America’s second-largest Protestant denomination splits
(Staff) ALMOST SINCE its founding in 1968, the United Methodist Church, America’s second-largest Protestant denomination, has argued over gay marriage, gay clergy and abortion. On Jan. 3rd the church decided to split, with traditional Methodists forming their own new body.
The UMC has arranged the separation in a remarkably civil way: The proposed solution, formulated by a committee of 16 church leaders from around the world and drawn from both sides of the debate, hopefully will avoid the disputes about properties and pensions that have marked other such denominational splits in recent years.
The split was over what the UMC called “fundamental differences” regarding its beliefs on same-sex marriage and the ordination of practising gay clergy.
The church’s worldwide general conference in May would need to approve the historic restructuring. If passed, it would allow for a “traditionalist” denomination to separate from the United Methodist Church, which has more than 12 million members worldwide.
In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 3.6 percent of the US population, or 9 million adult adherents, self-identify with the United Methodist Church. (This compares to an estimated 1.2 percent of the adult US population, or 3 million adults who self-identify as mainline Episcopalians.)
Currently, ordained UMC pastors are not allowed to perform same-sex marriages, risking disciplinary action if they do, and non-celibate LGBTQ people also cannot become ordained pastors, according to the church’s book of discipline.
The new traditionalist denomination, once separate, would open the door for the existing United Methodist Church to repeal the church’s ban on same-sex marriages and LGBTQ clergy.
The nine-page plan, dated Dec. 17, 2019, was mediated by Kenneth Feinberg, a well-known lawyer who oversaw the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and other high-profile compensation programs. The plan largely focused on the distribution of financial assets.
Under the plan, the church’s General Council on Finance and Administration would provide $25 million to the new traditionalist denomination over a period of four years. An additional $2 million is allotted in the plan for any other new denominations that might be created. Pension plans for current clergy and lay employees would also remain in place.
Local churches would be able to choose whether they want to stay in the United Methodist Church or join a new denomination. Those decisions must be made by the end of 2024, according to the proposal, and any congregation moving to another Methodist denomination would maintain its assets and liabilities.
“Every other mainline denomination in the United States has faced this conflict,” says the Rev. Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, who signed the proposal representing traditionalist views. “This agreement models how a conflict can be addressed in an amicable way.”
He said that the separation was bittersweet for him, but that each faction can now move forward “unhindered by the other.” Boyette said it was “a fair and equitable solution that puts decades of conflict behind us and gives us a hopeful future.”
The conflict came to a head last February at a special session of the church’s general conference, when 53% of church leaders in attendance voted to uphold the ban on same-sex marriage and clergy.
The group who devised the proposal said a separation was “the best means to resolve our differences, allowing each part of the Church to remain true to its theological understanding, while recognizing the dignity, equality, integrity, and respect of every person.”
The Anglican Planet asked Toronto theologian the Rev. Dr. Catherine Sider Hamilton to comment:
I have mixed reactions. On the one hand it is tragic, as schism is always a failure in the church.
But unfaithfulness is also a failure, and to live knowingly with unfaithfulness, in doctrine or worship or life — all three, in the case of the new teaching on marriage — is perhaps even more damaging than schism to the individual Christian conscience and to the church.
The UMC split seems an attempt to allow both irreconcilable positions to flourish, and practically speaking I think it is a good thing for the ‘traditional’ side of the church. They are allowed financial support, buildings, freedom in which to hold the vision of marriage that is now anathema to the wider population. In a few years they may not have gotten anything at all.
The difference between this and our Gamaliel project is that we are seeking not to split, but from within the Anglican Church of Canada to hold to the Christian vision of marriage publically, faithfully and thoroughly. We’re asking the bishops who have a new vision of marriage (which is, I can’t help noting, not only thoroughly secular but un-canonical) to give us the structures and support we need to do this. (But so far we have not won that support, so whether this attempt to have a faithful voice from within the church will succeed, I don’t know).
For more on the Gamaliel project see anglicanplanet.net/toronto-priests-urge-ceasefire-from-churchwide-division. TAP
