In the wake of General Conference 2019 session (GC2019) in St. Louis, bishops have issued pastoral calls for healing, congregations have gathered for worship and prayer, and both Methodist and non-Methodist friends have asked me what I think will happen. I do not have a crystal ball, but having studied the church’s historic and current divisions, I fear that we are heading for schism, a word that few bishops or church pastors have used, but which may be our best way forward at this point.
Going into GC2019, I was less optimistic than many people. I was hopeful that the hard work of the Commission on a Way Forward (COWF) and the prayers of United Methodists and their friends around the world would help us remain united. However, conversations with conservatives led me to feel they would accept nothing but the Traditional Plan, which was equally unacceptable to many centrists and progressives.
As many feared, a narrow majority (53%) approved that plan, which not only preserves the longstanding ban on ordaining or marrying gays and lesbians, but seeks to impose stronger penalties on those who defy that policy. Anger and pain filled the arena in St. Louis, in delegates’ speeches and in demonstrations by LGBTQ United Methodists. We emerged more divided than ever, and as in 2012, the plan adopted by General Conference violates the UMC Constitution in areas,[1] so we may be back to the policy with which we began the week.
While efforts to remain united did not succeed, we gave it our best shot. The 32 members of the COWF and the three bishops who moderated the process modeled how to hear each other, find common ground where they could agree to disagree, and forgive any unintentional pain they had caused each other. With that example before them, the GC2019 delegates nevertheless voted down the One Church Plan that the COWF and majority of bishops endorsed, and did not even consider the COWF’s Connectional Conference Plan, offered as an alternative path to remaining united.
I cannot imagine what might come before General Conference 2020 that could succeed where the COWF process failed. The division over how the church responds to an increasingly diverse church, specifically as it relates to sexuality, runs so deep that it cannot be resolved. Our own history tells us that such resistance to change doesn’t go away overnight, but that change only happens when a generation or two dies off.
Resistance to leadership of African Americans dates to the church’s earliest days when black Methodists, denied leadership opportunities, left to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816) and African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion (1822). The church split over slavery in 1844 and retained a racially segregated structure until 1968.[2] Women’s ordination was at issue for more than 75 years before being approved in 1956, after many of those who opposed it had died or were no longer in power.
The UMC cannot survive in its current state while it waits for a generational shift. Young people want an inclusive church, and in less than 24 hours, over 15,500 of them signed a message to GC2019 in support of unity. If there is no inclusive Methodist denomination, they will go elsewhere or drop out of church altogether, as many have already done.
As reluctant as we are to talk about a formal split, at this point, it may be our best option. It will be wrenching (see previous blog post), as division will not fall along geographical lines like the church’s schism over slavery did and will result in smaller denominations with divided resources and less internal diversity than we have currently. At the same time, that internal diversity is draining us of the time, energy, and resources to address other pressing spiritual and social issues. I fear our church is too broken to be mended into a single body.
I grieve with many that we strengthened our prohibitions on the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons, and that we did not emerge from General Conference with a plan of unity. Even so, I am optimistic because we did not splinter into several camps, but instead with two clear bodies: those who voted for the Traditional Plan, and those who would like to see something like the One Church Plan that would allow for a diversity of beliefs and contextualization of policy.
Traditionalists have been organizing through the Wesleyan Covenant Association, which was founded following the 2016 General Conference to prepare for exiting the denomination, should the Traditional Plan not be approved. In essence a “shadow” church within the larger UMC, the WCA had even announced dates for the possible convening conference of a new denomination in April. Following GC2019, the WCA stepped back from that move, while noting that they “remain prepared to launch a new Methodist movement.”
If the Judicial Council tosses out the entire Traditional Plan but upholds the disaffiliation plan that GC2019 approved, the WCA may take that opportunity to depart. If that does not happen, they will come to General Conference 2020 with a cleaned up version of the Traditional Plan designed to withstand Judicial Council review. They will most likely have the votes to pass it, since every US jurisdiction will see a decline in the size of its delegation, with corresponding increases in Africa and the Philippines.
Rather than ending up at the same place we are now, the 2020 General Conference should consider a formal plan of separation with an equitable distribution of property and pension holdings. This would hopefully signal an end to the hostility, pain, and anger that has been expressed by people on all sides of this issue at the GC2019 and at General Conferences for most of the UMC’s 50-year history.
When Methodists split over irreconcilable differences in the nineteenth century, it allowed separate bodies to offer effective ministries in their own contexts. We have the potential to come out of our current division with two global bodies: one with a membership base in Africa that upholds traditional theology and policies about the practice of homosexuality, and one centered in the United States where the One Church Plan or something like it would be in effect.
Getting there will be complicated and painful, and there will be individuals, families, and congregations that will be torn between these two choices, just as there are children of divorce who feel caught between two parents they love. But as one GC2019 delegate expressed in a speech last week, when a good marriage is no longer an option, the second best outcome may be a good divorce, rather than continuing in a bad marriage or going through a bad divorce.
Postscript:
After I had posted this, the WCA issued a statement denouncing bishops and other church leaders who say they will not abide by the Traditional Plan and offered two ways forward at General Conference 2020: an amicable split, or a repeat of St. Louis.
[1] The Traditional Plan and a plan of disaffiliation have been referred to the UMC Judicial Council, which will consider their constitutionality at their meeting April 23-26, 2019. The 2012 General Conference in Tampa passed a hastily crafted restructuring plan that was found to be unconstitutional.
[2] In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, split from the Methodist Episcopal Church over whether bishops can own slaves and issues related to the authority of bishops versus that of the General Conference. These churches reunited in 1939, along with the Methodist Protestant Church, to form the Methodist Church, which included a separate Central Jurisdiction for the church’s black membership. That structure was intact until 1968 when the Evangelical United Brethren made its dissolution a condition of merging with Methodist Church to form the current United Methodist Church.