The UMC "Split"???

If you come to me for scholarly attention related to the recent actions of the special-called 2019 General Conference, I will disappoint you.  I have read a number of articles in the main stream media, the church media, and on Facebook on the several sides of the controversy but have not followed all the possible wisdom imparted.  

There is a lot of fear, a lot of worry, that I think needs to be put into perspective.  

I have three points to share in hopes to take the anxiety over a potential split down a notch or three.

One, I think the “traditionalists” overplayed their hand, much like the Republicans have with their mindless support of President Trump.  Two, a split of consequence is not likely to happen in any case.  Nearly every congregation and annual conference is too split (or soon will be) to go one way or the other.   Three, legal wheels grind very slowly.  

One, many Americans and some people around the world who watch us closely are aware that under President Trump’s administration, the right has flexed its muscle because their advocacy of control and judgmentalism are not being discouraged.  As a result, Republicans in Congress have sat on their hands when it comes to realistic responses to the various wild and criminal actions of the President.  The most clear sign of where Republicans are in their radical approach to governance is in the realm of abortion rights, notably the passage of laws in their state legislatures that are anti-women,  Their presumption based on their sense of power has shown them to be so far from the middle that the losses the Republicans had in 2018 appear to be even more likely in 2020.  I see that the same drive by the right wing of our Church for control based on a wedge issue.  That drive motivates much of the legislation that the Judicial Council sorted through recently but the General Conference passed anyway.  

I’ve contended that the “traditionalists” in the UMC face a rapidly changing social milieu so that this year may have been their last real chance to make a permanent change (they believe) in the United Methodist Church.  America had swung from anti-gay to marriage equality in less than a decade.  And because of social media and international travel, the prospect of changes in Africa and Asia are likely to be even more rapid.  As I write, the Philippines has a significant pro-gay movement going.  And my contacts with Africans encourages me to believe the more they know, the more they are unlikely to support anti-gay legislation as soon as 2020.  Notice that the votes at General Conference 2019 were close.  

I am sure both sides pressing the homosexuality issue will do all they can to get their delegates elected for 2020’a General Conference.  The dynamic of change on the view of homosexuality is going on world wide now, mostly the younger generation against the older generation.  Most of the legislation supporting the “traditionalists’” position does not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, with one exception, and within months after that, the 2020 General Conference will go over much of the same ground with possibly different results.   I think the conservatives have overplayed their hand.

That doesn’t mean we will avoid a great deal of pain and disruption in our church life, not dissimilar to what we face in our political life in the U. S..  As long as “controllers” (those with the psychiatric issue of having to bring everyone to their point of view and have to be the only ones who are right) have any power, only dissension and other harms will result from it.  The struggle for reasonableness is not over but it may prevail much sooner than the “traditionalists” wish.

Two, many older experienced people just shake their heads as they watch the sound and fury of those most outspoken on both sides.  For one thing, there are few geographic signs in the United States that the Church can be split regionally as it was split before the Civil War.  At that time, the southern states were a geographic focus for slavery.  While certain counties in the deep south remained loyal to the Union and did not join in the war of the rebellion with the rest in their state, the denomination had a strong basis for splitting.  No such thing is true now, at least  in Europe and the U. S.  There are some churches that have strongly taken sides for and against homosexuality.  Some have actually chosen to leave the denomination already.  But by and large, possibly with the exception of certain ethnic congregations still under the influence of the older generation, most congregations are very mixed.  They would have a terrible time making up their mind to even take a vote to align with one faction let alone split away from the denomination.  The same is true of annual conferences.  The chances of there being a wholesale leaving of the denomination by one side or the other is highly unlikely.  Oh, the feelings can be very high and individuals within nearly all churches can get very upset over the disagreement, but most United Methodists will be pretty slow to even hold meetings to discuss the issues to say nothing of the option of leaving the Church.

I am aware that certain pastors have cultivated their churches to understand the issues from their point of view to the point of becoming identifiable to one side or the other.  I know from long experience that even in those churches, there are people who are not all in with that one side and do not like being forced on this issue to take sides.  As in the parts of the world that tended to support the 

“traditionalists’” legislation, the growth against anti-gay beliefs is very strong among the younger generation even in local churches.  

I also think that science and experience are taken seriously by more and more people as gays have come out of the closet.  Those who feel there is no real problem would prefer not to get into a fight about what for them is settled.  

I really do not see a massive shift of whole congregations or annual conferences into a new denomination nor into other denominations.  

Three, it has been pointed out in many places that a split on any scale within the denomination will tend to have long dragged-out legal hassles.  Who gets the Publishing House?  Who gets Wespath (the Board of Pensions)?  Who gets the properties, especially the really valuable sites in New York and Washington?  Who gets the seminaries?  

But the area not really thought through in the new legislation is that each allegation against a pastor or bishop will still end up having to be handled by fair process and appeals.  Each will likely be looked at in terms of the viewpoints of the annual conference and officers handling the respective cases.  And what may appear to be “egregious” to one side may appear to be reasonable and fair to the other when tested in our denominations’ court and appeal systems.  A bishop built a huge case unrelated to homosexuality against a pastor only to see it stretch out to nearly three years.  Making the laws more rigid, as the traditionalists have done, is likely to trigger stronger legal responses.  In this era when change occurs rapidly because of modern technology, three years is a very long time and the milieu can change dramatically while a case is winding slowly through the judicial system.  I cannot see the judicial system speeding up despite the efforts of the “traditionalists.”

Prior to the 2019 General Conference, I argued that millions of dollars and hours were being used to deal with an issue that pales in the face of the most recent projections by climate sciences that we have only a decade to change our carbon-based world economy or the climate will be so damaged it will lead to our extinction.   The next three years of that decade are going to be critical for humanity’s survival, to say nothing of the shift in thinking on homosexuality. 

In conclusion, I think the “traditionalists” won’t be able to handle their own overreach, the distribution for the various parties is too wide for any kind fo coherent split, and the very legalities the traditionalists have applied to their agenda against homosexuality (no longer just the practice of homosexuality) will take years.  

Of all I have read about the fears of the denomination splitting, in light of my observations, I like the following statement by the Rev. Dr. Chomingwen Pond, retired pastor, for missionary, and former professor of theology at Africa University:

“What we need now is the Gamaliel Solution (Acts 5:34-39). When Peter and the Apostles were arrested and the religious leadership wanted them killed, Gamaliel, a highly respected teacher of Israel, reminded them that they had faced similar situations at least twice before, and that when the leader was killed, their followers melted away. So in this case be careful. If it is of human origin, it will disappear of its own accord; if it is of God, it will endure--and you may find you are fighting God!”