As church delegates convene, American liberals clash with conservative Africans.
By Mark Tooley, Wall Street Journal.
As 864 delegates gather this week and next in Portland, Ore., for the United Methodist Church’s quadrennial General Conference, they face a fork in the road: Will United Methodism turn inward and remain a mostly liberal Protestant church? Or will it become increasingly evangelical and global?
United Methodism, with more than seven million American members, is the largest of the big seven mainline Protestant denominations. Nearly all the mainline churches in recent years have officially affirmed same-sex marriage and actively gay clergy, followed by schism and decline. The United Church of Christ, once a flagship mainline denomination, recently predicted losing 80% of its members over the next 30 years.
Methodists have not followed that path. Yet in the 1970s, as the late Catholic intellectualRichard John Neuhaus once recalled, United Methodism was expected to become the first major denomination to adapt to post-1960s sexual mores. Of the great Protestant communions, Methodism was arguably the most democratic and American, and the least tied to tradition.
Methodists have debated Christian sexual ethics at every General Conference since 1972, but delegates have repeatedly affirmed traditional teachings.
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While this article may have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, I believe it is important to note that Mr. Tooley is President of the Institute of Religion and Democracy (IRD) and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence.
As a member of the UMC I would prefer the PC(USA) Layman provide his full credentials. He has only one voice in the UMC as do any of us.
Exactly what the left wants — the churches have been transformed into
political battle grounds.
1) Genesis revels God’s plan for man, woman, child, family, and community.
Sex is sacred.
2) Darwinism plants the suggestion that procreation is random. Procreation
results when one organism bumps into another.
Fast forward forty years from the Scope’s Trial and find yourself in the middle of the sexual revolution.
The cause of church unity is paradoxically enhanced as those of orthodox faith in the main-line churches separate from main-line liberalism. Numerous PC(USA) churches have separated to join alternative evangelical denominations. The Anglican Church of North America is the orthodox branch of the Episcopal Church and it appears that the UMC may split into two separate bodies. These evangelical bodies from the main-line denominations have more in common with the historic church–including Roman Catholicism and Orthodox–than with their liberal colleagues in the declining main-line denominations. So “schism” ironically can be a step toward spiritual unity transcending old boundaries and a cause for optimism…in my view..if we but seize the opportunity for a new paradigm…
The Wall Street Journal article did, in fact, note that “Mr. Tooley, a United Methodist member, is the president of the Institute of Religion and Democracy.”
Looks like things have progressed to the point where the Washington Post is writing that the UMC may now be ending and breaking up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/05/17/united-methodist-church-to-respond-to-rumors-that-is-about-to-split/