Free Republic

United Methodism is increasingly likely to divide into separate traditional and liberal denominations. But even absent this division, the church was already heading towards sharp drops in funding for denominational structures, reflecting United Methodism’s ongoing drop in membership and resources. A recent memo from the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) outlined this reality. GCFA is submitting to General Conference 2020 a quadrennial budget for United Methodism’s structures of $494 million, an 18% reduction from the 2017-2020 budget. These cuts include 35% for United Methodist Communications (UMCOM), 20% for General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) and General Board of...

Oldline Protestant denominations make for a competitive peer group, but the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is on track to claim the top spot for fastest declining major U.S.-based church last year. Total membership declined from 411,140 in 2017 to 382,248 (-7%) while average worship attendance declined from 139,936 to 124,437 (-11%) according to numbers reported for 2018. Baptisms dropped from 4,344 to 3,782 (-13%) while the number of other additions (including transfers in) declined from 7,441 to 6,969 (-6.4%). At the current rate, the denomination will shrink by another 50 percent within a decade. This annual rate of decline...

The identity statement of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) states it is “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ we welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.” But congregational reporting numbers made available in the annual Disciples of Christ yearbook show that the denomination continues to welcome fewer people to that table – so few that its ability to minister as a nationwide Christian denomination is imperiled in the immediate future. Church membership shrank to 411,140 in 2017 (down from 497,423, or 17 percent, from 2014),...

A group of liberal clergy and religious leaders are calling on Texas Governor Greg Abbot to reverse his decision to revoke taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business. Abbott’s administration cut taxpayer funding for the abortion company after it was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies, though Planned Parenthood is fighting in court to keep taxpayers on the dole. “The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed in Texas, and the barbaric practice must be brought to an end,” Abbott said at the time. The signers (some listed below) of the...

Baden-Baden has been a spa town since Roman times, drawing tourists for its therapeutic waters, and more recently for a festival hall that features prominent classical artists. It also has a Faberge museum, which seems appropriate at this time of year: Christmas in Germany is like a brightly decorated eggshell with no egg inside. The forms of the holiday are merrily observed, but not the faith. To declare one’s belief in a personal God counts for proof of mental defect here as well as in most parts of Europe, especially among educated people. Nonetheless there is more faith left...

A 6-year-old boy stepped off the school bus one October afternoon and found himself locked out of his Metairie home. He peered into the kitchen window and saw his mother's lifeless body on the floor. Two weeks earlier, another 6-year-old returned to his Old Metairie home after a weekend away and found the decomposing body of his mother in bed. In July, a River Ridge woman found her 41-year-old son dead in a bedroom in her home, her third child to die from a heroin overdose.Those lives lost, two from heroin and another from a drug made to resemble it,...

Pastors from mainline denominations and other religious leaders knelt on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda Thursday, praying and singing until police arrested them for the protest. Their message to a Congress attempting to raise the debt ceiling? Raise taxes instead of cutting programs. “Today, we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to say to Congress, ‘Raise revenue, protect the vulnerable and those living in poverty,” said the Rev. Michael Livingston, the former president of the National Council of the Churches of Christ (USA), in a statement. Joining him were representatives from the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist...

Over the past two years, economic hard times have loomed as large at Washington National Cathedral as the Gothic spires that grace the city's skyline. The cathedral has slashed its budget from $27 to $13 million, outsourcing its gift shop operation and shuttering its popular greenhouse and its continuing education college for clergy. Three rounds of layoffs have reduced the staff from 170 to 70, including, at the end of this month, the cathedral's conservator and the liturgist who oversaw the April memorial service for civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height.

Montgomery County results explain Clinton's win TRIBUNE-REVIEW By: Salena Zito By all accounts, Pennsylvania's Montgomery County should have been Sen. Barack Obama's low-hanging fruit. From Norristown with its abundant black vote to the Main Line with its affluent well-off latte liberals, "Montco" was tailor-made for the Illinois senator. "I was shocked," said Karen Matthews, wife of GOP Montgomery County chairman Jim Matthews. Karen, who made her own news by switching to Democrat so she could vote for Obama, fully expected a big Obama win. "My only explanation is that people say one thing, and then do another," she said. Karen...

The Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 46,544 more members in 2006, continuing an ongoing decline that has seen the loss of 225,308 members in just the past five years. Membership in the denomination dropped from 2,313,662 in 2005 to 2,267,118 in 2006, according to annual statistics released by the Office of the General Assembly. That membership total is a drop of almost half – 45.7 percent – of the 4,254,597 members it had in 1965, the year that the PCUSA and its predecessor denominations reached their highest total numbers of members.

A 174-year-old Episcopal congregation in New England is selling its historic building and merging with another church, the two institutions announced recently. St. George's Episcopal Church in Newport, R.I., chose to close its doors because the building was too large for the congregation, The Providence Journal reported April 5. Maintenance costs were the primary factor in the decision, the church said in a statement. "During the past five years, St. George's community waged a valiant effort to remain at 14 Rhode Island Ave. in the face of the changing island demographics," the statement reads. "Although it has grown considerably, the...

