Mark Tooley: United Methodist conservatives did it to themselves

 

Mark Tooley says United Methodist conservatives underwrote the denomination's theological and sexual liberalization decade upon decade with hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in donations:

It’s more satisfying to blame outside forces. But United Methodist conservatives, loyal to financially supporting the institution across generations, underwrote the denomination’s liberalization. I think the same is largely true for other liberal Mainline Protestant denominations.

When we reflect on what is wrong with the church, we should always begin with ourselves.

-- Juicy Ecumenism

The history of the fall of Methodism in America is a cautionary tale for today's Christian nationalists, but they'll probably ignore it

 Mark Tooley, here:

The collapse of Methodist social influence in America began with its greatest political victory: Prohibition. After Prohibition’s repeal, Methodism first began to lose in its share of American population, and then later in absolute numbers, all the while becoming politically less and less relevant. Presidents Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson all spoke to Methodist governing bodies during the lead-up to Prohibition, after which another president never again addressed a Methodist juridical convention. In the 1950s, Bishop Bromley Oxnam was exasperated when the Methodist bishops met with President Eisenhower, who offered only a photo op, and no interest in hearing their views. Oxnam was not discouraged from pursuing other channels of political influence for his denomination.

Methodist exodus makes the news at CNBC

 1 in 5 United Methodist congregations in the U.S. have left over LGBTQ conflicts :

Some 6,182 congregations have received approval to disaffiliate since 2019, according to an unofficial tally by United Methodist News Service, which has been tracking votes by annual conferences. That figure is 4,172 for this year alone, it reported. ... While most UMC congregations are remaining, many of the departing congregations are large, and denominational officials are bracing for significant budget cuts in 2024.

 

Queer Jesus has gone "mainstream" because 13.7 million sane people have already left the formerly mainstream churches

Queer Jesus Goes Mainstream at Churches, Divinity Schools

John Murawski, RCI

 

United Church of Christ membership is down 64% to 0.8 million from 2.2 million. The queer-affirming church performs nuptials for polyamorists where multiple partners marry each other.

United Methodist Church membership is down 47% to 5.7 million from 10.7 million. The church aims to be the first to ordain a drag queen.

Presbyterian Church USA membership is down 74% to 1.1 million from 4.25 million. In Iowa they worship the god of trans being, the great they/them.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America membership is down 42% to 3 million from 5.2 million. It elected a transgender bishop two years ago.

The Episcopal Church in the United States is down 53% to 1.7 million from 3.6 million. It has a priest who maintains that promiscuous people are simply being hospitable. The real sinner at Sodom was Lot, who refused the hospitality of the rapists trying to break down his door.

There's nothing mainstream about the 12 million still left in these churches.

Millions of Americans have fled into non-denominational Protestantism. And there are at least 30 million Baptists of one kind or another, while Roman Catholics number 70 million.

The USA has 210 million nominally Christian people. But Africa has 685 million. Latin America about 601 million. Europe 571 million.

America is fast on the road to becoming a Christian backwater. The main show is elsewhere.

Lying leaders who infiltrated United Methodism responsible for its subversion and schism

Methodist John Lomperis in "Methodism’s Messy Divorce" in National Review, here:

 

We lost our collective appetite for doctrinal accountability.

 

Over time, we then welcomed more and more ministers who essentially crossed their fingers behind their backs while taking the required ordination vows of doctrinal loyalty. Some have frankly admitted to lying through this process in order to change the church from within. Many such clergy members ascended to the highest levels of denominational leadership.

 

Have a serious conversation with most any even conservative Methodist minister and you will more often than not find an individual who emphasizes God's grace at the expense of God's law.

 

Ideas have consequences.

 

 

Some results from the decadal Religion Census of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies for 2010-2020

 As reported here in The Economist:

the ranks of all religious Americans rose by 10.6m (7%) ...

overall population grew by 7.5% ...

the number of Episcopalians and Methodists dropped by 19% each ...

the Lutherans plunged by 25% ...

Presbyterians lost nearly 1m (40%) ...

The Southern Baptist Convention shrank 11% ...

non-denominational Christian churches recruited 9m new members ...

Catholics claim they gained nearly 3m members (a 5% increase) despite closing over 1,100 churches. 

      

Color me skeptical.

Start with the big number.

