CV NEWS FEED // A significant exodus from the United Methodist Church (UMC) has ensued after a pro-LGBTQ faction within the denomination pushed the cause enough to alienate many churchgoers.
Christianity Today reported Monday that 7,659 churches, about “1 out of 4 of the denomination’s 30,000 congregations,” have “decided to split” over the last four years. The departing congregations are citing “issues of sexuality and authority.” Christianity Today is an Evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham in 1956.
“This month marked the final push to exit before the December 31 deadline,” the magazine continued. “In that time, another 74 churches in Florida voted to leave, plus 51 more in Illinois, 152 in Mississippi, 8 in New Mexico, and 36 across three regions in Texas.”
Per the denomination’s news outlet, of the churches that have chosen to leave the UMC since the end of 2019, 5,643 of them – 74% – left in 2023 alone.
As of Wednesday, UM News also reported the four-year total of churches that have left the denomination as 7,660 – an increase of one from the total in the Christianity Today article published two days prior.
“This is also the largest denominational divide in the United States since the Civil War,” Christianity Today noted.
“While there have been several notable church schisms in the 20th century … none involve more than 600 or 700 separating congregations,” added the publication. “The UMC split is more than 10 times as large.”
According to USA Today, UMC pre-schism was the second-largest American Protestant denomination, following the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC):
A 2015 Pew Research Center study estimated about 9 million Methodists in the U.S., though the church’s online directory puts the number of professing members at just 5.7 million.
Back in November, researcher and Baptist pastor Ryan Burge posted a map on X (formerly Twitter) showing that there were UMC churches in 95% of the counties in the United States.
However, as Ruth Graham of The New York Times observed Monday, the once-influential Methodist group is “in the final stages of a slow-motion rupture.”
USA Today reported that according to Southern Methodist University (SMU) political science professor Matthew Wilson, “Progressive factions within the [UMC] … want to overhaul church teachings to, for instance, permit same-sex marriages and allow ordination of gay clergy.” SMU is affiliated with the UMC.
Wilson added that these “progressive” Methodists “want to essentially remove any reference to what we call ‘traditional marriage and sexuality norms.’”
“The traditional faction is deeply opposed to that,” he emphasized. “They say those moves are out of step with church teachings, and they’ve been at odds for some time.”
Again from Christianity Today:
Though United Methodists have not voted to drop their traditional marriage stance—they shot down proposals for change as recently as 2019—the denomination did not enforce the policy when bishops and churches continued ordaining non-celibate gay clergy and celebrating same-sex marriage. As the push for LGBT inclusion in the UMC persisted, conservatives opted to leave.
“The division likely paves the way for the UMC—which still does not affirm gay marriage on paper—to adopt more progressive policies at its General Conference in the spring of 2024,” stated Christianity Today. “The gathering had been postponed four years due to the pandemic.”
According to a report by the UMC’s Washington, DC, seminary, the denomination post-schism will be left “less southern” and “probably more diverse.”
