I dont understand the reticence of the UMC to take the full plunge into a mere social group
that’s all any of the modern suburbanized Christian churches want to be...our Novus Ordo parish makes the local woman’s club seem like a group of acetic monks...
I think we all make excellent points on the history of the dissolution of John Wesley’s Methodism with becoming “united” with the brethren, abandoning traditional worship, ordination of female “clergy,” etc. The primary point of all of this is to validate the total lack of traction on the slippery slope once the choice is made to follow man rather than scripture. Everything can only unravel from there.
My family is Methodist back at least three generations but my dad’s oldest brother, a pillar of his local small town congregation in the years I was growing up, died in 1998 with significant assets. As an executor, I can tell you I was truly surprised he left NOTHING to that church after giving regularly for building projects for years.