Average population grew 7.1% or 22 million over the period, according to POPTHM, which is the data of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

The data of the U.S. Census, as shown by POP, shows average population grew by even less over the period: 6.97% or 21.6 million, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

Obviously these are estimates, not counts, but the reported overall population growth claim in the story is up to a half-point larger than these big baseline numbers reported by the official organs of the U.S. government.

One half point of 310 million is 1.55 million people. One false move and you've just wiped out the entire denomination of the American Baptist Churches USA. When you study religion in America, you are discussing a bewildering number of splinter groups, many of which are simply microscopic in size.

It's extremely difficult to get data about groups like that right. Fully 40% are left out of even good surveys.

We are then confidently given to believe that hardly half the population growth went on to affiliate with a religion over the period: 10.6 million out of something north of 22 million, but by the end of the story you then have to believe also that 9 million new non-denoms plus 3 million new Catholics still equals 10.6 million.

Hello, is there an economist in the house?

Separately, there is the recent claim, supported by Pew, that Mormonism is the fastest reproducing American religious group, the implications of which go wholly unaddressed by the story.

On the other hand, reported Mormon membership in the U.S. grew by fewer than 700k 2011-2023, according to the latest Mormon data.

As pointed out previously, Christians themselves variously and significantly exaggerate how much money they give to their churches. Relying on their statements of membership in surveys even such as this one is . . . problematic.

They resemble in these respects nothing so much as the wider culture of exaggeration.

I'm doing great. Everything is fine. Awesome, in fact.

57% can't afford a $1,000 emergency. 85% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The world is going to end in 2031 if we don't address climate change.

2.3 million Methodists expected to flee United Methodism by the end of 2023 over LGBT and become independent to avoid the fate of the Episcopalians

 Unsurprisingly, the liberal denominations of the old Mainline Protestant world are the fastest to decline. The Episcopal Church just announced that in 2021 it lost 56,314 members while attendance dropped 36 percent from 2020. Sixty-two congregations were permanently closed. Average worship dropped from 55 to 21 persons. Ninety percent of Episcopal churches have fewer than 100 attendees on Sunday. 

Many Methodist congregations seek to escape this grim fate. And who can blame them?

More.

American United Methodists scramble to exit the denomination over same sex marriage by the December 2023 deadline

The United Methodist Church—America’s third-largest religious body, with over 6.2 million members—is in the thick of its own [schism] over its teachings on sexuality. Hundreds of congregations have voted to leave the denomination, which had 13 million members world-wide as of 2020, and thousands more likely will. On Aug. 7, United Methodism’s second- and seventh-largest churches by attendance, both in the Houston area, voted to quit the denomination. 

What brought United Methodism to this divide was its decision-making body’s 2019 “Traditional Plan”—a document that affirmed its ban on same-sex marriage and mandated that all clergy be celibate if single and monogamous if married. That sets the church apart from nearly every other mainline Protestant denomination. The traditionalists won thanks to votes from conservative African delegates, whose churches have grown by millions even as the U.S. has declined by nearly the same magnitude.

... United Methodism has lost five million members in the U.S. since 1968 and will lose millions more. Mainline Protestantism has been sidelined—and it will take years for United Methodism’s schism to resolve.

More.

Conservative Methodists have had it with liberal dithering

Last week, when the United Methodist Church postponed — for the third time in as many years — a vote on an orderly plan to split the mainline Protestant denomination long riven by disagreement over the full inclusion of its LGBTQ members, some conservative United Methodists announced they were finally done: They would launch a new denomination in May, orderly plan or no. ... For decades, debate over ordaining and marrying LGBTQ United Methodists has roiled the United Methodist Church, one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States. 

More.

With vote on separation delayed until Aug 2022, 89 Methodist congregations have paid hefty fees to leave early in 2020-21 to date

Though the disaffiliations represent a sliver of the more than 31,000 United Methodist churches nationwide, they show that some churches are willing to take the hard way out of the UMC. ...

To depart with property, churches can use a provision added by the 2019 special session of the General Conference, allowing churches to disaffiliate for “reasons of conscience” related to human sexuality. This addendum is sometimes called Section 2553.

Even under Section 2553 disaffiliation requires churches to pay hefty financial obligations to their conferences: several years of contributions to the pension and payment of two years of aportionments, money local churches give to support the conference and denomination. Though not specified in Section 2553, some conferences also require churches to pay a percentage of the church’s total assets. The annual conferences must also vote to release a church. But if churches waited until the protocol ’s approval, they could walk away with their buildings and no major fees.

