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The Future of United Methodism
First Things ^ | 28 February A.D. 2022 | David Coulter

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.


TOPICS: Current Events; Mainline Protestant; Ministry/Outreach; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: homosexualagenda; umc; unitedmethodist
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To: lightman

As a kid, my best friend’s dad was a UMC minister, and he was a good man. When they moved away, the church got a new minister who immediately put up pink triangles and rainbows with an “All Are Welcome” message on the church sign. This was around 1990. So the split has been coming for a long time.


21 posted on 03/01/2022 11:39:14 AM PST by Boogieman
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To: jagusafr

Thanks!
I pretty much stopped following what was going to happen to the UMC. I left the UMC for Anglicanism (John Wesley was Anglican :) ).

I appreciate the information!


22 posted on 03/01/2022 11:41:00 AM PST by iceskater (I'm in the control group. ;))
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To: iceskater

I learned most of the liturgy I know from three years in the Anglican Episcopal Church in Caracas, Venezuela, which we attended because there wasn’t a UMC there and my folks weren’t going to go to the United Church of Christ. I learned it by rote, and only years later began to realize that much of it was straight out of the Bible.


23 posted on 03/01/2022 11:45:16 AM PST by jagusafr ( )
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To: lightman
The big religious divide of today is not within any one denomination, but it is very easy to define.

Sodomy versus non-sodomy.

Not only between and within Christian denominations, but the various branches of Judaism as well.

Sodomy is now a religion, not just a sexual practice. Furthermore it is the official religion of the global elite, even those individuals who do not prefer the sexual practice.

Also see my tagline.

24 posted on 03/01/2022 11:48:50 AM PST by Salman (It's not a "slippery slope" if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: lightman

The Methodists voted and the Progressives lost. Now, the anti-Democratic crybaby Left refuses to live by the outcome.

And, since Progressives infiltrated the Church structure, they will take the money and property and leave.


25 posted on 03/01/2022 12:06:01 PM PST by MattMusson (Sometimes the wind blows too much)
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To: lightman

Someone should lock up the name “Divided Methodist Church”.

I remember some former EUBs who never got over it.


26 posted on 03/01/2022 12:10:19 PM PST by bigbob
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To: jagusafr

every single General Conference vote on this issue for the last 30 years has been for traditional marriage and against LGBTQ values.


If I remember right, it was the African churches holding things together.


27 posted on 03/01/2022 12:11:44 PM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: lightman

The UMC is NOTHING like the holiness movement involving the Wesley brothers. Nothing.


28 posted on 03/01/2022 12:20:38 PM PST by fwdude (Every time I see someone voluntarily masked in public, I know I'm looking at a vaccinated person.)
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To: Prov3456

As long as the “traditionalists” take women ordination with them, they will end up just the same in a few short years. It is a poison pill.


29 posted on 03/01/2022 12:22:50 PM PST by fwdude (Every time I see someone voluntarily masked in public, I know I'm looking at a vaccinated person.)
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To: chajin
Which means getting rid of all the theological and political liberals, which comprise at least half the clergy and a plurality of the laity.

Also means they'll have to jettison a lot of unbiblical policy and practice, like ordaining females for ministry. That's like 2/3rds of the denomination.

30 posted on 03/01/2022 12:27:15 PM PST by fwdude (Every time I see someone voluntarily masked in public, I know I'm looking at a vaccinated person.)
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To: bigbob

I remember some former EUBs who never got over it.

I remember some UBs and Evangelicals who never got over the EUB, much less the UMC.


31 posted on 03/01/2022 12:43:59 PM PST by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: PeterPrinciple

For the last several GCs, you are correct. That’s why it’s so suspicious that the GC planners have done nothing to help our African and Pacific delegates secure visas, when they routinely do it for other foreign delegates and visitors. WCA has offered assistance, including money, to make it happen and has been either rebuffed or ignored.


32 posted on 03/01/2022 12:54:52 PM PST by jagusafr ( )
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To: lightman

Is the goal allowing gays to marry and preach in the church, or is the goal to destroy the church?

There are plenty of denominations that allow gays - why must the UMC go along also?

I doubt the hue and cry will cease once the split happens. The militant gays will just go after the traditionalists.


33 posted on 03/01/2022 1:40:46 PM PST by AdSimp
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To: fwdude

As long as the “traditionalists” take women ordination with them, they will end up just the same in a few short years. It is a poison pill.


That’s exactly what I believe. Wherever this corruption takes place a split is not very far behind.


34 posted on 03/01/2022 2:44:20 PM PST by punknpuss
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To: xzins

Ping!


35 posted on 03/01/2022 4:14:56 PM PST by Albion Wilde (If science can’t be questioned, it’s not science anymore, it’s propaganda. --Aaron Rodgers)
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To: fatboy
I know that one pastor doesn’t mean the whole group is off track.

When I came to the painful realization 20 years ago that I must split from the church that was once a proponent of Wesleyan holiness, I thought back over my past ten UMC pastors. Nine out of the ten were either pro-gay or gay themselves (flouting the rules of the denomination), even the one who used to be a military chaplain. It's as if they couldn't read the plain meaning of words in the scriptures.

I am in a Bible-believing church now, and so much more at peace without the weekly assaults to conscience from the UMC pulpit.

36 posted on 03/01/2022 4:21:17 PM PST by Albion Wilde (If science can’t be questioned, it’s not science anymore, it’s propaganda. --Aaron Rodgers)
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To: jagusafr
I learned most of the liturgy I know from three years in the Anglican Episcopal Church in Caracas, Venezuela, which we attended because there wasn’t a UMC there

My family going back generations was Methodist Episcopal. It was a beautiful liturgy and I can still recite parts of it. The UMC merger ruined a strongly conservative church.

37 posted on 03/01/2022 4:23:10 PM PST by Albion Wilde (If science can’t be questioned, it’s not science anymore, it’s propaganda. --Aaron Rodgers)
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To: Salman

No one ever backslides into fundamentalism.


38 posted on 03/01/2022 5:07:04 PM PST by fatboy
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To: Albion Wilde

“I am in a Bible-believing church now, and so much more at peace without the weekly assaults to conscience from the UMC pulpit.”

__________________________________

I’m very happy to hear this. I left the Lutheran church after reading a few biographies of Luther and reading the Bible. It was a lot of anguish but once we found a solid Bible church there is no going back.

Even in very solid bible churches where the gospel is preached or in a seminary with a fantastic doctrinal statement, or even very famous preachers or teachers there are some who believe almost all of the words of the Bible but come up short on believing every single word. It’s not about reading or attendance or giving or service it’s all about faith in the word. And that is difficult.


39 posted on 03/01/2022 5:15:59 PM PST by fatboy
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To: fwdude

Agreed. It is the poison in the church. They try to be agreeable. You can not be agreeable on doctrine. It’s either the truth or it is not. The good news is not good news with a modern twist.


40 posted on 03/01/2022 5:52:03 PM PST by wgmalabama (We will find out if the Vac or virus risk was the correct choice - can we put truth above narrative )
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