Microscopic Coronavirus
Electron microscopic image of an isolate from the first U.S. case of COVID-19. United Methodist churches in the Seattle area have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak there. (Image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Special to United Methodist Insight
The entire Christendom is being forced to make adjustments on how to engage in ministry around the world since the outbreak of the pandemic. The United Methodist church is not exempt, either. Indeed, the COVID19 virus has put the whole world into unprecedented measures observing simple health hygiene standards, which leaves the pastoral ministry exploring other innovations to reach out to the church’s people.
Despite the COVID19 pandemic, United Methodist unity has been threatened by decades of debate on biblical orthodoxy and diverse inclusive interpretations of the Bible on human sexuality. The average pew member has experienced noncompliance with church laws. Some proponents call for resistance to harm by the church structural systems with those in leadership authority. Different groups have advocated for their positions, pitching the church in camps for and against.
This has been debated from 1972 to recently in February 2019, when the entire denomination convened in St Louis for the sole purpose of resolving the stalemate. African bishops have issued three communiqué statements in 2015, 2018, and 2019 holding a traditional view on issues of human sexuality.
Recently, a caucus of sixteen eminent leaders, including bishops, from jurisdictional and central conference, and leaders of debating groups with strong convictions (traditional/orthodox, progressive/liberal, and centrist) across the divide of the denomination met and charted a way forward to amicably resolve the stalemate. Leaders proposed what has come to be known as the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, which has been the talk of the day since December 17, 2019, when it was announced that it was expected to come before the 2020 General Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. Now that General Conference has been postponed due to the COVID19 pandemic, and awaiting the confirmation of new tentative dates, many faithful are asking, would COVID19 pandemic be a unity reflection for United Methodists around the globe?
Today the church and nations experience one battle in which the focus now is fighting one enemy by seeking a COVID19 vaccine and protecting the health of the people. Persons of opposing theological reflection now share a medical room, and the only enemy is the coronavirus. What does this mean for the church?
Does this mean to water down our convictions on biblical interpretation? No, but it can make the church come out stronger and bolder if the church policies and laws are enforced by those in leadership authority. Just like if we do not adhere to WHO directives in keeping our hygiene of washing hands with soap, keeping social distance, sanitizing our hands from time to time, and wearing a mask, then we catalyze COVID19 virus to the masses. Thus, the church loses its meaning and saltiness if leaders and Christians do not adhere to its agreed standards and scriptural authority to guide our faith and practice.
Different entities have weighed in their position on what the future holds, foreseeing new expressions of Methodism and the post-separation United Methodist Church if structural accountability is not determined.
Africa Initiative also did an evaluation, and some have criticized AI as being used to divide the denomination. However, no AI leaders were a part of the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation negotiation. Methodism has a history of lobbying and organizing groups to strategize to win the votes at General Conference dating back to the Methodist Episcopal Church of 1828 in Boston, dealing with slave holding.
The UM Africa Initiative leaders urged amendments to the Protocol that win the vast majority of African church delegates’ support at General Conference. The Initiative leaders followed the call of their bishops over the years proposing orthodoxy of Scripture, a view that agrees well with the traditionalist church in Africa. They proposed the African church should be able to maintain the “United Methodist” name and cross and flame, with modification.
Africans noted that the name “United Methodist” and the cross and flame have indelible history and legacy. They have become a great symbol and witness to ministries across the African continent and bear significant spiritual and legal impact on missional activities in Africa. That United Methodism in Africa is synonymous with the name and logo greatly benefits the mission and ministry of the church in Africa. The African delegates over the years in their voting patterns have maintained traditional beliefs. It is unreasonable to imagine the UM Church in Africa will remain in a post-separation UM Church having diverse theological beliefs and teachings aligning it to the progressive wing, which is pro-LGBTQ.
United Methodist African bishops unanimously reaffirmed their view that marriage is between one man and one woman and vowed to “maintain the unity” of The United Methodist Church. This statement resonated with the African church, and it was on this basis that Rev. Dr. Jerry Kulah drew his clarion emphasis to fellow African delegates during a Good News breakfast in February 2019 in St Louis “that Africa shall not exchange the Bible for dollars,” but shall stick to their traditional biblical interpretation, which is culturally relevant in the African setting and context.
When did rain start beating the United Methodist Church? Methodism has suffered episcopacy problems that previously rent the Methodist Episcopal Church apart, due to non-compliance with the set out laws in the then MEC. Such problems have also crippled the UM Church even to today.
- The office of general superintendency without term limit was appointed to serve the entire connection, with the exception of African American churches (1939).
- Localizing or regionalizing the election of bishops in the Methodist merger of 1939, restructuring bishops’ elections into geographical areas and not elected at the General Conference, as had been the norm.
- Bishops thus were no longer general superintendents, but only able to serve within their jurisdictional or regional geographical areas and not to itinerate across the entire general church.
- Racial discrimination in the Council of Bishops leadership. Since over 200 years of Methodism, not a single central conference bishop from Asia (Philippines) or Africa has ever been the council president.
- Abandoned the authority of the General Conference, as seen today in the failure of leaders to enforce the standards set by General Conference.
In the 1844 General Conference session, slave holding was debated and resolved by removing Bishop James Andrew. A resolution that was moved by Leonidas L. Hamline, a delegate from Ohio, came to be known as the “Croton River Speech,” stating that the General Conference is supreme in its legislative, judicial, and executive authority. “It is the sun of our system from which all parts of the connectional body receive light and power. Rather than being a co-equal branch of the church government, the episcopacy is an abstraction that can be worked into a concrete form in any hundred or more ways we are able to invent. Just as bishops have the power to remove preachers or preachers have the authority to remove church officials for the good of the church, so also the supreme body (General Conference session) in the church enjoys the same privilege” (debate 1844:32).
While reflecting on COVID19, I fortunately discovered such a voice of reason that could heal our ailing denomination if all accept to implement and correct the United Methodist structural lapses that are almost tearing the entire denomination apart. These will seal the weak structural accountability as currently constituted in the office of the episcopacy. The church is further experiencing institutional fragmentation through leaders not enforcing the church policy on issues of same sex relationships.
Indeed, it is possible for the United Methodist Church to remain in its current status of one global Church, if the following proposal can be considered in the coming General Conference for reflection.
The General Conference should adopt the Croton River Speech to serve as the last resort disciplinary measure of the general church in providing leadership guidance to the episcopacy office. General Conference delegates could vote to compel a sitting bishop to desist exercising his or her office, so long as he or she was associated with outlawed church policy like that of Bishop Andrew’s slave holding. The theory has largely informed Methodist ideas of episcopacy ever since.
All bishops who are not accountable to their call and consecration vows in their areas should face the same experience of the General Conference to hold the structural system accountable.
Jurisdictions and central conference episcopacy elections should be approved by the General Conference to ascertain that church laws were observed during the process for one to continue exercising the office of the general superintendency.
All bishops should intinerate by at least serving one year in the global church, holding an annual session in another central conference and jurisdiction before returning to their areas. That would help bishops to understand the missional needs and challenges of the entire denomination around the globe.
The Rev Wilton T.A Odongo of Nairobi, Kenya, is a Conference Secretary of the Kenya-Ethiopia Conference and UMNS Communicator, East Africa.