More.

 

Get lost Boomers: Grove United Methodist Church in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, a small congregation of over-60s, told to take a hike

"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed"

Reminds me of the Lutheran pastor at Immanuel, Grand Rapids, a coveter of expensive shoes, who once complained from the pulpit that the Baby Boomers were sucking this world dry.

Talk about sucking.

But that guy pales in comparison to the Methodist authorities, whose claims to openness and inclusivity are the whitewash on the sepulchre of their denomination. They say Yes to illegal aliens. Yes to faggots. No to Boomers.

Is there a church more fitting for the Boomer-haters than the Methodists? A gathering place for the dead.

From the story:

[M]embers of the Grove United Methodist Church in Cottage Grove are upset enough that their church is closing in June. What makes it worse is that their church is reopening in November — pretty much without them.

The church wants to attract more young families. The present members, most of them over 60 years old, will be invited to worship somewhere else. A memo recommends that they stay away for two years, then consult the pastor about reapplying.

Officials say the church needs a reset, and reopening the church is the best way to appeal to younger people.

But the older church members say they see that as an insult.

“This is totally wrong,” said Gackstetter’s wife, Cheryl. “They are discriminating against us because of our age.”

After the plan was explained by a visiting pastor on Jan. 5, she said, “I called him a hypocrite. I said, ‘You are kicking us out of our church.’ ”

United Methodist Church to split in May 2020 over gay marriage

Friday’s announcement came as new sanctions were set to go into effect in the church, which would have made punishments for United Methodist Church pastors who perform same-sex weddings much more severe: one year’s suspension without pay for the first wedding and removal from the clergy for any wedding after that. Instead, leaders from liberal and conservative wings signed an agreement saying they will postpone those sanctions and instead vote to split at the worldwide church’s May general conference. They said the agreement was brokered by Kenneth Feinberg, the mediation expert who handled the compensation fund for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, among other major negotiations. 

More. 

 

 

Laugh of the Day: That Ben Op book's been so great for Rod Dreher that he can now support more than one wife

I thought his trajectory would go Methodist → Catholic → Orthodox → Gay.

Instead it appears to have gone Methodist → Catholic → Orthodox → Muslim. I mean, he's praying for their dead in New Zealand and everything. Or does that mean he's really gone Mormon now?

Rank and file Methodists reject their elites in St. Louis, vote to reaffirm traditional morality

Conservative Christians Just Retook the United Methodist Church:

The mainline denomination voted on Tuesday to toughen its teachings against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and LGBTQ clergy. It must now decide whether it will stay together.

The United Methodist Church has fractured over the role of LGBTQ people in the denomination. At a special conference in St. Louis this week, convened specifically to address divisions over LGBTQ issues, members voted to toughen prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. ...

The bishops clearly did not have the support for which they had hoped. 

 

 

So-called conservative and Methodist Rush Limbaugh doubts the existence of hell

Terrible Budget Bill Will Be Used Against Trump in 2020:

There’s also — the Republican Party, elected Republican Party is more afraid of government shutdowns than they are of going to hell, if there is one.

Rod Dreher gets a DNA test but gets completely distracted from the fact that his family "turned" German

Here:

I’m 99.3 percent European. About 67 percent of that ancestry is Anglo-Irish, with 9 percent “French and German” (they can’t yet distinguish between French and German ancestry, so my ancestors came from that region; it’s got to be German, because the first Dreher to come to the US came from Germany; Dreher is a German name meaning “turner”), and 4 percent Scandinavian. The rest is “broadly Northwestern European”. But here’s the surprising part: 0.6 percent of my ancestry — the thin red slice — is West African. The genetics timeline indicates that five to eight generations ago (the test can’t be more specific), I had an ancestor who was 100 percent West African. That ancestor was likely born between 1700 and 1820.

Well, isn't that instructive?

So far in life Rod Dreher has "turned" personally from Methodism, to Roman Catholicism, to Orthodoxy of some sort or other. How long will it take for him to understand how in keeping this is with his own name, his own character?

Obviously his family got this name "Dreher" because it turned from what it was to German, and the family accepted it. Now Rod Dreher is turning still, which is why he submitted his DNA for analysis in the first place (there's some innate doubt there), only to find out he's got a little "black" in him somewhere along the way, which turns him some more . . . from the main point.

