After the Vote
The hashtags of #gc2019 and #umcgc are sad to read right now, even to my humanist eyes.
But this one post from Lance Pressley of Mississippi is a warning to anyone inviting dissenting Methodists to UCC, TEC, ELCA, etc.
“There’s a #UMC in every rural community and every poor neighborhood, ministering with the community. There’s rarely an Episcopal congregation nearby.[…] Do you know how many UCC congregations are in this state? A grand total of 2. And they’re both in the Capitol. Tell a kid in Shannon, MS that they should go to church 200 miles away. I appreciate your invitation now, but your denomination hasn’t seen fit to invest in my home state. It leads me to suspect you only care when you can use that care to show how tolerant you are.”
It reminds me of how even the UCC has had a presence in Columbus, GA three separate times in its history, most recently when Forgiving Heart United Church of Christ became a UCC member. The nearest UCC members are small churches in Pine Mountain and Woodbury.
There’s a glut of UCC churches in Metro Atlanta, but where’s the UCC in Macon? Augusta? Albany? Valdosta? Athens?
How much investment is being made in progressive mainline Christianity in non-Atlanta Georgia? or in rural Georgia for that matter?
If progressive mainline Christianity is already having a hard time funding itself and broadening itself to rural areas, progressive Methodists will face a bit of an uphill climb if they leave the UMC.
But forming a new Methodist church may be the only option left.
United Methodism as Colonial Christian Hubris
If anything, #umcgc/ #gc2019 showed one of the hubrises of Western Christianity: the descendants of those who were missionarized in Africa during Europe’s colonization and in Eurasia flexed their weight rather spitefully against a great deal of the European and North American descendants of the colonizers and missionaries who now seek a different course for the UMC on the question of gender and sex than what was preached for over a century to Africans and Eurasians by European and American colonizers.
The minority, somewhat-wealthy White American Methodist right – through such groups as the Wesleyan Covenant Association and the Institute for Religion & Democracy – joined the above bloc and helped lead the charge as a means of taking power away from more progressive clergy.
The American section of the UMC – in the birthplace of the UMC – is now in a weird position. American Conservative Methodists, largely concentrated in the South and Midwest, can claim a victory, and are rubbing salt in the wounds of the Progressive Methodists on social media with the usual “pleasantries” directed toward LGBT people.
The Progressive American Methodists, most reflected in the Western Jurisdiction, will marinate on this and come to decisions in the coming days.
This decision reduces pro-LGBT church caucuses like the Reconciling Ministries Network from a somewhat respected caucus like IntegrityUSA (in the Episcopal Church) to an actively-opposed caucus like DignityUSA (in the Roman Catholic Church) or Affirmation (in the LDS).
Another big issue is whether disaffiliation will be made a lot easier for churches, namely for those who want separation. But it is hard to tell who wants the split of the UMC more: the conservatives or the progressives.
A lot of the progressives are pledging in religious language to stay (but it is far from unanimous, as numerous Twitter posts renounced membership within the minutes of the result), while the conservatives are hoping to drive the UMC harder to evangelicalism by driving out the progressives and also hoping that they demographically dwindle on the vine in a new, less-wealthy denomination for the sake of conservative vindication.
But given the PR crisis that has ensued from this – pitting young against old, rural against urban, nation against nation – I don’t think the conservatives have much else to gloat about than a seizure of power, money, property, and brand from progressive dissenters who they’ve wanted to railroad out of the denomination for decades.
Both sides are dressing their emotions in the religious language of the denomination. One side made a big power play against dissenters, and won. And many are gloating of their victory over “heretics”, “satanists” and “cultural relativists”, or, in less pointed language, professing “love” for LGBT people while maintaining their religious disdain for same-sex relations.
But the most hardcore progressive dissenting members and clergy are “grabbing the horns of the altar”, and refuse to walk out of their own accord at this moment. They’re also not taking, or are actively discouraging, invites to other mainline denominations for various reasons.
The politics of this decision reflect not only the effects of the historic colonialism of the UMC, but also an ecclesiastical system which reflects the crisis of American politics and economics. It may also affect the politics of the United States.
How would the schism of the UMC, the third largest denomination of Christianity in the United States, play out in the United States regionally, ethnically, in gender terms? How would it affect or manifest in American politics and partisan identity?
If the UMC becomes an evangelical denomination and drives as many of its progressive members out as possible, how close will this place the denomination into the realm of the Republican Party and its policies in states like Georgia?
This is important even for those who are not Methodists, or even Christians, or even theists. Whatever results from this crackdown will affect the rest of us.
The Digging-in of Heels
How can the progressive American Methodists dig in their heels when the UMC is becoming less American?
They clearly failed to convince the African and Eurasian delegates of the urgency of the One Church Plan. They failed to appeal to the hearts and minds of the African and Eurasian delegates, whose growing numbers come from countries whose Christian denominations are way too frequently antagonistic against LGBT people and who support state and corporalviolence against LGBT people. They are literally living the same ideology taught to them and their parents by Euro-American Methodists missionaries and colonizers, and their chickens came home to roost in St. Louis.
How did the progressive American Methodists think this was going to go down? Who were they seeking to convince? How do they expect to convince the African and Eurasian Methodists now?
I don’t think there will be convincing at this point.
