What is truly astonishing is the way that the Democrats\u2019 planks on emerging culture-war issues echoed the (often more radical) stands adopted by the Methodists. Among the rights of children, for example, the Methodists included the right \u201cto a full sex education, appropriate to their stage of development.\u201d\u009d Affirming the rights of women, the Methodists supported full equality with men and demanded and end to \u201csex-role stereotypes.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
To counter overpopulation, the convention recommended the distribution of \u201creliable contraceptive information and devices.\u201d\u009d Less than a year before Roe v. Wade, the convention urged \u201cremoval of abortion from the criminal code\u201d\u009d but stopped short of approving abortion on demand. Finally, the Methodists embraced affirmative inclusion by reserving 30% of seats on all church boards and agencies for nonwhites, even though barely 6% of church members were African-American.<\/p>\n
The events of 1972 also hastened the steady decline in membership and influence among the liberal mainline churches. Before the 1970s were out, the politically and socially conservative Southern Baptists superseded the United Methodists as the nation\u2019s largest Protestant denomination. As one generation gave way to the next, more and more young Methodists, Presbyterians and the like grew up to become religiously something else or\u201d\u201despecially among millennials\u201d\u201dnothing at all.<\/p>\n