Key points:
- United Methodist bishops learned more about the legacy of the segregated Central Jurisdiction and history of the U.S. jurisdictions in general.
- The lessons came as two denominational leadership bodies contemplate proposing changes to the jurisdictional system.
- A United Methodist historian noted that while history doesn’t say what decisions to make, it can offer a warning.
Retired Bishop Forrest C. Stith recalled that when he was growing up, attending his Methodist annual conference could involve traveling at least 500 miles each way.
For his Black family, he added, stopping at a restaurant or motel on the way was often out of the question.
“Segregation and discrimination were the law of the land, so you couldn’t stop everywhere,” said Stith, who grew up in the Central Jurisdiction’s Central West Conference that stretched from South Dakota to Missouri and west to Colorado.
“The way Black people traveled back then was by staying in people’s houses. And when we got to annual conference, the same thing was true,” he said. “They moved over, and the dog got out of the way. We moved what we could, and they had pallets on the floor. My sister and I never slept in a bed at annual conference.”
Stith was among the bishops who shared recollections in the video, “The Pain and the Push: The Story of the Central Jurisdiction,” about the efforts to end segregation in the Methodist Church. A number of U.S. annual conferences plan to show the video when they meet in the coming weeks.
The Connectional Table, a leadership body that coordinates denominational ministries and resources, produced the video with United Methodist Communications as part of a broader exploration of the jurisdictional system in the U.S. The body’s leaders presented the video April 29 to the Council of Bishops, meeting in Jacksonville, and then to the full Connectional Table, meeting online May 7.
“We felt that it would be helpful to consider the history of jurisdictions, how they came about, how the Central Jurisdiction influenced the jurisdictional structure, and how we can learn from that history,” Judi Kenaston, the Connectional Table’s chief connectional ministries officer, told the bishops.
The 1968 merger of the Methodists and Evangelical United Brethren that formed The United Methodist Church officially brought an end to the segregated Central Jurisdiction but left the other five geographical jurisdictions intact. Even now, jurisdictions oversee U.S. bishop elections and support their own ministries, but they only exist in the U.S.
But that could be changing with regionalization now taking effect. The restructuring aims to give the denomination’s geographic regions in Africa, Europe, the Philippines and the U.S. equal decision-making authority. Outside the U.S., the denomination’s eight regional conferences hold their own bishop elections. A U.S. regional conference that encompasses the whole country is just getting off the ground.
The Connectional Table is working with another leadership body, the Standing Committee on Regional Conference Matters outside the USA, in looking at what this means for the future of jurisdictions. At this point, a joint committee — with members from both bodies — is considering bringing legislation to the next General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking body, that would leave the question of whether to have jurisdictions up to each regional conference.
Such a move would require amending the denomination’s constitution — a high bar that would require at least two-thirds support at General Conference and at least two-thirds of the total votes at annual conferences around the globe.
With the proposal still in its early stages, the Connectional Table has invited church leaders to consider how the denomination got here. The presentation at the Council of Bishops included not only the video but also a historical overview and panel discussion.
“The African American community was a vital part of the Methodist movement from the beginning up to now,” Stith said in the video’s introduction. “The two are inseparable, and yet there was still the dilemma of how we relate together as a community of people, all who call ourselves Wesleyan Methodists.”
Ashley Boggan, the top executive of the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History, told the bishops in a historical overview that the move to make segregation officially part of church governance started in 1916 when work began on reuniting the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South — denominations that split in 1844 over slavery.
“Unity was framed as a practical and national necessity, not a theological reconciliation,” Boggan said. “And within that framework, race became a problem to be solved structurally.”
The ideological currents shaping the conversation, Boggan said, were not only racism but also ideas about white Christian manhood and white Christian nationalism.
The commission working on the union never seriously considered full integration, she added. Instead, the debate became about structural segregation within one church or full denominational separation.
Eventually, the Methodist Protestant Church — which had broken away in 1828 over the role of bishops — joined the discussions about reunion.
The outcome — when the three denominations formed the Methodist Church in 1939 — was the establishment of the jurisdictional system, including the segregated Central Jurisdiction.
“This system did more than organize geography — it redefined authority,” Boggan said. “Bishops would no longer be elected by the whole church, but by regional bodies. This shift was both a racial compromise and a political one.”
But efforts began almost immediately to dismantle the Central Jurisdiction. Many Methodists recognized that the segregation then mandated in the denomination’s constitution was antithetical to Wesleyan theology.
The Evangelical United Brethren ultimately made dissolving the Central Jurisdiction a requirement of joining to create The United Methodist Church.
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But to this day, Boggan said, The United Methodist Church remains the rare Methodist denomination that elects bishops regionally and not at its General Conference or equivalent.
“History does not tell us what decision to make. But it does offer a warning,” Boggan said.
“The jurisdictional system did not emerge because Methodists failed to value unity. It emerged because they valued unity in a particular way — one that allowed them to preserve institutional cohesion without addressing deeper injustices.”
During the panel discussion that followed Boggan’s presentation, Bishop Harald Rückert — the standing committee chair — said the issues surrounding the jurisdictional system should be resolved by the still-forming U.S. regional conference.
“You have to deal with the racist part of this history,” said Rückert, a retired bishop in Germany. “It is your homework as a regional conference in the United States to figure out how to move forward with that and be cautious. Please do not impose an issue that is really important to you and for the U.S., on us in Africa, Europe and the Philippines.”
Mountain Sky Conference Bishop Kristin Stoneking noted that even within the jurisdictional system, the reach of segregation varied. For example, outside of Colorado and Montana, the segregation of the Central Jurisdiction did not extend into much of the Western Jurisdiction. “Racism is in the churches of the West — that is for sure,” she said. “But the experience of jurisdiction in the West was more one of an organizational unit … listening for God’s call in that context.”
Many of the trailblazers who broke racial and ethnic barriers in church leadership came out of the Western Jurisdiction.
While Stoneking acknowledged that the legacy of jurisdictions is very much a U.S. concern, bishops — who are consecrated to serve the whole church — must all grapple with the church’s history and what it means for the mission today.
“The theological question is still, even in the midst of sin and division, what else is God doing?” she said.
Retired Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr., who has led conferences in both the U.S. Western Jurisdiction and Sierra Leone, has roots in the Methodist movement going back at least five generations. But as a descendant of enslaved Americans, he ruefully said, he cannot trace his family back any farther.
He said he sincerely believes all United Methodists have a desire to do good and be faithful followers of Jesus. However, he added, fear keeps getting in the way.
“So, unless we’re able to be vulnerable, admit we might be wrong, and tell each other the truth without carrying a grudge, we aren’t going to be able to talk through this,” Brown said.
The conversation about the denomination’s difficult history matters, said Bishop David Bard, who leads the Michigan Conference and co-leads the Illinois Great Rivers Conference.
“History isn’t destiny, but unacknowledged history functions a little bit like those unacknowledged parts of our unconscious,” he said. “They can limit our creativity and possibility.”
Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi, who leads the Eastern Pennsylvania and Greater New Jersey conferences, moderated the conversation. She reminded those gathered that in a week that contained many troubling accounts from the denomination’s past, the bishops also had reason to offer thanksgiving to God.
“Even when we were our worst selves, God’s grace broke through,” she said. “Somehow, God redeemed the irredeemable, and God’s mission went forth … through the people called United Methodist.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
