Why the United Methodist Church is REALLY Splitting: The Big-Picture History

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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).

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.

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.

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.

Here is a glowing review, from Amazon, for the book you mentioned, Never Silent (review is from 2009)....

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2009
Verified Purchase
Never Silent was given to my husband by our son. He said, “You’ve got to read this.” And now, I can’t put it down. The account of the faithful men of Africa and Asia who could not stand by and do nothing is a call to us all to not back down when faced with opposition to the truth. As a culture, we are the proverbial frog that is slowly boiled to death—we could choose to jump out, but we’re lured by the truth-wrapped lie called tolerance. I hear on the radio, see on the TV, and read in the newspapers about the increasingly blurred lines between races in post-election America. But this is the real thing—men of other countries and cultures laying down their lives for the church in America. I have new heroes.

Will there be a way to tell (other than asking :) which direction these offshoots - that DO leave - will be taking?

Whether they will be the more conservative/Bible based church vs the more progressive UMC church? Will it be in their (new) name?

The one more conservative group fighting for the split is called the Wesley Covenant Association. They are the lobby group, and their name is probably not what a new conservatice denomination will be called. But you can follow them to keep up with what is going on.

I’ve seen a few crazy liberals talking about having a crazy liberal denomination. So, if the split happens I expect a few splinter groups like that. My guess is there might be an orthodox group as well, but it would be tiny

A SoCal Congregational church discovered in 1970 that its pastor was an atheist. The congregation went across the street and started a new church, which thrives to this day. A few holdouts recruited the youth pastor from a nearby Congregational church, who preached to twelve people on his first Sunday. He retired a few years ago, when four Sunday services finally became too much.

One ministry that grew out of that church has been responsible worldwide for at least one million conversions to Christ. That's just one more example of God's handiwork.

:When you think about it, any Protestant, by definition, believes that there are some issues worth splitting the church over.”

From a different perspective, Protestants don't wish to split a church, they want to split FROM that church. They wish to shake the dust from their clothes and leave said church intact with its own problems.

I was told Methodists don’t own their building even if it is paid in full and built by church members.

That is true as it now stands. However, the agreement if it's approved allows each church that votes to leave to join the new orthodox denomination be allowed to keep their building. The consensus is that this will be approved.

Will there be a way to tell (other than asking :) which direction these offshoots - that DO leave - will be taking? Whether they will be the more conservative/Bible based church vs the more progressive UMC church? Will it be in their (new) name?

The proposed agreement is that the liberal wing of the Methodist will retain the name "The United Methodist Church". The Wesley Covenant Association is well into planning and organizing the structure of the new conservative/Biblical denomination as yet unnamed.

The "United Methodist Church" name is VERY important to the large conservative, orthodox African Methodist and they are demanding to keep it. So that must to be resolved before the actual split occurs.

I’ve always thought the best name for a group that had “method” as a name would be “systematic christianity”. Then they could be called systematics for short.

But, the early method-ists’ “method” worked so well that it captured a couple of generations of Christians and taught them the steps to faith, holiness, and obedience. One could do worse than taking that idea and bringing it into our culture where Christianity is largely an entertainment cult.

Eastern Orthodoxy is a blessing. The strength of faith of their members in the middle east is shown in their horrific martyrdoms.

They are a great example, perhaps of what we are to prepare for.

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