Key points
- Traditionalist advocacy groups want General Conference to approve petitions extending disaffiliation paths for churches and annual conferences.
- Those groups are aligned with the breakaway Global Methodist Church and should not have influence on United Methodist decision-making, writes the Rev. Mark Holland.
- There are already exit paths for those wanting to disaffiliate, and adding a “top-down, uniform” approach would be a step backward.
Photo courtesy of the author.
Commentaries
There are petitions coming to General Conference that would re-create a top-down, uniform disaffiliation process similar to the Book of Discipline’s Paragraph 2553, applicable both in the United States and in the central conferences. That temporary provision of church law expired at the end of last year.
Petitions seeking to re-create it are a step backward and need to be defeated. Each region of the world has unique issues and we should not attempt another one-size-fits-all solution from General Conference.
These petitions are largely the work and priority of Good News, Wesleyan Covenant Association and the Africa Initiative — groups that had a hand in launching the breakaway, traditionalist Global Methodist Church. These groups supported the divisive Traditional Plan that narrowly passed at the 2019 General Conference in St. Louis.
After the backlash against the Traditional Plan in the U.S., traditional churches and some others used Paragraph 2553 to leave The United Methodist Church. In the U.S., that has been about 25% of the congregations. A Lewis Center for Church Leadership report in January said that about half of those have entered the Global Methodist Church or another denomination.
Good News and the Wesleyan Covenant Association have advocated for United Methodist churches to disaffiliate and join the Global Methodist Church. It lacks integrity for individuals and groups that have aligned with a new denomination to now advocate disaffiliation legislation — or any legislation — for The United Methodist Church. There will be zero United Methodists advocating at the GMC General Conference this September in Costa Rica. There should not be any GMC advocates at our General Conference in Charlotte.
At the 2019 General Conference in St. Louis, only about one-third of U.S. delegates voted for the Traditional Plan. The whole plan, which included measures intended to strengthen already existing church bans on same-sex weddings and “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy, passed by a vote of 438-384.
The international vote for Paragraph 2553 was also narrow, with 420 in favor and 390 opposed. This paragraph has been widely misused by opportunistic U.S. pastors and churches to simply avoid the trust clause and secure their church property — and stop paying global mission shares. Under Paragraph 2553, churches could disaffiliate “for reasons of conscience” related to the denomination’s policies on LGBTQ inclusion. Yet we have seen multiple cases of churches promoting disaffiliation without naming this as a reason.
Going forward, churches will still be able to leave The United Methodist Church, just as they have through the years. Alternative exit pathways remain in the Book of Discipline, and annual conferences are actively using them. What’s more, annual conferences already have the authority to create a process for departure that could look as much like Paragraph 2553 as they want. It is unacceptable for the General Conference to prescribe another uniform process that will hurt the very annual conferences that have already been hit the hardest by disaffiliation.
Traditionalists say they want to see something like Paragraph 2553 extended to the central conferences, specifically Africa. But Paragraph 2553 was promoted as a necessary response to longstanding division over homosexuality. There is almost no disagreement about homosexuality in Africa.
I am not aware of a single delegate or bishop in Africa who supports same-sex marriage or LGBTQ ordination. A group of delegates met with the Africa Forum earlier this year in Tanzania and voted unanimously to both support regionalization and define marriage as between one man and one woman. The Liberia Annual Conference funded a study last fall that shows its membership does not support same-sex marriage or LGBTQ ordination.
Despite this reality, the WCA is funding the Africa Initiative, a group distinct from the Africa Forum, to label everyone in Africa who supports regionalization as pro-gay. This is obviously not true.
African annual conferences have the same tools U.S. annual conferences have to allow local churches to leave — and it is happening. The GMC reports that congregations in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya have disaffiliated.
Central conferences also have the ability to adapt the Book of Discipline to meet their own needs. If the General Conference adopts new disaffiliation legislation, it will simply be wading into a power struggle on behalf of those loyal to the GMC.
Let’s turn to the Philippines, which has had a dynamic internal conversation about autonomy for 40 years. This has had nothing to do with homosexuality, but about the Philippines’ own self-identity. Does the church there want to be autonomous like Methodist churches in India, South Korea and Myanmar?
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The three episcopal areas in the Philippines recently convened a study group to explore the idea of autonomy anew. Many annual conferences in the Philippines have adopted resolutions supporting regionalization, in part because it offers a bona fide alternative to autonomy; it could be the best of both worlds.
Meanwhile, the GMC has formed a provisional annual conference in the Philippines and is actively recruiting churches in an effort to divide the church. The General Conference should defeat disaffiliation legislation forcing division in the Philippines and allow the capable leaders there to make their own decisions about who leaves and who stays. There is a clear interest within the Philippines to remain together, regardless of whether they choose regionalization or autonomy.
The churches in Western Europe are closely aligned with The United Methodist Church in the U.S. in terms of seeking to remove the harmful language that targets our LGBTQ siblings. Some European annual conferences have already utilized the flexibility within the Book of Discipline for central conferences and allowed same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination. They are fully capable of making their own decisions about their church without the General Conference interfering.
Some churches in Eastern Europe have already left, including churches in Bulgaria and Slovakia, which did so without following the Book of Discipline process.
The four annual conferences in Eurasia are following the Discipline’s process to leave. This exit option is available to every central conference. Technically, they need permission from the General Conference, but this is a formality. Churches outside the U.S. that choose to leave may leave. New disaffiliation legislation is not needed to help them do so.
The GMC’s only hope for more division is if the General Conference adopts another top-down, uniform disaffiliation process that will allow them to harvest more congregations from The United Methodist Church — and hope half of those will join them.
I encourage every 2024 General Conference delegate to vote “no” on any petition that extends disaffiliations in any way. We must let annual conferences decide for themselves. We are the UMC — let’s not do the work of the GMC.
Holland is an elder in the Great Plains Conference and executive director of Mainstream UMC, an unofficial caucus within The United Methodist Church.
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