some bishops and district superintendents try to avoid this. But even such relatively fair-minded officials must face the mathematical problem of having to appoint all of their ordained elders somewhere, in the widely observed context of how, in the words of liberal Southern United Methodist leader James Howell, “on average the clergy are far more progressive than their congregations.” This problem will only become worse as theologically orthodox new pastors become increasingly uninterested and unwelcome in pursuing ministry in the UMC.

For a congregation to remain United Methodist means, among other things, choosing to accept that you probably will have a liberal pastor, and possibly even a non-celibate LGBTQ pastor, appointed over you at some point.

There has always been a strong liberal element in the United Methodist Church, even in the South. This was heard in harsh rhetoric against theologically orthodox believers recently employed by one of the most high-profile United Methodist megachurch pastors in the South and a prominent longtime professor at the UMC’s Duke Divinity School in North Carolina.

The South is home to five official United Methodist seminaries. United Methodists in the South should know some facts about these environments spiritually forming new ministers who will eventually be sent to their congregations if they choose to “stay UMC.”  While Duke has had a relatively moderate history, it has its hard-left elements. Gammon Theological Seminary recently promoted left-wing abortion-rights activism. Both Gammon and St. Paul School of Theology distanced themselves, to different degrees, from the 2019 General Conference’s reinforcement of traditional biblical standards on marriage and sex. Emory University’s Candler School of Theology went further, boasting of having for years actively helped gay ordination candidates circumvent United Methodist standards. Both Candler and Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology also, in different ways, intentionally help promote the non-Christian religion of Unitarian Universalism. Furthermore, the current dean of Perkins is Bishop Mike McKee, is a member of the Convening Team for the aggressively liberal UMC Next caucus. While it had been almost unheard of for an active bishop to so publicly, formally co-lead such a divisive, unofficial, “partisan” caucus, on any side, McKee’s willingness to do so, beginning when he was still serving as North Texas’s bishop, shows the depth of his commitment to liberalizing the church.

Then within the last few years, we have seen a dramatic shift in the United Methodist Church in the South.

In 2019, the elections of General Conference delegates in much of the United Methodist Church in the South saw a systemic exclusion at this level of leadership of anyone who was not committed to supporting church blessings of same-sex unions. As noted, every General Conference and non-alternate Jurisdictional Conference delegate elected in the previously conservative-leaning Western North Carolina Conference was part of a slate committed to “support[ing] the full rights of marriage and ordination for LGBTQIA+ persons.” In Virginia, the regional chapter of the aforementioned UMC Next caucus, focused on redefining marriage and promoting ordination of LGBTQIA+ ministers in the UMC, boasted, “We elected our entire slate of delegates to both General Conference and Jurisdictional Conference.” Before mass disaffiliations began, these ranked as the top-two Southeastern United Methodist annual conferences in numbers of congregations. Similar liberal “clean sweeps” were seen in other 2019 United Methodist elections in the South, especially among clergy elections for General Conference.

A national liberal caucus boasted (with plenty of debatable spin) about the liberal dominance in these elections in much of the United Methodist South Central Jurisdiction.

Such elections led to the aforementioned results we saw in last November’s jurisdictional conferences.

Note that these November and earlier developments all happened before most of the disaffiliations of conservative U.S. congregations from the United Methodist Church in the South and elsewhere. Now the United Methodist South Central and Southeastern Jurisdictions have each seen more than one quarter of their congregations leave the denomination, with many more set to leave this fall, as part of a mass exodus of conservative believers from the UMC.

This conservative mass exodus means that the leaders, people, and votes that had previously kept radical liberalism in check will, for the most part, no longer be there.

The brakes have been removed on United Methodist liberalism, even in the South.