As noted in my last post, the Commission on a Way Forward (COWF) has completed its work, offering three options for how the United Methodist Church (UMC) may resolve its long-standing division over inclusion of gays and lesbians. Even as the Commission’s report was emerging, conservative United Methodists were already discrediting the process and claiming with confidence that General Conference will continue to uphold traditional values, as it has in the past.[1]
What they rarely disclose but clearly count on is that General Conference no longer represents mainstream American values, as it has through most of the history of American Methodism. Conservatives can boast of upholding traditional values for one reason alone: Africa.
The United Methodist Church is described as a global denomination, but 98% of its membership is in the US and Africa, and the balance between those two regions is shifting rapidly. UMC membership has flourished in Africa, as it declines in the US. General Conference delegations represent the membership in each region, so African countries represent an ever-increasing share of General Conference delegates. Central Conference delegates, the vast majority of whom are African, increased from 13% in 2004 to 42% in 2016. Sexual ethics in Africa are generally more conservative, so the votes of African delegates are essential in retaining policies that restrict full inclusion of gay United Methodists.
While conferences outside the US are permitted to adopt policies that are consistent with their cultural context, the US church does not have the same opportunity. By voting down every plan to restructure the UMC that would have allowed that to happen, conservative delegates have retained and increased their majority, while making the church increasingly out of step with the American mainstream.
Medical and social sciences no longer view different sexual orientations as deviations but as normal variants. The Supreme Court has upheld same-sex marriage, a move that 55% of Americans favor, including 64% of Mainline Protestants and 73% of those under the age of 30. An even higher percentage of Americans (62%) support the acceptance of homosexuality, including 66% of Mainline Protestants and 70% of Catholics.
This greater acceptance is not just among moderate and progressive Christians. Prominent evangelicals such as Jim Wallis, Eugene Peterson, and Jen Hatmaker have changed their thinking about homosexuality, including young evangelicals Rob Bell and Rachel Held Evans, while Matthew Vine, Trey Pearson, Julie Rodgers, and others have come out themselves.[2] On this issue at least, the UMC is increasingly at odds with the majority US culture and especially to its own young people, who have urged us to find a way to live together.
Yet US conservatives seem determined to prevent the rest of the American UMC from adopting policies that reflect this growing acceptance, and an African voting bloc allows them to do that. Methodism in Africa has roots in missionary activity by British, American, and African Methodists, and missionary churches continued until the 1960s and ‘70s. Many churches begun by British Methodists became independent bodies, but those that are now part of the UMC became Central Conferences within the UMC’s predecessor denominations, bringing vitality and cultural diversity, but allowing US churches to continue a paternalistic relationship with African Methodists.
Kalaba Chali exposes the tactics of the conservative caucus Good News as a form of Neo-colonialism in his article about a recent gathering in Nairobi called Africa Initiative UMC: Prayer and Leadership Summit. The gathering was convened by Good News to instruct Africans how to vote in the upcoming General Conference, a strategy they have employed for years. Chali writes that the summit ignored the many challenges facing African nations, just as Christian missionaries in the past turned a blind eye to their countries’ slaughter and enslavement of African people.
Conservatives themselves rarely acknowledge how much their dominance within the UMC depends on African delegates, or the tactics they employ to influence those delegates’ votes. Mark Tooley, of the the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, made that explicit when he boasted that the UMC’s addition of one million members from the Methodist Church of Cote d’Ivoire in 2004 would make “any ‘pro-gay’ shift by future General Conferences increasingly impossible.”[3]
A look at our history reveals a curious reversal in conservative American Methodists’ view of Africans. A century ago, when considering whether to allow black Methodists a place in a reunified Methodist church, southern delegates argued that African Americans were not sufficiently developed to serve in leadership over white Methodists. Even so, delegates noted, they were more civilized than savages in Africa, due to the influence of slavery, because white southerners could boast “of the great distinction of having brought up a race from Africa through slavery into a wide and cultured civilization.”[4]
Conservative Methodists now tout African Methodists as morally superior to those who support the inclusion of gays and lesbians. Yet paternalism continues, as Good News instructs African delegates to vote in ways that benefit US conservatives, with little regard for other issues facing African Methodists themselves.
I have long maintained that US conservatives would not approve any restructuring plan or change in policy regarding homosexuality unless they see a win in it for them. Unfortunately, the COWF does not seem to have come up with anything that conservatives deem acceptable.
I hope that the prayerful process observed by the COWF and the Council of Bishops can continue through the 2019 General Conference and truly change hearts and minds. I pray that the African representatives to the COWF will provide leadership in their churches so that fewer of them vote in lock step with US conservatives. I pray that some previously unforeseen solution emerges from the General Conference floor next year that can allow us to continue as one body despite our deep divisions on this issue.
Should that not occur, the UMC will be the victim of what could be described as a hostile takeover. Conservatives warn of the mass exodus of traditionalists if there is any change of policy, while ignoring the hemorrhage of moderate and progressive members over the past four decades, especially young people, who represent the church of the future. I fear that hemorrhage is only beginning.
[1] See William J. Abraham’s essay “In Defense of Mexit: Disagreement and Disunity in United Methodism,” in Unity of the Church and Human Sexuality: Toward a Faithful United Methodist Witness (UMC General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, 2018), pp. 1-28; see also Rob Renfroe’ s essays Respect or Contempt and Seeing the Future and other articles from Good News.
[2] There are a variety of interpretations of the handful of scripture passages that address same-sex behavior, and for many Christians, this issue is similar to slavery, polygamy, and divorce, which we now view differently because of our changing social context.
[3] Tooley, “Light from the Dark Continent: Africans’ Orthodoxy Steadies United Methodist Church,” Touchstone, Sep. 2004, p. 63.
[4] Methodist Episcopal Church South (MECS) delegate F. J. Prettyman, recorded in the MECS 1918 Daily Christian Advocate, p. 98.