Posted on 03/01/2022 10:39:43 AM PST by lightman
The United Methodist Church is going to split. No one knows the exact contours of the split, but everyone seems confident that it is coming. There is a gulf between traditionalists and progressives in the UMC regarding same-sex marriage, and that gulf is widening: several Methodist bishops have performed same-sex weddings, defying official UMC teaching; and Karen Oliveto was elected as the first Methodist bishop in a same-sex relationship. At the root of these divisions is the fact that the UMC has always been made up of believers with distinctly different theological trajectories. The UMC was formed as an experiment in “big tent” theological pluralism, eventually guided by the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” formulated by Methodist scholar Albert Outler: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Over the years, much of the Wesleyan tradition that guided the early Methodists has been lost; the future of United Methodism depends upon recovering Wesleyan catholicity.
The division in the UMC over sexuality was the immediate occasion for the recent Next Methodism Summit. Last month, over sixty Wesleyan scholars met in Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss how to recover the Wesleyan tradition and shape the Methodist future. Under the direction of Ryan Danker and the John Wesley Institute, the attendees crafted a theological statement entitled “The Faith Once Delivered: A Wesleyan Witness.”
The statement “The Faith Once Delivered” upholds Wesleyan distinctives. It focuses on the image of God and how holiness is essential to its restoration. For John Wesley, to be holy means to have the mind of Christ, as expressed in and through the plan of God found in Scripture. It is “scriptural” holiness. Through this holiness the Christian can rightly order his loves; rightly ordered affections require the right order found in the natural law and in God’s story, expressed in the person and work of Christ and set forth in the Scriptures. Sanctification and growth in the Christian life is about ordering all interior movements toward God and neighbor by integrating God's moral law into the conscience. Genuine freedom is freedom ordered toward the truth about God and creation.
There can be no separation between scriptural holiness and love in the Christian life. Over time, however, holiness and love have begun to separate in United Methodism, which helps explain the increasing divisions over same-sex marriage; in the UMC, love has increasingly come to mean merely openness and acceptance, rather than rightly ordered affections shaped and guided by God's moral order. In the UMC, the Wesleyan framework for thinking about love and holiness eventually buckled under the weight of the new morality of situational ethics, a form of utilitarian consequentialism.
Joseph Fletcher, the father of situational ethics, argued that justice is love distributed and that love justifies the means. According to this theory, love never sets forth laws, but examines each situation and asks what is the most loving consequence. This approach to ethics entered the UMC through the Methodist ethicist Walter G. Muelder. It hovers behind recent Methodist slogans such as “open hearts, open minds, open doors.” Its long shadow looms over the UMC Council of Bishops’ recent statement on how the UMC can remain unified. The statement declares that love is the paramount attribute of the church, but disregards the holiness so crucial to early Methodism.
The liturgical declaration of the trisagion (“holy, holy, holy”) points toward holiness as the sum total of divine perfection, the fullness of God’s own life in which nothing is lacking. When Jesus proclaims “Be perfect for your Father in heaven is perfect,” he refers to the perfect order and beauty that defines God’s holiness. Expressed in both the natural law and the written law of Scripture, the divine moral law defines the parameters of holiness. Poured out by the Spirit, love moves toward holiness through the power of grace at work in the Christian life.
In the Scriptures, to ascribe glory to the Lord is to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness (Ps. 29:2) without which no one will see God (Heb. 12:14). By faith one first peers into the portals of glory, and love realizes the holiness that makes such a journey into glory possible. The pursuit of this “love divine, all loves excelling” transforms the believer from glory to glory.
The UMC was formed as an ecumenical experiment in pluralism, but its foundational documents anchored unity in the Wesleyan tradition. Unfortunately, as this Wesleyan catholicity decayed—particularly the notion of holiness—the UMC has become more divided. As discussed at the conference, the way forward for Methodism is to return to the early Wesleyan fusion of holiness and love and recover Wesleyan catholicity. As UMC Bishop Scott Jones noted in the final session of the conference, Methodism will thrive to the extent that it is faithful to its original calling. The hope of those who attended the conference is that “The Faith Once Delivered” (which will be published at the end of March) will guide the next stage of Methodism in recovering that calling.
