A long-brewing conflict is coming to a head in the United Methodist Church.
The Global United Methodist Church was established in May, in response to decades of debate on whether LGBTQ individuals should be able to marry or become pastors in the global denomination. This new offshoot will uphold the denomination's traditional view, while those remaining in the United Methodist Church will decide where they want to take the policy of the church in the future.
“We have had some churches that have expressed interest in knowing the process and are thinking and praying on, ‘Do we stay or do we leave?’” said Rev. Scott Ocke, superintendent of the Maumee Watershed District of the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church.
He’s on the forefront of the issue in northwest Ohio.
Reverend Ocke, the former pastor at Maumee United Methodist Church, said he thinks the strongest feeling about leaving the parent church is found in the larger metropolitan areas throughout the West Ohio Conference, such as in Columbus and Cincinnati, due to larger populations that have greater diversity.
The United Methodist Church has been debating the question of sexuality and policy towards LGBTQ individuals since 1972, when delegates to that year’s General Conference introduced language to the Book of Discipline stating that homosexuality is “incompatible with church teaching.”
Forty-four years later in 2016, the bishops of the denomination convened a special session of the General Conference to try and bring the church to an agreement. It ultimately led to a strengthening of language on homosexuality, as voted in 2019 by the General Conference.
This did not end debate. Conservative sects began to grow annoyed at the delays in formally ratifying the policy, and prepared to establish an offshoot denomination.
The proposal to form this new denomination was to have been formally voted on at the 2020 General Conference, a quadrennial meeting which brings in Methodists from around the globe. But that meeting was delayed twice by the coronavirus and ultimately canceled in favor of the next scheduled meeting in 2024. In the meantime, the Global Methodist Church was created.
The participants at the West Ohio Annual Conference, the annual meeting of United Methodist Church leaders in western Ohio which was held virtually June 3-4, discussed what exactly it would mean for a church to leave the United Methodist Church, including the process it would take and the penalties involved.
According to procedures established in 2019 by the special session of the General Conference, a disaffiliation would require a two-thirds majority vote of the members of the local church. Additionally, because each church is required to pay a certain amount of money to the global denomination every year, any churches that break away would be required to pay back any outstanding money.
They would also have to pay off any obligations to the pension fund for retired pastors that the annual conference collects.
Conversation now centers on whether these stipulations, drafted specifically to deal with the inclusion issue, are the best path to exit.
According to some, a second path to exit exists in a paragraph that has been in the church’s Book of Discipline for years; it allows the church’s annual conference to direct the leaders of a local church to begin a transfer of property to another denomination.
This second path, outlined in the Book of Discipline’s paragraph 2548, is controversial. An article posted on the United Methodist Church website in 2019 explains that this second path “does not create a right for disaffiliation.”
The Rev. Stephen Swisher, the senior pastor at Epworth United Methodist Church in Ottawa Hills, is confident that local churches who remain in the United Methodist Church will eventually be able to move past the inclusion issue and continue their work in the communities they serve.
Epworth is the largest Methodist church in the area with over 3,000 regular congregants, and Reverend Swisher said he felt strongly that no real decision on “disaffiliation,” as church leaders call it, should come until after the General Conference in 2024.
“As a denomination I certainly don’t recognize that there has been a split,” Reverend Swisher said of the nascent Global Methodist Church. “Epworth is not interested in splitting and as far as I know most churches in Ohio are not interested in splitting.”
Reverend Swisher said the motto of Epworth tells the general public all they need to know about his church’s stance on the matter: “Help for today, hope for tomorrow, and a place to call home.”
“Every Saturday and Sunday, I say that there is no litmus test to come to this church and there is no litmus test for communion,” he said. “We are not going to say someone can’t get Holy Communion because we are not the ones making that determination. We think that Jesus gave everyone an invitation, we are giving everyone an opportunity to accept the invitation, but we are not creating the invitation. It is important that we are not setting ourselves up as judge and jury and we are making ourselves as welcoming as we can be.”
Carol Williams-Young, pastor at Zion Methodist Church in Whitehouse, said her congregation has not had any conversations for or against the inclusion issue.
“We are busy doing what Jesus told us to do,” Reverend Williams-Young said about her congregation, which usually numbers around 25. “The reason for that is there is really nothing to decide on. Like if a church decided they want to go to the Global Methodist Church they do not really have any of their structures set up yet.”
Reverend Williams-Young mentioned how legal, financial, and disciplinary details have not been spelled out yet and how any church that commits to the Global United Methodist Church would not really know what they are signing up for.
Still, Reverend Williams-Young personally feels the inclusion issue is an important one.
“To be more inclusive is in keeping with our tradition,” she said, explaining that she was speaking for herself, not on behalf of her congregation. “In the past there was controversy about slavery, divorce, and women in the church. Women were not allowed to preach until John Wesley’s mother convinced him to give them license and women were not ordained until 1956.”
Gregory Palmer, the bishop of the West Ohio Conference, presided over the Annual Conference earlier in June.
“The church must invite and include all people in its light. Inclusion of all persons is very important to me,” said Bishop Palmer, pointing out that it could extend beyond gay and lesbian individuals to those are who bisexual or transgender as well. “I do not think this is an issue that needs to divide the church, but there is definitely room for people to have conviction. I just hope that the list of things that make people say ‘I no longer want to be here’ is a short one.”
Indeed, Bishop Palmer drew attention to some of the positive accomplishments the West Ohio Conference has made over the last year that he hopes can rise above the negativity of the inclusion drama. This includes a successful campaign for new church development and congregational redevelopment over the last few years that has raised $7.5 million; just in the last two months $250,000 was raised for relief in Ukraine.
He describes himself as a leader that has helped the denomination think this issue through over the years, and Bishop Palmer said he is very interested in the way that the inclusion issue will play into the future of the church and the section of it that he leads.
“I hope everyone can find a place to stand while still calling themselves United Methodists,” he said. “And the more people we have engaged in honest conversations, the better it will be as we work towards getting to that place where everyone can stand. Hopefully by keeping engaged with each other, both by listening to stories and to each other, there will be more of what my friend calls ‘space for grace’ for everyone.”
First Published June 19, 2022, 1:30 p.m.
