Conservative Methodist Exit Nears End Point
In the largest U.S. church schism since Civil War times, nearly 7,700 churches of the roughly 30,000 in the United Methodist Church (UMC) have voted to take their property and go elsewhere.
The issue of contention in the 19th century was slavery. Today, in the UMC, it’s LGBTQ-related issues. Liberals have been defying denominational rules banning same-sex marriages and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” and conservatives have been taking advantage of a temporary rule passed in 2019 that allows their congregations to vote on whether to leave, taking their property and buildings with them.
The number of leavers is greater than expected — Methodist insider Mark Tooley earlier this year put the low-ball number at 3,000 leavers, with an upper limit of 5,000. In actuality, a massive rush for the door by 5,642 departing congregations in 2023, the last year the deal is in effect, brings the current total to 7,659.
How Things Got to This Point
The UMC, as a church body, has resisted the tsunami of LGBTQ fervor that has swept through the rest of liberal Protestantism. Indeed, it has endorsed at every general convention since its initially passing in 1972 a stricture in the denomination’s Book of Discipline that declared the practice of homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
***
GJ - Religious journalists fail to trace this debacle back to the Methodists embracing the Social Gospel Movement, political activism, and rationalism. Just like ELCA, LCMS, and WELS - the Methodists protected their apostates and railed against anyone who dared murmur against the trendy usurpers.
In Three Giant Steps -
I. Repudiating the Traditional Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, followed by "translations" from idiots, illiterates, and snake-oil salesmen.
II. Replacing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with activist causes, always careful to finesse doctrine into the latest Left-wing fad.
III. Tossing the basics of the Scriptures aside, except for raising money, the managers suddenly abandon the Creation, normal clothes, and traditional marriage.
In 1987, my wife and I left the Lutheran Church in America: everything was that obvious... 36 years ago.