Big tents are for circuses.
Therefore:
Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Be rooted in Christ!
The August 19 date refers solely to the adoption of the gaysbian agenda, NOT to the “Full Communion” agreement.
Last time I did any reading on this subject, which seems like forever ago, a plurality of UMC churches would be going to the more conservative incarnation of the church.
Which means getting rid of all the theological and political liberals, which comprise at least half the clergy and a plurality of the laity. The surgery is going to be very painful, but the longer they wait the more the cancer grows.
Your comment has me a little confused but obviously we’d both agree that the ELCA is all kinds of messed up.
I used to attend Hope UMC in Sacramento and it fractured over gay marriage about thirty years ago. This stuff has been happening for a long time and is not a new thing. Not at all.
And what’s really at stake here is US$64 BILLION in property assets that are all held by the denomination and not by the local churches.
http://www.umglobal.org/2020/01/a-primer-on-umc-assets-who-owns-them.html
Exactly: Who keeps the brand and the buildings?
That’s interesting, as when I did my own split about 30 years ago it seemed that the liberals were running everything. Maybe it’s a matter of degree, back then many were good people who were just left of center, now maybe they’re full-blown nutjobs. Don’t much care anymore.
Same here - thought it was a done deal and may be in my state. The fags took the UMC name and ran.
I checked out 🤪
Methodists are nothing more than Catholics with the same amount of humanism, and less liturgical B.S.
Oh, and Catholics have way cooler costumes....
Let’em split....Progressives should never mix with Conservatives.....
I’m a lay chaplain in my volunteer fire company. My counterpart in our neighboring mutual aid fire company is a retired UMC pastor. He is a typical social liberal, his theological hero is Karl Barth and he thinks I’m a religious kook because I take the words of the Bible seriously. He has a degree and I don’t.
I know that one pastor doesn’t mean the whole group is off track. This pastor has no kind words for the local Wesleyan church which is experiencing big growth and has a Biblical foundation. I see nothing but crash and burn in the UMC.
Because the "Progressives" (as they're called) control the hierarchy, Council of Bishops, and all of the agencies within the denomination, the progressives will KEEP the UMC, called the "Post-Separation United Methodist Church," psUMC. The "traditionalists" will leave and form a new, Wesleyan, traditional denomination which will be the "Global Methodist Church." There's a lot of details and history involved in the coming separation - but I, for one, CAN'T WAIT to be gone from the UMC and join the GMC at its "convening conference." (Date of that is TBD.)
See my comments below.
OOPS: See my comments above (in post #14).
My understanding is even though the GMC has more members, the psUMC will keep the property. Perhaps they will sell some of it back to the UMC. If that is true the quickest breakup is the best because the GMC is subsidizing the psUMC.
Unfortunately, not. The Protocol for Separation has us, the traditionalists, leaving - despite the fact that every single General Conference vote on this issue for the last 30 years has been for traditional marriage and against LGBTQ values. At this point, as long as the properties and pensions get fairly split, I’ll take it.
I read a few articles at least a year ago and it sounded like the liberal/progressive branch would keep the brand. The property would go with whichever side the church decides to join. I’ll have to look for the article -it’s been awhile.
The gist of the article was that the liberal/progressives successfully maneuvered to keep the name brand instead of having to create a new brand. In a normal world, they’re the ones leaving the original brand and would have to leave and create a new brand.
The new brand is the “Global Methodist Church”, which has been spearheaded by the Wesleyan Covenant Association. The WCA has been methodical (NPI), considered, prayerful and solicitous of input throughout the process and has come up with foundational documents that form a good starting place for “the next Methodism”, which is traditional Wesleyan doctrine.
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