CV NEWS FEED // As 2023 comes to a close, about 24% of United Methodist congregations in America have disaffiliated from the mainline church—the second largest mainline Protestant denomination in the US—which has been accused of altering many traditional Biblical teachings.
John Lomperis is the director of UMAction, a group pushing for conservatives to separate from the United Methodist Church (UMC) following the church’s abandonment of biblical teachings on sexual morality.
But the UMC won’t let all of them go so easily, according to Lomperis.
“United Methodist denominational officials and ‘Stay UMC’ activists have brought all kinds of difficult barriers, misleading propaganda, and heavy-handed coercion to try to minimize the number of congregations separating from the United Methodist Church’s increasingly liberal and intolerant new direction,” he wrote in a letter.
“A small number of annual conferences have even gone to the extreme of blocking the disaffiliation of some congregations at the last minute,” he continued. “These blockades were imposed after the congregations did everything asked of them, in transparently greedy attempts by the conferences to seize valuable property away from their congregants for the benefit of liberal factions.”
Even so, almost 7,300 U.S. congregations have been approved for disaffiliation.
In 2019, the UMC, one of the largest protestant denominations in the US, voted to uphold traditional marriage and limit clergy to non-LGBT people. But as many liberal Methodists ignore the ruling by officiating same-sex marriages and electing LGBT clergy, conservative Methodists have begun to leave. These traditional Methodists are usually joining the Global Methodist Church or becoming non-denominational.
“The Global Methodist Church continues to grow rapidly as the denomination remains faithful to historic, biblical Methodist doctrine and morals while carrying on the best of its UMC heritage,” Lomperis wrote.
Lomperis hopes to “set the record straight in response to some of Mainstream UMC’s recent lobbying and misinformation about the actual separation options facing United Methodists next year.”
In [the UMC’s] crusade to effectively hold people hostage, the “Mainstream UMC” caucus continues lobbying General Conference delegates with strident rhetoric and blatant misrepresentations of the truth. Incredibly, this group of liberal United Methodist leaders has recently chosen to especially single out IRD/UMAction as a top enemy, because of our advocacy against coercing congregations to remain United Methodist against their will, and our advocacy for the next General Conference to be less contentious and pave a relatively more amicable way forward that avoids ugly lawsuits over church property!