The global 12 million member United Methodist Church, now likely
the world’s 9th largest communion, is no longer a predominantly
liberal U.S. denomination. Its quadrennial governing General
Conference, which met for 10 days in Tampa ending May 4, refused to
alter the church’s official disapproval of homosexual
practice.
Some news stories huffed disapproval and surprise. After all,
the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,
Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Church of Christ have all
surrendered to American culture on sexual ethics. Their membership
spirals subsequently accelerated into formal schisms. But United
Methodism, unlike these other historic denominations that once
dominated American religion and liberalized in the early 20th
century, is now a growing church and has a record number of
members.
Unlike the other traditionally liberal-led Mainline
denominations, United Methodism is fully global in membership. (The
2 million member Episcopal Church of the U.S. does include the
small churches of Latin America, Europe and Taiwan but is still 90
percent U.S. persons.) There are 7.5 million United Methodists in
the U.S. and 4.5 million overseas, almost all in Africa, mostly in
the Congo. With the U.S. church losing about 100,000 members a year
(down from 11 million 44 years ago) and the African church gaining
over 200,000 a year, the denomination likely will become a majority
non-U.S. church in about 10 years or less.
These statistics frustrate United Methodist liberals who have
dominated the domination for 50 years or more. Homosexuality has
been debated at the church’s General Conference every four years
since 1972. And the church consistently decreed that homosexual
practice was “incompatible with Christian teaching.” Over the
years, the denomination formally prohibited clergy who were
actively homosexual (as well as any clergy sexually active outside
traditional marriage) and banned same-sex unions. For the last 12
years it has even supported “laws in civil society that define
marriage as the union of man and woman,” though normally loquacious
bishops and other church elites decline to articulate this stance
even as the nation debates it.
United Methodist liberals always assumed their church would
follow American culture on sexual permissiveness, just as the
church had followed on so much else across the 20th century,
starting with divorce and contraception. They always consoled
themselves, “If not this time, then next time!” Sounding like
deterministic Marxist Hegelians, they believed history sided with
sexual inclusion.
But this year in Tampa, the church once again rejected any
dilution of his disapproval of homosexual practice, despite a full
court lobby campaign. Liberal caucus groups pitched a full size
tent outside the Tampa Convention Center, served daily lunches to
any delegates, mobilized hundreds of volunteers in rainbow stoles,
and distributed a full-size daily newspaper, sometimes translated
into other languages. As chronicled by the just released
Forgetting How to Blush: United Methodism’s Compromise with the
Sexual Revolution by the Rev. Karen Booth, pro-gay caucus
groups have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from
non-church philanthropies.
It was largely wasted money. A record 30 percent of delegates
came from Africa this time, up from 20 percent just 4 years ago
(and 10 percent 8 years ago), and they voted uniformly against any
liberalization of the church’s sexual teaching. Combined with many
Filipino and European delegates, plus U.S. evangelicals, who were
themselves about 20 percent of the total, there was an
insurmountable conservative majority on key issues. The final vote
on homosexual practice’s “incompatibility” with Christian teaching
showed 61 percent supporting the current stance.
Two prominent, formerly conservative evangelical clergy who now
oppose the church’s stance offered a seductive substitute that left
the church’s current disapproval in place while merely
acknowledging disagreement within the church. Even this admission
was rejected by 53 to 47 percent. After the defeats, pro-gay
demonstrators angrily disrupted the conference, as they always do.
But remarkably, there were no more votes on petitions about
sex.
Summoning conservative and liberal caucus groups, United
Methodist General Conference leaders, including two bishops,
suggested that evening in a closed meeting that further votes
regarding ordination standards and same-sex marriage issues, among
other items, be effectively tabled. Realizing they only faced
further defeats, even the liberal caucus groups largely agreed. It
was a historic first across 40 years of debate. And the tabling of
sex issues perhaps presages future United Methodist General
Conferences.
In 2016, the Africans will likely have about 40 percent of
delegates, making any inroads for sexual liberalism almost
impossible. Church liberals in the past have tried to manipulate or
marginalize the Africans. In 2008, with support from the U.S.
bishops, they even proposed creating a new U.S. only governing
convention to exclude the Africans. Even the regional bodies in the
U.S. church voted against it, and the African churches rejected
their proposed exclusion by over 90 percent.
With over 4 million and soon to be 5 million members, the
African churches are now too large to ignore. A few liberal
activists, in their blogs, complained about Africans from
impoverished countries who don’t contribute dollars into the
denomination now having so much power. But disenfranchising the
poor is not a successful battle cry for progressives. Some U.S.
liberals quietly try to paint the Africans as primitives who reject
enlightened Western liberalism.
These canards will only backfire. More so than ever, the African
delegates were organized as a bloc and were effective
legislatively. They gained 25 percent of the legislative committee
officer seats, previously typically getting none. They also filled
two of four open slots on the church’s top court, the Judicial
Council, with a Congolese pastor and a Harvard Law trained
Liberian, as well as electing a Congolese university president to
the oversight body for United Methodist seminaries.
When church liberals tried to persuade the General Conference to
divest from firms doing business with Israel, Africans
overwhelmingly opposed it, sending divestment to defeat by 2 to 1.
One Nigerian delegate unapologetically argued that such anti-Israel
measures would only encourage Israel’s Arab and Muslim enemies to
seek its destruction. During the General Conference, the Islamist
terror group, Boko Haram, attacked several Nigerian churches,
killing over two dozen Christians. Although there are over 400,000
United Methodists in Nigeria, the General Conference said not a
word.
As at every General Conference for the last 50 years, dozens of
far-left political resolutions were passed with nary a debate. Most
United Methodists would be surprised to know their church favors
socialized medicine, Global Warming regulation, unilateral
disarmament, and open borders for the U.S. These utopian stances
will disappear into a 1,000-page Book of Resolutions
ignored by all except for the denomination’s busy Capitol Hill
lobby office, which even liberal legislators largely
disregard.
A traditionally liberal dominated legislative committee approved
by a significant margin withdrawing United Methodism from the
archaic and radical Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice,
founded by the church in the wake of Roe v. Wade in 1973
to rally religious support for abortion rights. With African
support, including the bishop of Nigeria, withdrawal almost
certainly would have passed in the plenary, except for a
legislative log-jam on the final night. It will happen next
time.
Inevitably the growing African membership will alter these
preoccupations with American leftist themes. They believe the
church’s role is primarily evangelistic, not political. But to the
extent the church does speak politically, the Africans focus on
economic growth, disease eradication, clean water, government
corruption, promoting traditional family structures and defending
religious liberty, especially against encroaching Islam in
Africa.
The Africans will almost certainly influence the worship focus
of future General Conferences. This year, in typical fashion, a
Berkeley trained California activist led the worship services,
pantheistically at times focusing on rocks and driftwood. A radical
American Indian professor angrily denounced America’s ostensible
genocide of his people while citing his veneration for the spirits
of his ancestors, the elk, and even corn. Some overseas delegates,
including some East Europeans who pondered a formal protest,
thought these services neo-pagan.
Many U.S. delegates left Tampa frustrated by a bureaucratic
General Conference that seemed trapped in the status quo. But
beneath that veneer was the ongoing empowerment of millions of
African United Methodists. They represent surging global
Christianity. But they also are salvaging what otherwise would be
another dying American Mainline denomination.
