Posted on 01/26/2021 12:50:15 PM PST by lightman
Hopefully, by now, you’ve all heard that our denomination is headed for a major division, and that the need for this is widely agreed upon by the leaders of all major factions.
Why is the United Methodist Church splitting?
You may have heard that our division is because of homosexuality. There is some truth to that, but that is really a misleading way to view things.
The reality is that our division has been a long time coming. The impending split is the result of an extensive history which dates back long before the present debates over sexual morality.
We have a history, going back about two centuries now, of breakdown in our discipline, and breakdown in our doctrine. And these two things really get to the heart of what this schism is all about.
By the way, if you hear any United Methodist claim they are absolutely against EVER splitting the church, that is NOT a serious idea. Unless the person saying it is in the process of becoming Roman Catholic. When you think about it, any Protestant, by definition, believes that there are some issues worth splitting the church over.
Breakdown in Discipline
Many of us have seen that famous picture of the hard-working, circuit-riding preacher of early Methodism. It dramatically highlights how when Methodism first began, we were a really high-commitment movement, that really demanded a lot of sacrifice and forsaking of worldly comforts for the sake of the Gospel.
What really set us apart was the degree to which we practiced sometimes rather demanding levels of church discipline, for not just our leaders and clergy but also our lay members. There are all kinds of examples of lay people facing temporary but serious consequences for sins ranging from getting drunk to wife beating.
But over the course of the 19th century, we saw a decline in really expecting too much of our laypeople, and then our ministers.
We saw some early moral decline in Methodism with the sins of slavery and racism, and NOT just in the South.
We had a strong early commitment against the great evil of American slavery. John Wesley spoke strongly against it, defended the equality of black people, and was a personal inspiration to the great British anti-slavery activist, William Wilberforce. The 1784 Christmas Conference that established American Methodism as our own denomination declared that one of the CENTRAL goals of this new church was to “extirpate the abomination of slavery.” Our early rules were clear that Methodists were forbidden from buying, selling, or owning slaves.
But this strong, principled Christian stand conflicted with the culture. If we insisted too much on this moral stand there were fears that we would offend people. That we would drive people away. That we would especially offend some upper-class people and lose a lot of money for our ministries. Any of this sound familiar?
So we started compromising on our rules against slave-owning. We started looking the other way for Methodists involved in this sin. This sin became increasingly accepted in some regions of our denomination. Then in 1844 we had a newly elected bishop openly involved in this inherently sinful lifestyle. That finally sparked a total crisis that split our denomination apart for several decades.
Later in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century you had the Holiness Movement in America. This was largely a movement of believers who took some aspects of John Wesley’s teachings about Christians avoiding all sin and really ran with it. And over time, Methodists involved in the holiness movement were increasingly marginalized within much of our denomination, or much of which would become our denomination. And eventually some of these holiness Methodist pastors became exiles in new denominations, like the Church of the Nazarene. And when they left, our denomination lost a lot of positive influences for disciplined, holy Christian living.
Breakdown in Doctrine
So our decline in discipline has a long history. What about our decline in doctrine?
By 1913, Evangelist and veteran General Conference delegate Leander Munhall of Philadelphia was sounding the alarm about how the Methodist Episcopal Church was infected by liberal theologies, Methodists were becoming more worldly, and powerful elites in our denominational bureaucracy were especially pushing Methodism away from our own biblical doctrines on core issues like the authority of Scripture and original sin. At that time, the relatively new theological movement of modernism was widely attacking these and other core Christian teachings, particularly supernatural parts of Christianity.
Now Munhall could be a bit strident, un-nuanced, and frustratingly vague. But in reading Munhall’s 1913 book, Breakers! Methodism Adrift, it’s really striking to see the similarities between his complaints and those of many traditionalist United Methodists today.
Here’s what Brother Munhall lamented about our denomination back then:
“the great spiritual dearth throughout Methodism” (12)
“anti-biblical and unmethodistic teaching” heavily promoted in seminaries, by leading denominational officials, and our own publishing house (13; Cf. 67-72, 84)
“the Christian pulpit has become silent about human depravity and the judgment to come” (44-5)
Overall, “Our congregations are growing smaller, and many of the outsiders are having less and less respect for us” (201)
Bishops appoint liberal pastors to “many of the big wealthy churches” while many other pastors “of acknowledged ability, who are loyal to the Bible and the doctrines and usages of Methodism, never get such churches, but are usually sent to second, third and even fourth rate appointments” (199)
As my friend, Riley Case put it in his Evangelical and Methodist book, “By 1920, [theological] modernism basically controlled Methodism, at least institutional Methodism, in both the north and the south. The colleges, the seminaries, the pastors’ schools, the Courses of Study, the Church press, the Sunday school material, the Church agencies, and finally even the Council of Bishops were, or would soon be, in the hands of modernists” (81).
Such trends continued for decades.
Fast-forward to 1966: Rev. Charles Keysor of Illinois published an op-ed that sparked the Good News movement. He wrote about a group within our Methodist churches who had little to no representation in our denominational bureaucracy. He said: “I speak of those Methodists who are variously called ‘evangelicals’ or ‘conservatives’ or ‘fundamentalists.’ A more accurate description is ‘orthodox,’ for these brethren hold a traditional understanding of the Christian faith.”
