Global Governance Is Dead

Mainstream UMC

by

Prior to the 1990s, the United Methodist Church was governed entirely by regional bodies.  The short-lived experiment with global governance began in the 1990s and essentially ended in 2012 with the adoption of ¶101.  This paragraph says in part, “Each central conference [those outside the US] may make changes and adaptations to the General Book of Discipline to more fruitfully accomplish our mission in various contexts.”  This was a work-around so a US majority did not impose its will on the international minority.  With the stroke of a pen, vast sections of the Book of Discipline went into regional control—for everyone except the US—which is now the minority.

The question at General Conference 2024 is not, “Should we have regional governance?”  The real question is, “How do we formalize the de facto regional governance we already have to preserve our global mission?”  The plan put forward by the Connectional Table and the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, in consultation with the Christmas Covenant team, represents our best path forward. 

Our global governance is already dead.  Churches outside the US can officially ignore the Book of Discipline; churches inside the US are unofficially ignoring it too.  This is an untenable situation.  Failing to adopt true regionalization puts our entire global mission at risk.

How did we get here?

In 1980, only 7% of United Methodist delegates to General Conference were from outside the United States.  As soon as an annual conference in another country grew to a certain size, they became an autonomous Methodist Church—raising all their own resources and making all their own decisions.  So, all the Methodist Churches in Mexico, Central America, South America, India, China, and Korea are autonomous Methodists because they came of age prior to the 1990s.  In fact, according to the World Methodist Council, by 2016, half of the 10 million Methodists in Africa were already autonomous.  The other half were United Methodist.

Beginning in the 1990s, the United Methodist Church began “absorbing” other Methodist churches from around the world.  While part of this shift grew out of a faithful desire to become a more diverse denomination, less centered in white, middle-class concerns, another part was an attempt to reverse the decades-long numeric decline in US churches.  This shift was cynically embraced by those on the far right who realized that delegates outside the US were often reliably “traditional” votes.  And so, the change began.

The growth outside the US has been so dramatic that, had the General Conference not phased in representation, the US would have been a minority vote several years ago.  Nevertheless, the number of votes from outside the United States has grown exponentially. In 2012, when ¶101 was adopted, international delegates totaled nearly 1/3 of the votes.  For General Conference 2024, the delegates from outside the US will be close to 45%.  In four years, it will be almost 55%. 

We have come full circle:

After years of being in the majority at General Conference, the US finds itself in a dilemma of its own making.  Homosexuality is the flashpoint in this conversation.  A US-only vote likely would have permitted LGBTQ ordination and marriage as many as 12 years ago, just like the US Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Disciples have done.  (The same would be true in Western Europe.)  Most notably, 60% of the votes for the Traditional Plan came from African delegates.  Yet, because of ¶101, Africa can ignore much of the Traditional Plan they adopted.  However, ¶101 does not allow the US churches to do the same.

The UMC remains the largest church in the world that ordains women and does not ordain LGBTQ persons.  And, we are the largest Christian denomination in the world still trying to manage a democratic global governance structure.  Everyone else is either autocratic or regional.  Of these two, regional is the only just option.

The pretense of global governance while operating under a de facto system of regional governance outside of the US, has had a particularly devastating impact on the US church.  We lament the loss of 25% of the US church who refuse to live with difference and have disaffiliated.  But, we forget, that we have lost at least that number in the US over the last generation with our outrageously harmful “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.  The mean-spirited Traditional Plan of 2019—which doubles down on the harm—has proven to be the tipping point in the United States.  Either this policy is completely repealed at General Conference 2024, along with the other anti-LGBTQ language, or the exodus continues, and likely accelerates, in the United States.

This was not an accident:

When we started becoming a global church, the far-right “reform and renewal” coalition in the US actively sabotaged changes to make the Book of Discipline reflect regionalization, because they knew the US as a region would have permitted LGBTQ ordination and marriage.  They wanted global governance to control the US church because they did not have the votes to do it alone.  As we can see by the disaffiliations, they only had 25% support in the US.  Without the international votes, this group likely would have disaffiliated 12 years sooner, as the "traditionalists" in the other US denominations have done.

Just last week, the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA) publicly launched their fundraising campaign to continue the fighting and sabotage regionalization at General Conference 2024.  The Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) recently celebrated the divisions in our church saying, “Praise the Lord for this great work” and attributed the disaffiliations to their “years-long efforts.”  It is naïve to believe these groups are done attacking our United Methodist Church.  They are not.

Moving forward:

Paragraph 101 was written to provide grace to the minority vote at General Conference.  Now the US needs this grace to be reciprocated.  However, according to the Book of Discipline, the US is the primary church, the default, the standard.  Everyone else is a satellite.  This colonial structure needs to change.  It will take eight (8) changes to the constitution of the UMC to de-center the US church and allow the United Methodist Church to be truly global and have regional governance.  But unlike Paragraph 101, which only took a majority vote, true regionalization will require a 2/3 vote at General Conference and a 2/3 ratification vote of all annual conferences around the world.  If there is no global consensus, there will be no “official” regionalization.  Without the ability for every region to make their own decisions, the global mission will be at risk. 

Notes:

Numbers of Methodists around the world. 

Read about the WCA’s fundraising efforts to sabotage General Conference 2024:

Read the IRD’s celebration of division in the UMC

The Rev. Dr. Mark R. Holland serves as executive director of Mainstream UMC, an unofficial advocacy organization devoted to United Methodist unity.