Methodist church divides over social issues
A massive number of conservative congregation left the United Methodist Church this year
The United Methodist Church has seen its members divide over social issues in the past two years. The more conservative members left over disagreements on how to theologically treat sexuality, gender, and, to a lesser degree, abortion.
The UMC is about as mainstream a denomination as there is in America. Hillary Clinton practiced in it. So did George W. Bush. Southern Methodist University political science professor Matthew Wilson said that clergy and laity could just as quickly turn up at an abortion rights rally as they could an anti-abortion rally. He thinks that could change going forward.
“What will remain to be called the United Methodist Church will be a more left-leaning denomination, theologically, politically, and socially, than what has existed before,” Wilson said. “And so I would not be surprised to see the United Methodist Church leaning somewhat more aggressively into pro-choice advocacy.”
Wilson said that the Dobbs decision played a small part in the fracturing of the church. The division had its roots far earlier.
The conservative members could join the Global Methodist Church, which tends to be more conservative and includes countries from the third world. Others may form their organization in America.
“Still others are right now are just independent,” Wilson said. “And they may stay that way and essentially become independent Bible churches with a Wesleyan flavor or a Wesleyan influence.”
The region where the Methodist church is located has a role in determining its political slant. In the South and Midwest, the congregations are more conservative. On the West Coast and in the Northeast, church leaders and parishioners tend to be more liberal. In Texas, about 40 percent of Methodist Churches have left the UMC.
The split comes down to the views of traditionalists versus modernists, who believe that scripture should be interpreted to evolve with the current world.
“Many of the more progressive churches not only would welcome clergy to officiate at same-sex unions, but they would welcome openly gay clergy,” Wilson said. “And in the more traditionalist churches, they see that as just an affront to not only scripture but to the 2000-year history of Christian teaching. And so it really is a kind of fundamental divide between those groups.”
Wilson is interested in how the church’s position on abortion will evolve going forward with the change in the organization’s makeup.
“With Methodism now becoming a more kind of clearly left-leaning denomination because of the exodus of the conservatives,” Wilson said, “they may find a more productive recruitment and reception for that message within this what we would say newly constitutes the Methodist Church.”