{"id":78801,"date":"2019-02-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=78801"},"modified":"2019-02-22T05:49:34","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T10:49:34","slug":"stephen-noll-mexit-methodists-anglicans-and-the-limits-of-disagreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=78801","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Noll–\u201cMEXIT\u201d: Methodists, Anglicans and the Limits of Disagreement"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post I shall address the \u201cspecial General Conference\u201d of United Methodists in St. Louis. Here is a brief preview<\/a> of the agenda:<\/p>\n

Last July, the Council of Bishops offered three possible plans for moving forward: the One Church Plan, the Connectional Conference Plan, and the Traditional Plan. The One Church Plan calls for removing language from the Book of Discipline that upholds traditional teaching on sexuality, and allowing individual churches and conferences to decide on the basis of conscience whether they will permit same-sex unions or homosexual bishops. The Connectional Conference Plan calls for completely reorganizing the regional conferences around shared beliefs rather than geography\u2014in other words, creating traditionalist and progressive conferences and trying to hold them together. The Modified Traditional Plan calls for upholding the traditional teaching on sexuality and then offering an exit path for any local churches or conferences that disagree.<\/p>\n

One might wonder why the Methodists are the last mainline church in North America to hold the line on biblical teaching on marriage and homosexuality. The reason is that, unlike the Anglican Communion, which granted autonomy to its missionary churches, the Methodists kept them together in one body \u2013 the General Conference. And the African churches have voted with conservatives in North America to uphold the Book of Discipline, which states that \u201cthe practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching\u201d (sound familiar \u2013 see Lambeth Resolution I.10<\/a>, clause d).<\/p>\n

The revisionists, who hold the money and influence in the North American Methodist bureaucracy, have employed the usual Alinskyite<\/a> tactics of \u201ccivil disobedience\u201d to challenge the norm by ordaining [non-celiobate] gay pastors<\/a> and now a [non-celibate] lesbian bishop<\/a>. They are now calling for \u201cgood disagreement\u201d under the One Church Plan, which would maintain formal unity while permitting radically different practices regarding marriage and ordination.<\/p>\n

One proponent of the Modified Traditional Plan is Dr. William Abraham, a senior theologian from Southern Methodist University, who has written a paper titled; \u201cIn Defense of Mexit: Disagreement and Disunity in United Methodism<\/a>.\u201d Abraham proposes that the progressive minority be authorized to exit the Church (hence \u201cMexit\u201d) with their property and to affiliate with another church or form their own \u201cProgressive United Methodist Church\u201d (Abraham suggests then renaming the majority body the \u201cEvangelical United Methodist Church\u201d).<\/p>\n

What is interesting to me as an Anglican is how the Anglican experience figures into the theological discussion among conservative Methodists….<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post I shall address the \u201cspecial General Conference\u201d of United Methodists in St. Louis. Here is a brief preview of the agenda: Last July, the Council of Bishops offered three possible plans for moving forward: the One Church…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,175,168,360,177,159,34,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-episcopal","category-anthropology","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-methodist","category-pastoral-theology","category-sexuality-debate-other-denominations-and-faiths","category-theology","category-theology-scripture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78802,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78801\/revisions\/78802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}