Methodism Revisited: No Turning Back

By DON ROLLINS

The General Conference is not the church. It is a legislative body. Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church is the living breathing body of Christ called to LOVE GOD, LOVE NEIGHBOR AND CHANGE THE WORLD. - From the Facebook page of Rev. Britt Skarda, Pastor, Pulaski UMC, Little Rock, Ark.

It’s been nearly seven years since I used this space to describe the United Methodist Church’s roiling theological tensions. As with all the mainline Protestant communions gone before, the denomination’s progressives were calling for lifting the church’s historic ban on LGBTQI+ marriage and ordination. And as with the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and kindred traditions, the pushback was fierce.

And regional. For as the UMC in North America was hemorrhaging members, whole sections of the more theologically and socially conservative Southern Hemisphere were growing in number and denominational influence. On the one hand, this trend was enriching the 12 million-member church’s diversity in race, culture and class; but it was also reinforcing the conservatives’ voting bloc at the church’s biannual General Conferences, where denomination wide decisions are made.

This trend toward a conservative majority has since continued, but not without progressive resistance. Pro-repeal groups of Methodist leaders, lay and ordained, have engaged their congregations and judicatories in a vigorous campaign for inclusion. (Perhaps the epitome of these efforts is that of Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, prominent figure in the denomination’s most liberal wing, who in 2017 surrendered his ordination to protest the exclusion of LGBTQI+ ministerial candidates.)

Yet, for all the leveraging of resources and relationships on the part of the change agents, the codified barriers have remained in place. The latest discouragement for progressives came last month, when after a long and intense effort to thread the theological needle, UMC leadership convened a special conference to revisit the ban in up/down fashion: church delegates voted 53% to 47% in favor of keeping church teaching and practice as they are.

At least doctrinally, the United Methodist Church, second largest Protestant communion in America, would continue to deny marriage and ministerial credentials to anybody who won’t identify as straight, effectively putting the ball in the progressives’ court.

It’s hard to capture in words the grief and anger my closest Methodist colleagues are experiencing right now. Normally a steely lot, they’re keenly aware this may be the end of the denomination as they’ve known it, and are already mourning.

But there’s also an inward fire when they talk about all this. They talk about dignity, diversity and love as non-negotiables. They talk about solidarity, focus and modeling the denomination they imagine. They even talk in cautious tones about the prospect of a US Methodism.

What they don’t talk about is turning back. No turning back.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister and substance abuse counselor living in Pittsburgh, Pa. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2019

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