The present state of affairs, however, is that the theological and ethical diversity of United Methodism has reached a breaking point. I attribute this to what Jonathan Merritt has called America’s “new moral code.” Whereas conservatives have long bemoaned the rise of moral relativism, before our eyes there is occurring a sea change. Relativism is becoming a thing of the past. Absolutism is coming quickly upon us, and it is no less fraught with problems than the relativism it is replacing. From the perspective of our diverse denomination, the arrival of the new moral code presents the greatest danger to unity we have yet faced. Moral absolutism has exposed the holes in our polity that have allowed for an unauthorized regionalization of ethical decision making in the UMC.
Our denomination’s way of ordering its life assumes disagreement, a push and pull worked out through political processes, such as the legislative sessions of our various conferences. This is, as David Brooks has written, the very essence of politics, and our system is inherently political. No one gets everything they want, but the result is that we are able to live, worship, and work together. We resist the old Protestant impulse to part ways when we disagree, and we thereby avoid further fracturing the body of Christ. While the system is not perfect, it does in theory compel us to recognize the perspectives and interests of others. For diversity of thought to inhere within one community, the various factions of that community must abide by the recognized processes for dealing with disagreement.
In recent years, however, the rejection of the church’s way of ordering its life, and hence the theological diversity protected by that order, has undermined our unity with devastating effectiveness. Note that while conservative groups in the UMC have called for division before, they have never had as realistic a chance of accomplishing this as they do today. This desire for division itself was perhaps an early indicator of the trend toward moral absolutism. We might say the same thing about churches that for one reason or another refused to pay apportionments. Yet the primary rationale for division is not now, as it once was, rooted in a call for a more doctrinally and ethically conservative church. It is based on the breakdown of denominational governance that has become increasingly prevalent since 2013.
Read it all and follow the links.
If the UMC was created to be a theologically diverse place joining “liberals, evangelicals, and pietists” (because they are exclusive choices) under one denominational roof, and if nothing that occurred in the history of the denominations that mergered to formed the UMC matter, then the writer is drawing correct conclusions: the processes in the UMC are more important than what it believes and they must be protected as they alone provide United Methodism with coherence.
I realize there are individual churches, pastors, laymen, and schools in the UMC that do care about the substance more than the form. But, reading this makes me wonder if the UMC might not be more accurately described as the minor league of the Unitarian Universalist world. A place for people not-quite-ready to let go of their based-on-a-true-story beliefs and reams of meeting minutes to leap over to the Big Show.
Probably one of the greatest reasons the Methodist Church grew in America was its staunch opposition to alcohol and its support of prohibition. Certainly my grandfather changed to the Methodist Church (his family were Presbyterians) because of its policies on prohibition (my great-grandfather used to get drunk and then beat my grandfather as a child, giving him a hatred of alcohol for the rest of his life). Today we look on Prohibition as a failed experiment, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was widely supported by those who saw drinking as having major negative effects on individuals, families, and society.
Of course, now that is a distant memory, and it has become just another liberal mainline denomination.