Methodism’s Failed Political Witness

At this point, nearly 6,600 congregations have been approved for exit from United Methodism. At least 16 more special annual conferences will meet this Fall to ratify hundreds more churches, leading to a total of more than 7,000 before this year’s deadline.

The official reason for their departure is denominational discord over marriage and sexuality. But traditionalists have been distressed by a wider range of theological, ecclesial, and political issues for many decades, if not most of the past century. United Methodism’s political witness for at least the last 60 years has been utopian and vacuous. Recent official statements on Hamas terror against Israel, by the bishops and by the denomination’s political action agency, the General Board of Church and Society, have been predictably empty and unhelpful. Official United Methodism has been negative towards Israel since the 1970s.

My own United Methodism reform activism began in reaction against United Methodist support for Marxist regimes and movements in the 1980s. This erroneous church witness never represented very many church members outside church agencies and seminaries. But it was never corrected or seriously challenged. Instead, bishops, district superintendents and pastors across decades unfailingly defended and refused efforts to reform. Even after major media exposures in the 1980s by Sixty Minutes and Reader’s Digest about church support for Marxist regimes and movements, official United Methodism resisted self-critique. This mindless and self-destructive institutionalism accelerated United Methodism’s decline.

With traditionalists now leaving the denomination, the church’s faulty political witness will likely become more outspoken and more prominent. Pastors who previously disguised or ignored church political pronouncements, hoping to guard their congregations from unwanted controversy, will in the future be more comfortable touting United Methodist political stances. Some church members who were indifferent to church disputes over marriage and sexuality will be alarmed. Many will leave. The ideological activists who run church agencies will not be deterred. Their “prophetic” pronouncements are expected to offend the “privileged” and the contented. So long as church agencies are funded, the reckless pronouncements will continue.

Church funding cuts of 40 percent are anticipated for agencies like the DC-based General Board of Church and Society and the also politically outspoken Atlanta-based General Board of Global Ministries. But both agencies have other incomes sources. The former has rental income from its Methodist Building on Capitol Hill and an endowment that traces back to the old Board of Prohibition, Temperance, and Public Morals, none of whose causes now interest the contemporary agency.

In 2022, per this report, the Board of Church and Society had $29 million in assets, including $7 million in property and nearly $18 million in investments. Its total income in 2022 was nearly $7 million, of which $2 million came from church collection plates through apportionments, $1.6 million came from investment income, and $2 million came from released assets, which presumably was a draw down from the assets, which had been $33 million in 2021.

The General Board of Global Ministries in 2022 had nearly $374 million in assets, and $46 million in revenue, of which $22 million came from local church apportionments. By comparison, 2016 revenue was nearly $57 million.

These United Methodist agencies and others will decline as church income declines, but their assets ensure they will continue almost indefinitely, issuing political pronouncements without regard to opinions of most church members. The assets ensure that even if The United Methodist Church collapses, these agencies could continue as independent entities.

This undesirable and extraordinary situation is a warning to the new Global Methodist Church and others against building unaccountable and somewhat self-funding politicized church agencies accountable to almost no one. The decline in denominations overall in America implies this model of large, well-endowed church agencies is a model that is passé.

Post-Mainline new denominations, in reaction against the unpleasant history of Mainline political witness, have avoided political witness almost entirely, with the exception of pro-life causes.  They also don’t have large, bureaucratic agencies. The Global Methodist Church almost certainly will follow this example.

But Christianity does need to speak to public life. This voice need not necessarily come from official church agencies. There could be unofficial causes or thought circles within churches that articulate a social witness from the perspective of their tradition without claiming to speak for the whole community much less demanding funding from it. This arrangement is more authentically “prophetic” and transparent, hopefully sparking conversation and serious public engagement.