As our denomination’s slow-motion separation accelerates, we hear all kinds of nice-sounding, extraordinarily vague rhetoric from various United Methodist leaders that, even as the United Methodist Church liberalizes on marriage, it will still tolerate and even welcome conservatives and liberals who choose the post-separation United Methodist Church (psUMC). Such rhetoric usually lacks anything binding or specific, and is often accompanied by dismissing concerns as “fear-mongering” or “misinformation.”
However, such promised United Methodist tolerance is impossible, for three basic reasons:
United Methodist promises of tolerance are logically and pragmatically unsustainable.
Leaders of the new United Methodist Church already refuse to extend basic tolerance to conservative believers.
Liberal United Methodist leaders have already made clear their extreme “alienation of affection” from traditionalists.
Whatever changes on other issues, it is universally agreed that the denomination is on track to liberalize its official standards on sexual morality. So before too long, the United Methodist Church will be a denomination that officially affirms same-sex weddings and non-celibate gay clergy. In American United Methodism, this is now already the officially supported ethos of the leadership of every region and the de facto reality in all but a shrinking number of annual conferences.
In this context, these three factors make the end of tolerance for United Methodist traditionalists not just likely, but inevitable.
1. United Methodist promises of tolerance for conservatives are logically and pragmatically unsustainable.
Others have broadly explained the logical necessity and observed reality of Neuhaus’s Law: “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.”
Promised United Methodist tolerance for conservatives and liberals who choose the post-separation United Methodist Church is impossible, for three basic reasons. #umc https://t.co/4c79JCG5pm
— IRD (@TheIRD) January 18, 2023