The money on the test was obviously well spent.

"The least of these my brethren" remains misunderstood divorced from the meaning of discipleship in its apocalyptic milieu

The misunderstanding was recently on vivid display here, where conservative and liberal interpreters feud over the meaning of Matthew 25:40 for the contemporary social situation of wealth and poverty.

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Unfortunately the text has little meaning for the contemporary social situation, except perhaps to teach those who think that they are Jesus' followers that they are not, and those who are self-satisfied humanitarians that they are dull.

The significance of "my brethren" is much more than what its conservative interpreters say it is. The phrase locates it in apocalyptic time, to the activity of The Twelve before the end of the world. It cannot refer to future generations, as if it were some timeless instruction for right living which liberalism for example can pride itself on by making it the law of the land. Jesus does not at all imagine such a future. He does not even imagine our existence. Instead Jesus imagines a future cut short by judgment and the arrival of the kingdom of God. It is the narrowest of time horizons constrained by the expectation of an imminent end of the world.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ... Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:34, 41).

The activity of The Twelve is what is expected of disciples who have paid the cost to escape the apocalyptic sentence of death: Leaving all and following their Master, selling what they have and giving to the poor, embarking on an itinerant life preaching a similar repentance, traveling without visible means of support and relying on God to provide, and so on. This is all of a piece with the teaching on discipleship and the instructions to missionaries elsewhere, summarizing and presupposing it.

"Salvation" comes to a house that provides these itinerants their food, drink, clothing, shelter, palliative care for illness in the event, and companionship if and when imprisoned for posing a threat to the powers about to be overthrown by the inbreaking of God's reign. Such acts constitute their own repentance and solidarity with the "Christian" message.

Needless to say, this is a vision which has almost nothing to do with the Pauline Gospel per se, but amazingly survived in the written record anyway despite its failure to materialize.

It does live on in Paul, however, in another form, in "the collection for the saints". Paul's pledge "to remember the poor" is specifically defined by that, and not by a dull humanitarianism. Paul's collection for the saints in Jerusalem, in fact, is the second great animating feature of his missionary journeys but is still little remarked let alone appreciated in your average church today. As for the dull humanitarianism, we have to wait until the 19th Century and Liberal Christianity before we really get the groundwork laid for that contemporary misreading of the ancient sources referred to above. It was against this that Schweitzer's critique based on apocalyptic was launched at the beginning of the 20th Century.

We talk about that critique a lot here.

Since 1968 membership in the United Methodist Church has declined by 35%

From 11 million to 7.2 million currently.

Expect this to change even more dramatically as the gay mafia takes over.

It appears that since 2008 alone, membership has already contracted by almost 9%, from 7.9 million to 7.2 million.

 

 

Boom! go the Methodists over ban on same sex relationships

It was only a matter of time.

METHODISTS ELECT 1ST OPENLY GAY BISHOP IN DEFIANCE OF BAN :

[S]everal regional districts are openly defying the prohibition by appointing gay clergy and allowing same-sex weddings in churches.

The poor in spirit according to Joseph Benson

From the English Methodist minister Joseph Benson, 1749-1821, here:

But it seems much more probable that the truly humble are intended, or those who are sensible of their spiritual poverty, of their ignorance and sinfulness, their guilt, depravity, and weakness, their frailty and mortality; and who, therefore, whatever their outward situation in life may be, however affluent and exalted, think meanly of themselves, and neither desire the praise of men, nor covet high things in the world, but are content with the lot God assigns them, however low and poor. These are happy, because their humility renders them teachable, submissive, resigned, patient, contented, and cheerful in all estates; and it enables them to receive prosperity or adversity, health or sickness, ease or pain, life or death, with an equal mind. Whatever is allotted them short of those everlasting burnings which they see they have merited, they consider as a grace or favour. They are happy, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven — The present, inward kingdom, righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, as well as the eternal kingdom, if they endure to the end. The knowledge which they have of themselves, and their humiliation of soul before God, prepare them for the reception of Christ, to dwell and reign in their hearts, and all the other blessings of the gospel; the blessings both of grace and glory. For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place: with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Isaiah 57:15; Isaiah 66:2. And those in whom God dwells here shall dwell with him hereafter.