Month: May 2023

United No More

~ Vincent

The United Methodist Church was, in hindsight, a pretty bad name for our denomination. I can’t count the number of times that there was something controversial going on in a conference and someone would say, “UNITED Methodist?!? Why are we called united? We’re NOT united at all!” Which is fair. When you’re a part of a massive entity that’s been struggling to identify what exactly it is for as long as anyone can remember, having a name that begins with “united” must seem pretty silly. But that word didn’t get there because we were so wildly harmonious! We were named “United” Methodists because of a church merger. The Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church came together in 1968 to create the United Methodist Church. “United” is a nod to the EUB side of the merger.

The EUB was a much smaller church than the MC. Previously EUB congregants represented about 7 percent of total UMC congregants after the merger. That being said, this all happened the zenith of Methodist power in the United States, so the EUB’s membership was still nothing to sneeze at. There are quite a few denominations around today that wish they were as big as the 750,000 member EUB church! Sizes aside, the goal of the merger was to forge a marriage of equals. There was this great ecumenical hope that more and more churches would find common ground and come together, so nobody wanted to kill that enthusiasm by creating the appearance that the MC gobbled up the EUB. Again and again during the merger, people sought out ways to ensure that EUB distinctives and heritage would be protected going forward.

But did it work? Not really. The fact that the average person doesn’t know why “united” is in the name is pretty clear evidence of that. And why should they know that? Who cares about some boring ‘ol historical details. As long as a fact sounds like an answer to a trivia question, it’s going to seem trivial in people’s hearts and minds. Education about the Evangelical United Brethren Church are still requirements in United Methodist seminaries, but again, as long as it’s kept safely in the Methodist History section, it’s not going to become something that pastors make use of in their ministry. John Meunier recorded a little piece of a General Conference petition on his blog that specifically laments several ways in which the Methodist side of the merger hasn’t honored the full heritage of the EUB. Unfortunately, the original source that he linked to has since been removed, so a big thanks to him for preserving this little piece of history:

A widespread, but largely overlooked obstacle to being an inclusive church is the omission of United from our church name and the name of our people. The Methodist Church ceased as an organization on April 23, 1968, as did The Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB). On that date, The United Methodist Church was born, a new church created by the marriage of the two former bodies. This was the  intention of the Plan of Union. When the word United is omitted, it suggests that the marriage was a pretense and that the union was, as some disappointed former EUB’s have termed it, a hostile corporate takeover.

Since 1980, the General Conference has declared that omitting United from our church name is “unacceptable usage.” Yet the practice continues in conversation and in print. Former EUB’s are not being oversensitive about a few syllables. When Methodist is used in place of our proper name, it becomes, to them, a painful reminder of more than a dozen serious betrayals of the spirit of union and inclusiveness:

1. Glorifying Wesley and Asbury, while ignoring or belittling the inheritances from Otterbein, Boehm, and Albright.
2. Abandoning beloved EUB institutions, including Westmar College, Otterbein Press, Kamp Koinonia, and the Church and Home magazine.
3. Cutting off EUB clergy widows from their only pension income, the dividends from Otterbein Press.
4. Repeated attempts to close United Theological Seminary.
5. Identifying Heritage Sunday with Aldersgate Sunday in 1976 and 2004.
6. Removing the EUB Hymnal from circulation and canceling its status as an official United Methodist hymnal in 1972 .
7. Including only two EUB hymns in the 1988 United Methodist Hymnal.
8. Replacing “debts” or “sins” in the Lord’s Prayer with “trespasses.”
9. Excluding the EUB service of infant dedication from The Book of Worship.
10. Restoring the Lovely Lane Chapel while leaving the EUB birthplace, the Peter Kemp Farmhouse, just a few miles away, to the fickle mercies of a secular economy bent on commercial expansion.
11. Suppressing the fact that the twin flames in the cross-and-flame emblem represent the Methodist and EUB traditions and that, when depicted correctly, the two flames are equal in size.
12. Closing a disproportionate number of former EUB churches (28 percent of those closed between 1975 and 1985).
13. Representing an ash-less Ash Wednesday, the EUB practice and the universal Protestant practice before 1970, as “un-United Methodist.”

2012 UMC General Conference Petition, as cited by John Meunier at
https://johnmeunier.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/an-eub-laments/

As I’m headed to the Global Methodist Church, I’m leaving the “United.” Which is ironic. From what I can tell, the EUB was more evangelical than the Methodist Church and had distinctly less modernist influence, but now their name has been claimed by the faction that they would have least agreed with! Oh, politics. Either way, popping that word in front of the denominational name didn’t preserve any heritage. We have the opportunity to honor our theological history in more than name; we can actually know it. But it’ll take work! We need to know about more than John Wesley. Yes, I get it, he’s the guy that started the thing. Nobody is downplaying that. But where did Wesley get his much of his theological outlook? Jacob Arminius. Who helped Wesley get Methodism going in the colonies? Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury. Who wrote the famous covenant prayer he adopted? Richard Alleine. Who helped get the Gospel to German-speaking populations in the colonies? A disgraced Mennonite bishop, Martin Boehm, and a Reformed missionary, William Otterbein. And who literally helped spread Methodism among German-speakers when the actual Methodists didn’t allow preaching in German? Jacob Albright.