Keysor outlined five defining beliefs of this group, which were really five of the most prominent doctrines that the modernists had been attacking since the early 20th century:
The inspiration and authority of Scripture
That Jesus really was miraculously born of a Virgin
“that somehow Christ on the cross paid the price of transgression which a righteous and holy God properly requires”
That Jesus actually, physically rose from the dead
And that whatever the details of the End Times may turn out to be, Jesus really will physically return to Earth again
None of this should be remarkable for a Methodist to believe. It’s all right there in the Methodist Articles of Religion, which officially remains the central doctrine of the United Methodist Church, now along with the EUB Confession of Faith.
But what’s really striking was Keysor’s title: “Methodism’s silent minority.” Keysor explicitly described folk who believed in these most basic, biblical, Methodist doctrines as being a marginalized “minority” within what’s now our denomination.
This is quite a shift from how in 1913, Munhall had declared that the majority of our members and ministers were loyal to biblical, Methodist doctrine. Over 50 years of modernist dominance had taken a toll.
Then later Good News was joined by several other renewal groups.
Today’s Controversies
Meanwhile, the doctrinal division continued.
In the early 2000s, we had an active bishop of our denomination, Joseph Sprague of Chicago, publicly deny such core Christian doctrines as the accuracy of the Gospel of John, as well as the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was abusing the office of bishop to teach that people should NOT believe in some of the most core Christian doctrines. There was a formal complaint filed against him. But basically what happened in 2003 is that he was let off with a slap on the wrist.
Then some of you may have heard of this activist minister out West named Karen Oliveto. In 2016, the Western Jurisdiction, which is basically the Western third of the USA, elected her bishop, knowing that her being an openly partnered lesbian was in open defiance of our longstanding church law saying that clergy cannot be “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” That’s the main thing she is known for.
But there are deeper doctrinal concerns. In 2005, I was in the room where she was speaking at a major national gathering of liberal United Methodists. Among other things, she urged addressing both “the benefits and flaws” of Scripture. What do you mean “flaws” of Scripture? Well, she made clear that one flaw she saw in the Bible was the “theology of election and chosen-ness” she rightly recognized is taught in the Bible. It got really bizarre when Oliveto started teaching about the account in Acts 16 of Paul casting a demon out of a slave girl. According to Oliveto, getting to be free of the demon did nothing to make the girl’s life better and “probably made it worse.”
So now we have a top leader of our denomination who is on record as teaching about the flaws of Scripture and the benefits of demon possession!
About a year after she was elected bishop, she used the office of bishop in Denver to publicly teach that we should not “create an idol out of” Jesus Christ. How can you possibly create an idol out of someone who already IS God? Well, according to Oliveto, Jesus actually had such sins as “his bigotries and prejudices” and that as an adult, he needed to experience “conversion.”
There are multiple reasons why, according to our denomination’s own official rules and standards, Oliveto should be removed from being a bishop. But the denominational leaders who have that responsibility have made clear that they are unwilling to do so, because they support her.
Fundamentally, our breakdown of doctrine has led to a breakdown of discipline. And this has now reached the breaking point.
The older model of liberal clergy, bishops, and leaders who kept their word by following the rules even when they personally disagreed with them is being increasingly replaced by a more militant, rule-breaking sort of liberalism.
This is not sustainable.
We could keep fighting at the next General Conference, and the next, and the next, with lots of costly complaints and church trials and bad press in between, until one side finally wins. But by that point there may not be much of a denomination left to win.
Ping.
Therefore:
Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!
Christ is Revealed, Glorify Him!
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
The August 19 date refers solely to the adoption of the gaysbian agenda, NOT to the “Full Communion” agreement.
Again a reminder, God left us His Word and not a denomination. Food for thought.
It sounds so familiar, as other protestant denominations have been and are falling apart for the same reasons. Orthodoxy, once made optional, soon falls into decay and disuse. The world of modernism depletes the spiritual energy the church needs to keep the faith.
It seems when all Christian institutions when they reach a certain size they become worldly and apostate. Thus forcing a faithful remnant to break off in order to preserve the faith once for all delivered to the Saints. Just look at the history of the Ivy League colleges, most of which started as devout seminaries.
It seems the failure of this denomination is that it stopped following God’s Word, and replaced them with the traditions of men.
"When orthodoxy become optional
eventually it will be proscribed."
And they keep ordaining and sending us liberal pastors. Thankfully, at present our church has a God fearing, Bible believing and preaching pastor.
Having been baptized Methodist and having spent my young adulthood as a Good News/Emmaus Methodist, I can speak to the accuracy of the 20th century description. If it weren’t for the African bishops, the UMC would already be 100% like the PCUSA, the ELCA, and the UCC.
Those of us who gave up in the 1980s and joined the LCMS or Wesleyan churches (I became the former) thought we were accelerating the necessary split, but it took two more generations.
United Methodist Church splitting?
Then it won’t be United any more.................
Then it won’t be United any more.................
= =
Untied, maybe.
..It seems when all Christian institutions when they reach a certain size they become worldly and apostate.
Any organization that becomes larger than Dunbars Number, begins to fragment and break apart.
Dunbar has argued that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
Bkmrk
The UCC is next.
My brother in law is an ordained Methodist preacher. He left the church at the end of 2020.
If it weren’t for the African bishops, ...
I came to the realization several years that one could make a good case for removing the appellation “Dark Continent” from Africa.
You bet it’s an excellent analysis. I’m not even a Methodist, but I read every word.
I went to a college founded by an abolitionist Methodist in 1860 but never knew of all the foment over the last 100+ years or so.
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