U.S. Jurisdictions
The United Methodist Church in the United States is divided into five geographical regions known as jurisdictions. A proposal from the Connectional Table would designate these jurisdictions as a Regional Conference that would be self-governing similar to the Central Conferences in Europe, Asia and Africa. (UMCom Photo)
As one who lived all my life in one annual conference (what is now California-Pacific), I watch the verbal grenades being tossed back and forth over the issue of "Liberal" (or "Progressive") vs. "Conservative" (or "Orthodox") in our denomination, and can't help wondering just how much United Methodist history that I’ve known is being ignored in today's discussions.
Too often I see "the Western Jurisdiction" being blamed for the results of decisions in history made before most of us were born. After the Unification of Methodism in 1939, and the creation of the Jurisdictional system, the Western Jurisdiction was the stepchild no one knew what to do about. Even the segregated Central Jurisdiction of African-American churches was easier for most Methodists to understand. Then, the Western Jurisdiction was essentially a little-known mission area.
The vast majority of Methodism in the United States existed (and still exists) east of the Rocky Mountains. The 1939 Unification Conference planted three Bishops in the Western Jurisdiction, in Episcopal areas geographically much larger than even the ones that exist today. The Portland area comprised the states in the Seattle Area today. The San Francisco Area comprised All of California, Arizona, and Nevada. The Denver area was comprised of what is in the Denver area today.
However, in one respect, things are different: Today, there is no shortage of clergy who would like to transfer their membership to one of the Annual Conferences in the Western Jurisdiction. Then, Bishops had to recruit clergy to come and fill the void not being filled by each Annual Conference. And in this instance, All three bishops were graduates of Boston University School of Theology. The Western Jurisdiction's earliest bishops all sent district superintendents to Boston, each year, to recruit new seminarians to come to this mission area in the west. In those days from 1939 through the early 1960s when Iliff and Claremont seminaries got established, Boston was the most liberal seminary in the denomination. We recruited new seminarians there because we needed them.
Even in the 1960s, my annual conference would ordain 18 to 20 new Probationers a year, and transfer in 18 to 20 clergy a year from other conferences, because in 1939, no one ever believed there would be such a population explosion in the western part of the United States. So the entire heritage of the Western Jurisdiction is of annual conferences made up of clergy who were theologically liberal Boston grads. That frame of thought continued even when two seminaries were established within the Jurisdiction. Is it any surprise that there is a convergence of thought and belief, today, between clergy in the Western and Northeastern Jurisdictions?
Meanwhile, in the 1939 Unification, the Southern California-Arizona Annual Conference (today’s California-Pacific and Desert Southwest Annual Conferences, combined,) transferred only 39 congregations from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South into its compliment of churches. Almost exclusively, those 39 churches from the M.E., South denomination were found in communities along the Southern Pacific Railroad. They included the largest former M.E., South church in the west, Trinity Church, Los Angeles, with its fiery and infamous pastor, “Fightin’ Bob” Shuler. Consequently little of the more conservative southern evangelical thinking became part of my Annual Conference. I suspect this same heritage played out in other annual conferences in the Western Jurisdiction, in the 1939 Unification.
The bottom line: Much of the way the "liberal" Western Jurisdiction is, today, is the result of actions taken almost 80 years ago by the majority of the rest of The Methodist Church east of the Rockies. So now, some United Methodists want to cast out the Western Jurisdiction because its theological identity results from the actions of our Methodist forebears?
It seems that a lot of our history is being forgotten.
The Rev. Thomas H. Griffith of Chandler, Ariz., is a retired clergy member of the California-Pacific Annual Conference.