To Fight or Not To Fight, That Is the Question

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

In a few days, the Wesleyan Covenant Association will hold its fifth worldwide meeting at Frazier United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Ala. One of its first worldwide meetings, if not the first, was held a couple of years ago at Mt. Bethel UMC in Marietta, Ga. According to a Methodist I met recently from Zimbabwe, WCA representatives have visited Methodists in his country proclaiming that if they joined the Global Methodist Church, it would rid them of colonialism practiced by the United Methodist Church.

The WCA proclaims that its new church will heal all the wounds of modernism that it says infect Christianity in the UMC today, such as scriptural criticism, episcopal arrogance, violation of church law, support of the sin of homosexuality, and others. And it goes about shouting these proclamations to anyone and in any forum that will give it an audience. The question is what, if anything, should the real global United Methodist Church do to counter these accusations?

My church has taken a neutral position, waiting to see what happens and postponing discussion of church-wide issues. I’m not sure this is the best position to take. The North Georgia Conference has taken a similar position, but our Bishop has created a table fellowship where all current issues in the church can be addressed. The very public dispute between the Conference and Mt. Bethel UMC is, at its core, a dispute over the kind of church Methodism will be. Will it be open under a big tent, or will it require a narrower focus tending toward fundamentalism? Will it follow the Book of Discipline or go off in a different direction?

As a participant in the Reconciling Ministries Friends of the Alabama-West Florida Conference presentation on “The United Methodist Church: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” I take great comfort in meeting with fellow United Methodists who address and discuss what the WCA and other groups are doing to disunite my church. I fear that most people in the pews on Sunday mornings hear about these matters only as distant background noise having little impact on their church or their lives. At the same time, I heard a Sunday school class member state recently that we are all going to be asked to vote on our church’s position in the near future. This is not the case, of course. NOTHING will happen until the 2020 General Conference finally meets and takes up the various proposals about the church’s future. Of course, the 2020 GC may never meet. These proposals, such as the Protocol, the Christmas Covenant, and others, may carry over into GC 2024.

Meanwhile, the WCA is acting and proclaiming as if its Global Methodist Church is a current reality. It is not. What is the UMC doing to counter this assertion? Not much directly. What it is doing is being the church.

  • UMCOR is providing help around the world.
  • Church and Society, the UMC’s social action arm empowered by the General Conference, continues to speak about social justice.
  • Global Ministries continues to speak about international outreach. Religion and race continues to fight racism in all its forms.

The WCA’s proposed Global Methodist Church will do none of the ministries currently performed by The United Methodist Church. And the jurisdictions, conferences, bishops, and ministers are, for the most part, delivering the UMC’s myriad missions, ministries, and programs. This is a very good thing, but unfortunately it fails to garner the headlines of the self-serving WCA.

What should we do? I think the various conferences, jurisdictions, and the General Church should do more to contrast what the WCA and other affiliated caucus groups are doing with what the UMC is doing. We should be pro-active in advocating for the UMC that we love and cherish, in describing the actual history of the various conflicts over the past 40 years, and in exposing some of the less-than-above-board actions of the WCA and others, such as coaching African delegates to the Special 2019 GC on how to vote. We should not avoid conflict. We are on the right side of these issues.

Even though disaffiliation has been possible since the 2019 GC, only a small number of churches out of 30,000 in the United States have actually done it, and those congregations have spanned the full theological spectrum of the denomination.

Let’s speak out. Let’s say what we are doing to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Let’s proclaim the high ground on which we stand!

Pete Fleming, a United Methodist layman, lives in Duluth, Ga. This essay is adapted from  by the author from a post that appeared originally on the Progressive Methodists Facebook group.