In three lawsuit cases involving churches divided over pastoral leadership, the county court upheld the PC(USA) constitutional provision that all property is held in trust for the denomination. Furthermore, the factions seeking to leave the denomination must follow the directions of the presbytery with regard to the control and ownership of church property. The churches involved were Korean Hope Christian Church, Serone Church and Bethany United Presbyterian Church. The court also ruled in favor of the denomination in a lawsuit against First Presbyterian Church of Torrance, but the decision has yet to be adjudicated. Each of the four cases reflected...

The Presbytery of Prospect Hill in Iowa voted Monday night to order that Russ Westbrook, the pastor of Riverside Presbyterian Church in Linn Grove, Iowa, go on immediate administrative leave and that a presbytery administrative commission assume control of the congregation. The presbytery was responding to a recommendation by the Riverside session to separate from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a subsequent 74-0 vote by the congregation to endorse the session's recommendation. The two-hour meeting of the presbytery was called specifically to deal with the convening of an administrative commission. But the agenda was modified – unconstitutionally, Westbrook claims –...

Vote by UCC Puerto Rico Conference to disaffiliate 'deeply painful,' says UCC leader Written by Barb Powell Tuesday, 13 June 2006 Iglesia Evangelica Unida de Puerto Rico (United Evangelical Church of Puerto Rico), whose partnership with the United Church of Christ goes back more than 40 years, voted Saturday, June 10, 2006, during its annual Assembly to disaffiliate with the UCC. The final vote was 75 percent in favor of the resolution to disaffiliate. The Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, called the action “deeply painful and profoundly disappointing,” but said that the denomination “respectfully, though regretfully,...

The judicial branch is no place for politics, Judge John E. Jones III told a crowd Tuesday afternoon at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. The federal judge from Pottsville ruled in December that Dover's intelligent design policy was unconstitutional...... Jones was among the speakers at a two-day convocation..Though he was asked to speak about the Constitution's Establishment Clause..he instead talked about the broader issue of th epublic blurring the lines between the branches of government...... judges should make decisions based on the law, not based on personal affiliation, he said. "We must remember that we have a rule of law,"...

Two resolutions on the Israel/Palestine conflict were also offered in the Blue Book. Strangely, however, they seem to offer contradictory approaches to the peace process. The first resolution, A011, would affirm a two-state solution to the conflict, seek an end to violence, and call for all parties to return to the negotiating table rather than resort to unilateral action. Strangely enough, however, the resolution also demands that Israel withdraw from all its West Bank settlements-which would appear to be a unilateral action. There is no specific reciprocal concession asked of the Palestinian Authority. The second resolution, A012, is nothing but...

The liberal-controlled United Church of Christ (UCC) has unveiled its latest television ad, which features an intolerant and presumably conservative church ejecting an "African-American mother," "a gay couple, an Arab-American, [and] a person using a walker," According to Thomas, the ad showcases the "extravagant" hospitality of the Christian gospel. But almost all major networks -- CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and WB -- have rejected the ads, believing they are "issue advocacy" The spiritual descendant of New England's old Puritans, the UCC can claim an historical and social pedigree equal to the Episcopal Church. Both denominations are well-heeled, well educated and...

Liberal Jews do find a common language with liberal Christians on a host of social issues but when it comes to Israel they often part ways. American Evangelist Pat Robertson's pronouncement that Ariel Sharon's stroke was an act of Divine retribution for his abandonment of the Gaza settlements - though he subsequently apologized - was a frightening reminder of how extreme the views of those on the religious Right can be. Sadly, Robertson has something in common with some on the religious Right in Israel who have expressed similar sentiments. Yet, even as the Israeli Right can draw support from...

As angry Muslim rioters sent Christians to a martyr's death during last month's riots over cartoons depicting Muhammad, leftist-led Christian groups in the West chose to console the murderers. With sad predictability, many left-leaning church groups such as the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches responded with indignation about the Danish newspaper's publication of the cartoons -- with nary a word about their persecuted co-religionists. The National Council of Churches (NCC) of the U.S.A. reacted by standing in "solidarity" with U.S. Islamic groups, who "exercised disciplined restraint," i.e., by not rioting or killing Americans over the...

Beware any Christian pilgrimage which includes a ‘fact-finding mission’! ‘Fact-finding missions’ and propaganda campaigns feature in no Christian pilgrimages anywhere except the Holy Land. Here is the latest exercise in propaganda disguised as pilgrimage. The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) invites you to travel with members of Market Square Presbyterian Church this summer on a Christian pilgrimage and fact-finding mission to see the holy sites in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel and to meet with Christian communities in the Holy Land Propaganda and racism combined in one sentence here: Notice that no opportunity is offered to observe the impact of...