Of course, we also have a million ecumenical saints going back to the very beginning of Christianity to learn from and celebrate, but it’s worth noting that Global Methodists have some really cool heritage that a lot of us don’t even know about. We lost the name, but let’s not lose the treasures that history has for us.

Going Global

~ Vincent

For about a year now, I haven’t posted all that often on the ‘ol bloggerino. Some of that was because I had just moved and was settling into a new job (which I wrote about here), some of it was because I just had a son (which ironically was a couple days before the entry on birthdays, which I didn’t plan at all), but the biggest reason was because of what’s been going on in the United Methodist Church. The church split in a super-political mess and evangelicals and traditionalists left and started a new denomination: the Global Methodist Church.

Unsurprisingly, a guy who regularly blogs about classic theology is very much a theological traditionalist, so I found myself navigating the tricky politics in all of this. I led a church through a discernment process to see if they wanted to leave. I constantly stayed up-to-date on the circumstances as they unfolded and shifted. I managed the gross politics of it all. Needless to say, it was really stressful and hard. Frankly, I don’t plan on writing about the specifics of it here anytime soon, if ever. It was ugly and there’s no immediate need to relive it. A quick google search will help you discover just bad the politics of leaving the UMC were/are. There are already very skilled people with a greater knowledge of the political circumstances than myself writing about this, so I’ll leave it to them.

But why didn’t I write anything about historic church splits? After all, I did a ton of research on the topic of church splits in America over the past hundred or so years. There were several times I wanted to blog about it, but it would have been pretty imprudent to openly talk about church splits with an orthodox/traditionalist bias when I was still working for the United Methodist Church. There were even a couple articles that I posted that I ended up taking down, just because I knew that if a congregation member stumbled across them and felt that they reflected my own opinion too clearly, it might cause trouble down the road. I had to play my hand close to my vest until their discernment process was done. If they wanted out, I’d help them navigate the process. If they didn’t, I’d head out on my own. Sadly, the final vote from church members ended with them choosing to remain United Methodist (they needed 66.6% to leave and only managed 62%), so I had to say goodbye and move on to the Global Methodist Church.

I won’t pretend it wasn’t a terrifying transition. So many of the churches that leave the UMC are able to do so because a supportive pastor helps guide them through the disaffiliation process. It only takes 34% of people to block a disaffiliation vote, and if the pastor isn’t interested in helping you leave, drumming up 34% tends to be pretty doable (if they even present disaffiliation as an option to them in the first place). I wasn’t sure if there would be an open church that I could get a job at, but God is good. Not only were there multiple opportunities available, but one of them was perfect. Sometimes, you just go to a place, meet the people and realize, “Yeah, this is it.” I’m off to Kenton, Ohio to work with Walnut Grove GMC, and I’m incredibly grateful to God for that opportunity.

It’s been a hard year, but I’m a few weeks away from being a part of a new denomination with a new church and a new future, and I’m so excited. The simple fact that clergy are actually expected to affirm the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian definition is music to my ears, but on top of that, language in church law concerning Scripture is elevated, language concerning tradition is more reverent, church rites have been rewritten to be in-line with historic norms, there are more listed reference documents for historic orthodoxy, and the church bureaucracy is slimmer. I’m happy as a clam (assuming, of course, that clams are pretty darn happy on the whole).

For those reading this that are United Methodist, no hate. I’m dear friends with many of you and have grown a lot during our time together. That being said, we know we believe different things. It’s time to go our separate ways. I’m sure we’ll still be friends and learn from each other, but we’ll have more integrity working seperately than we would together.

For those that are looking to jump ship and haven’t made it quite yet, hang in there and keep excited. It’s worth it.

For those that aren’t Methodist at all and are wondering why they should care about this, just remember that for Christians in any denomination under the sun, orthodoxy has a cost. No matter what tradition you’re in, no matter how sure you are that it could never happen there, it absolutely can. A friend told me that when he joined the UMC, he warned them that he would resign if they ever changed the definition of marriage in church law. Everyone laughed because “it could never happen here.” They were wrong. There is, as good ‘ol Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us, a cost to discipleship. That cost is fighting for the faith. Don’t shrink away from heresy and call it “a matter of opinion.” Confront it with love and compassion. Correct it if you can. Leave if you must. But don’t give up. It’s worth it to keep the truth that was entrusted to us by God.

As hard as the battles can be, there comes a day when the battles end and you can beat your swords into plowshares. I found that ending, and I pray that you do too.