Was the United Methodist split inevitable?

In previous writings, I have outlined the range of issues driving the United Methodist Church’s major, still-ongoing break up. In this article, I address the basic question of if such a dramatically large United Methodist split was inevitable, and the key role moderate liberal leaders played in the failures of different attempts to try to “preserve as much unity as possible.”

In America’s biggest denominational split in decades, more than 7,600 conservative U.S. congregations have disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church since its 2019 General Conference.

While this accounts for 25 percent of the American local churches of the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination, the split’s true size will ultimately be much larger, as additional congregations, countless individual members “voting with their feet,” and entire overseas regions join the mass exodus from the increasingly radicalized UMC. Meanwhile, the Global Methodist Church, the new denomination founded by evangelical former United Methodists, is growing rapidly across America and on four continents. 

Much has been written about this schism’s history, issues, and mechanics, as well as some liberal bishops’ mistreatment of departing conservatives. But I was recently asked a more basic question: Was such a huge split inevitable? 

The best minds in our multi million-member global denomination worked hard to develop different plans to preserve “as much unity as possible.” But all proved to be unworkable. 

In February 2019, delegates from around the world gathered in a specially called General Conference to try to settle our dysfunctional infighting over homosexuality. Main proposals surrounding that time fell into three main categories: (1) permit but don’t require gay weddings, (2) establish new structures for different standards within the same denomination, or (3) enhance enforcement of longstanding (but increasingly regionally defied) prohibitions of gay weddings and “self-avowed, practicing homosexual” ministers. Key supporters of each thought that their preferred approach could avoid as wide a divorce as we see now. 

Importantly, the high-profile homosexuality debates stem from more fundamental disagreements about Biblical authority, the person of Jesus Christ, and the mission of the Church. 

That said, an important sub-faction of United Methodists favored a more permissive approach on homosexuality, but also valued evangelism, followed the rules, and declared that they could recite every line of the Apostles’ Creed without crossing their fingers behind their backs. Yet this moderate liberal sub-faction played a key role in the failure of all three ways of seeking unity.

Continue reading at WORLD here.

John Lomperis is the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s UMAction Director and a United Methodist General Conference delegate.