United Methodism’s last meaningful general conference

United Methodism’s General Conference started on April 23, in Charlotte, North Carolina. It will likely be the last important governing convention for United Methodism as the denomination, with the rest of American denominationalism, recedes into almost irrelevance.

This General Conference will liberalize United Methodism’s teachings on marriage and sex, over which traditionalists and progressives have fought across 50 years. Between 2019 and 2023, over 7,660 traditionalist churches, including up to 1.5 million members, exited the denomination under a temporary policy allowing departure with property.

In 2019, a special General Conference reaffirmed United Methodism’s official policies affirming sex only within monogamous male/female marriage, by a vote of 53%. After the traditionalist mass exit, this General Conference should easily overturn the official teaching. Proposed new language would remove prohibitions and simply “affirm human sexuality as a sacred gift and acknowledge that sexual intimacy contributes to fostering the emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being of individuals and to nurturing healthy sexual relationships that are grounded in love, care and respect.”

It declines to connect sex to marriage or even to monogamy.

Of the seven major Mainline Protestant (historically liberal) denominations, United Methodism, which is the largest, is almost the last to liberalize sexually, preceded by the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Evangelical Lutheran Church and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The American Baptist Churches (originally the Northern Baptist Convention) have not officially liberalized.

United Methodism is nearly the last to liberalize thanks to its large membership in Africa, which is overwhelmingly traditionalist, and where the majority of church membership is. Previously United Methodism had reported seven million church members in Africa, and 5.7 million in the U.S., but inexplicably recently reported 4.6 million in Africa.  After church exits, U.S. membership is likely about four million. In 1968 United Methodism, in its year of birth after a merger between The Methodist Church and The Evangelical Brethren Church, had eleven million members in the U.S. 

In the 1960s, United Methodism and the Southern Baptist Convention had about the same membership. Southern Baptists are also losing members, but its membership is now about three times United Methodism’s: four million versus thirteen million.

Many have wondered why traditionalists exited United Methodism when they had across five decades won all the major sexuality votes from 1972 through 2019. Before the exits, most delegates elected to the 2020 General Conference, which was postponed repeatedly until 2024, were traditionalists. But traditionalist churches were in a bind. The deadline for a temporary policy allowing church exits with property, approved in 2019, concluded in 2023. Waiting for what happened in 2024 was risky.

And even if traditionalists had won another win on sexuality at this year’s General Conference, it would've made slight difference. Only the African votes made this win possible. Traditionalists were losing ground in the U.S., no longer able to elect traditionalist bishops anywhere in the country. The national and local bureaucracies were hostile to traditionalists. After 59 years of continuous membership loss, United Methodism is sclerotic and bureaucratic, unable to reverse its six decades of decline. The old bones could not rise again.

Traditionalists hope that this General Conference, at most, might create a new path for churches to exit. After this General Conference liberalizes, more churches will want to exit. Many local churches were urged to await this General Conference, ignoring that their path to exit would likely conclude in 2023. This General Conference is unlikely to offer another exit path. But we can pray.

The African delegates will be disappointed by this year’s General Conference, but they are hopefully prepared for defeat. They are also far fewer in number than they should be because of the usual visa problems, which were worse than usual this year. In 2019, 31 African delegate seats were empty because of visa failure. This year, 70 seats, or 25% of African seats, apparently are empty thanks to visas.  Many complain that United Methodist authorities were especially delinquent and unhelpful this year, even with four additional years to plan.

We renewal movements in United Methodism, at every General Conference since 2004, have worked to help African delegates with their visas, sometimes asking United Methodist members of Congress to intervene, with mixed success. (Then U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions personally phoned some U.S. embassies in Africa.)  When visas were denied to delegates, alternate delegates had no church funding to replace the blocked delegates. Often renewal groups paid for alternates to attend. It has always been a struggle to attain fair African representation. Even if all Africans could get visas, their representation, because of the formula, never assigned seats proportionate to their population. Although a majority of the church, they get only one third of the delegates this year. With twenty percent of them unable to attend, they are perhaps only one quarter of the present delegates.

When the U.S. delegates vote to liberalize church teachings, the African delegates, even if prepared, will be anguished. It’s unclear to what extent they remain in United Methodism. U.S. institutionalists are pushing “regionalization” allowing Africa to set their own rules on sexuality. But many and likely most Africans will not find that plan tolerable. They have by large majorities rejected this proposal in the past. Within five years I expect 80-90% of Africans will have exited United Methodism, leaving the denomination almost entirely U.S. only with small numbers in Europe and the Philippines.

To what extent does this United Methodist story matter to U.S. Christianity and wider culture? Not very much, as it is the culmination of a multidecade trajectory for Mainline Protestant denominations that began theologically over 100 years ago, accompanied by sharp membership losses since the 1960s. Mainline Protestantism and United Methodism are longer important institutionally in America. For that matter, these institutions are increasingly unimportant to even members of these denominations. Church members under the age of 60 typically are indifferent to denominations and attend only because of commitment to the local church. Most will not be interested in what this General Conference does. But the liberalizing impact of this General Conference will, with time, affect nearly all local churches. The clergy pool will grow even more liberal, as traditionalist clergy leave or retire, and traditionalist young people pursuing ministry look elsewhere.

I expect that United Methodism will functionally not exist in 10 years (although church agencies with large endowments will independently survive). Its four million current members will shrink by hundreds of thousands annually. And remaining members will not be interested in paying for national church bureaucracy, submitting to distant bishops, or tolerating their church property’s ownership by a denomination. For that matter, other denominations will functionally not exist either. The Southern Baptist Convention, also affected by denominational indifference, may not be with us in 10 years.

Methodism and Wesleyanism as a belief system and movement of course will endure in different formats, bringing new vitality. I’m grateful to been raised and spent my life in United Methodism, to which I owe so much. I first held office in my United Methodist church in 1985 at age 20, representing my congregation at the Virginia Annual Conference. In 1988, I compiled a report for my congregation about the United Methodist missions agency exchanging radical politics for evangelism, which led to my career to church activism. It’s an odd sensation not to attend General Conference this year, having attended and submitted legislation to every gathering since 1992. This experience, typically 10 days of night and day of labor and combat, amid countless tensions and emotions, was always draining and exhilarating. There were adversaries and defeats, but also victories and many friends. It’s been a wonderful journey.

When this United Methodist General Conference liberalizes, there will be media attention followed by indifference, as the denomination recedes. There is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted. United Methodism and its predecessor denominations play their providential role. I will miss the idea of a great national denomination, as American Christianity becomes post denominational. But the new, less centralized expressions of Christianity in America will continue and even amplify God’s work.

Originally published at Juicy Ecumenism.