The Burden Is on Us to Leave

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In Sam Shepard’s play Buried Child the grandson leaves the family farm but returns in the end to keep the dysfunction going. He should have left and kept on driving.

In the United Methodist Church, the burden is on us progressives to leave. And it should be. General Conference after General Conference had drifted rightward on the issues of sexuality and the most recent General Conference confirmed that direction to the point of no return. And so, it falls upon us to leave.

This is a hard truth for progressives to accept. We have lobbied and protested for change for years. We have suffered recriminations for our witness. It is very hard to acknowledge “defeat” after all those years of organizing. It makes us feel weak and brings out a fear of being seen as a victim. Yet, developing a martyrdom syndrome is neither politically effective nor emotionally healthy.

This is a hard truth for moderates to accept. General Conferences in the nineties and early 2000s reaffirmed the traditional policies because moderate American delegates acquiesced to the wishes of conservative American delegates—long before there was a marked increase in African delegates. And now the change of heart among moderates is too late. I believe the last realistic chance for something like the One Church Plan was in Pittsburgh 2004. Guilt for past sins of omission is hard to confess.

The political reality necessitates progressives leaving the denomination. It is highly unlikely that this will change in 2020, despite efforts to flip the North American delegations at this summer’s annual conferences.

Not only is our leaving inevitable, it is desirable for our sake. Dr. Jack Jackson, Director of the Center for Global Methodism at Claremont, lays it out in his recent piece for um-insight.net . The denomination is like a dysfunctional family and we should leave for the sake of our emotional and spiritual health. Why keep going back home when Daddy has rejected you year after year? The equivocations of moderates over the years created false hopes that are now exposed.

We are not wanted in the United Methodist Church so let’s be at peace with this and forge a new church family.

Our kinfolk in the Western Jurisdiction seem to be bent on standing their ground. They might have the luxury of doing that because they are, for the most part, protected by the checks and balances in our polity. But for those of us outside the Western Jurisdiction we have no such protection. I am a pastor of an RMN congregation in Indiana. They need to consider the impact their (in)action could have on churches like mine.

Let us forge a new Methodist church family for the sake of all those who have already realized this hard truth. When disgruntled conservatives leave the United Methodist Church they go to another church. But when disillusioned liberals leave the United Methodist Church they stop going to Church. Let’s give them a new Methodist church to come home to.

For more perspective order my book The Secret Transcript of the Council of Bishops

The Rev. Darren Cushman Wood serves as pastor of North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Ind. This post is republished with permission from his blog, Notes on a New Methodism.