United Methodists Losing Their Social Action Tradition

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A United Methodist Insight Editorial Analysis

There’s a saying popular among businessfolks: when you’re up to your butt in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your objective is to drain the swamp. In this respect, the worldwide United Methodist Church aptly reflects both the saying and the world’s current reality. The people who make up the UMC are the same people beset these days by three big metaphorical alligators: the climate crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, and politics.

For a movement that began with faith-based social action in 18th century England, today’s situation is distressing if understandable. Historians often credit John and Charles Wesley and their companions with saving England from the kind of bloody revolution that engulfed France because they practiced compassion as a spiritual discipline. Methodists fed, clothed, educated, housed, and healed people when Anglicans snubbed them. John Wesley’s England was a cruel place, but his followers sparked significant social change such as the abolition of slavery because of the social actions that sprang from their faith.

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Today the story of U.S. Methodism has changed vastly. As with other institutions and individuals around the world, United Methodists have reached “surge capacity,” also known to psychologists as “allostatic load,” in their ability to respond to crisis. The Polis Center at IUPUI, conducting a long-range study on the coronavirus pandemic’s effects, noted in an article titled “The Pandemic’s Bright Light and Dark Shadows” in the September issue of "Research Notes: Findings from Religion & Urban Culture 2.0": “The [coronavirus] pandemic made every attempt at change more difficult at a time when nearly all congregations and clergy were out of emotional and intellectual bandwidth. When problems collectively look like a tsunami, the impulse is to survive and let tomorrow take care of itself.”

Survival mode has overtaken efforts that would have been primary actions for late 20th-century United Methodism. For example, some United Methodist climate advocates assert that now is a crucial time for the UMC to step up its advocacy and action on the global climate crisis. Those who’ve been pressing for climate change action over the years can see that civilization is at a tipping point – witness this summer’s extreme events – and yet the demands on local congregations by other forces are such that they’re barely keeping their heads above the storm surge.

Extreme weather opens eyes

Since the UMC is a U.S-based – some would say U.S.-dominated – denomination, the extreme Summer 2021 weather in the United States has lifted the veil from some United Methodists’ consciousness. The July heat dome over the Pacific Northwest that killed a thousand humans and billions of shellfish, added to rampant wildfires in the Western United States and tropical storms battering the southern Gulf and Northeastern states, finally convinced many clergy and laity that the climate crisis is real. The realization is only beginning to generate a will to do something about it, such as support President Biden’s “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan now making its way through Congress.

Simultaneously, the 18-month-long coronavirus pandemic – itself a symptom of the adverse effects of climate change – has wreaked havoc with everything church-related, from worship to budget to missions and beyond. The dispersal of church members to home quarantine has undercut the sense of community that drives social change, even with the well-received response of “hybrid worship.” Grief from thousands of COVID-19 deaths has sapped spiritual and emotional energy along with financial resources. In some cases, coronavirus has deprived local churches of the leaders best equipped to spearhead social-action campaigns, while extreme weather has damaged or leveled church buildings, such as in storm-battered Louisiana.

Furthermore, for a U.S.-based denomination with international links like The United Methodist Church, the impact on the world’s poorest countries of the climate crisis and its accompanying pandemic poses a hydra-headed threat to the institution. The General Conference, the only body that can make decisions for the entire denomination, has been postponed twice because of the pandemic. General Conference organizers have said they fear not only U.S. infection rates but also dangers to delegates from countries outside the United States having little access to vaccines.

In this the UMC mirrors this year’s major climate conference, COP26, where African critics such as Mohamed Adow, director of the climate and energy thinktank Power Shift Africa, urges that the November meeting be postponed until spring to allow African delegates more time to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Writing for The Guardian, Adow asserts: “As one of the millions of unvaccinated Africans, the thought of travelling to Scotland, where cases recently spiked, is a scary one. The frustrating thing is that it didn’t need to be this way. The reason why only 1.4% of people in the global south have been vaccinated is because the G7 failed to waive patents on vaccines and rich countries have hoarded available shots.”

Languishing without General Conference

The United Methodist Church is in precisely the same position as COP26 regarding its General Conference. Without General Conference action to amend its policies, the UMC languishes in institutional purgatory. Nearly half of worldwide United Methodist membership is now located on the African continent, the same group of people that Adow laments can’t get vaccinated. Yet the UMC has been practically invisible beyond a few high-level pronouncements in the push to get vaccines to the poorest countries that most need them.

The same is true of the climate crisis. Again, nearly half of the UMC’s worldwide members are in countries that are suffering the brunt of the climate crisis, yet only leaders at the very top of the denomination have rallied to their aid and advocacy. Most of the aid and some of the advocacies have come through the General Board of Global Ministries and the United Methodist Committee on Relief, supported by the “fair-share” contributions known as apportionments and by individual and congregational donations. The person-to-person and community-to-community relationships that provide the most incentive for public action have either declined or been left unstarted.

The third leg of The United Methodist Church’s withdrawal from its social action tradition comes from the rift within itself. The UMC stands on the brink of schism, ostensibly over competing theologies focused on the interpretation of the Holy Bible, particularly as it relates to human sexuality in the form of LGBTQ acceptance. However, the real root of the UMC’s internal fracture, much like U.S. national politics as historian Heather Cox Richardson describes it, is power – the dispute over which theological stance should control the denomination’s ecclesial identity and operations. If some popular music is “all about that bass,” as Meghan Trainor sings, the UMC dispute is “all about control” – who gets to say what and who are “in” and “out.” Again, in this the UMC reflects a similar political wave coursing around the globe, where right-wing authoritarian forces are pushing to overturn liberal democracies in which the people govern themselves.

Overall, The United Methodist Church faces an existential dilemma akin to what Jesus described in Matthew 16:25, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The crisis-ridden world needs The United Methodist Church to lose its life of hiding behind four cozy church walls squabbling over who is the greatest among the disciples. The UMC is being called to a sacrificial life that embodies the commandments of loving God and loving neighbors. One wonders whether the church still can hear and act upon its call.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.