United Methodist Church To Disunite

Over the past several weeks I've run into occasional references to something called the Global Methodist Church, which Christianity Today recently explained is the object of a proposal now scheduled to be taken up by the United Methodist Church's General Conference in 2022,

Delegates are expected to take up a proposal to split the denomination called the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation.

The proposal, negotiated by 16 United Methodist bishops and advocacy group leaders from across theological divides, would create a new conservative “traditionalist” Methodist denomination—that’s the Global Methodist Church—that would receive $25 million over the next four years. Individual churches and annual conferences could choose to join the new entity; otherwise, they’ll remain in the existing denomination by default.

As might be expected, the potential split reflects differences over marriage and sexuality. The Britannica site says:

In 2019, at a special session of the General Conference, leaders voted to affirm the traditional stance against homosexuality, and a proposal to allow individual churches autonomy in decisions regarding gay clergy and same-sex marriage was voted down. As a result of the significant division within the denomination following this vote, in early 2020 church leaders proposed splitting the church to resolve the debate.

So let me get this straight. In 2019, the UMC as a body voted to support the traditional stance on sexuality and refused autonomy on the decision. But in 2020, UMC leaders who apparently disagreed proposed allowing those who supported the 2019 UMC tion to leave the UMC. So that the actual proposal is that as of 2022, maybe, the UMC will support LGBTQ in contradiction to its 2019 position, but it will allow those who supported the 2019 position to leave. Or do I have this wrong? It positively reeks of doublespeak.

The new GMC website says of itself,

Methodists in Africa, Europe, Eurasia, the Philippines, and the United States have warmly embraced the name. It simultaneously states who we are and who we aspire to be: faithful Christians in the Methodist tradition dedicated to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with people all around the world.

Well, I spent almost ten years on the old blog looking at proposals like this. It's something like Anglicanorum coetibus meets the Traditional Anglican Communion meets the Anglican Church in North America, and I think it's likely to be just as successful.

The UMC is a result of a series of Methodist mergers, especially a 1939 reunioni of the Southern Methodists with the northerners to resolve a split dating from before the US Civil War. An additional merger resulted in the current UMC in 1968. However, it appears that the UMC is now in the process of unmerging, which of course is unscriptural and unproductive, but it's baked into Protestantism.

This is just a continuation of main line Protestantism's collapse. Protestants in general abandoned the field of marriage and sexuality in the 1960s, attempting to retain prestige by substituting vocal advocacy of leftist and pacifist programs. But the UMC itself knows it has a problem:

That’s according to projections from the denomination’s General Council on Finance and Administration — based on the continuing decline in U.S. membership as much as growth in Africa.

According to the agency’s forecast, total membership in the central conferences — church regions in Africa, the Philippines and Europe — will exceed that of the U.S. jurisdictions in 2020.

“Based on trends that have occurred over the last several years, we are annually averaging a decline of 2.0% overall for the jurisdictional membership,” Kevin Dunn, the agency’s director of data services, told the GCFA board at its November meeting.

“We may fall below 6 million (U.S.) members by 2025.”

But even that estimate doesn't take into consideration the potential loss from the new GMC.