United Methodist Church enters uncharted territory

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The United Methodist Church will bear the same name after May 3, but in many ways will be an entirely new denomination.

The UMC General Conference is gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina, to decide on legislation expected to shape the long-term future of the nation’s largest mainline Protestant denomination following a historic splintering. About a quarter of U.S.-based churches in the largely Nashville, Tennessee-based UMC left the denomination, or disaffiliated, between 20192023 following disagreements over theology and church policy – including dealing with LGBTQ+ rights.

This UMC General Conference, which meets every four years, isn’t merely reassembling a disoriented church body. It’s creating something entirely new.

This year’s conference, which runs through May 3, is entering uncharted territory as the denomination deliberates potential solutions to its current conflicts. It will be the first and major test of a new model of cooperation, both in how United Methodists operate ministries and interact with one another across regional and ideological divides.

There have been at least seven previous splits and schisms in the Methodist Church of a similar scale and consequence to the present splintering, such as the emergence of new denominations.

“Some might say an honest examination of the people called Methodist show that we split more often than we come back together,” said Ashley Boggan Dreff, head of the UMC General Commission on Archives & History, in a video produced for a series on splits and separations. “While this might sound a bit disheartening, it also provides room for new growth.”

But many of those previous splits were only between Methodists in the U.S. Many revolved around a dispute — slavery — that the Civil War and federal law ultimately did more to resolve than church policy did. What’s unprecedented about the present splintering is the high-wire act between the shifting stance on LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. church versus the cultural and legal conservatism among United Methodists outside the U.S.

The UMC General Conference is expected to face competing proposals, one to expand a policy allowing churches outside the U.S. to disaffiliate and the other aims to prevent further splintering. That latter proposal, called regionalization, elevates the authority and autonomy of regional United Methodist bodies outside the U.S., enabling those bodies to enforce different policies on LGBTQ+ rights than the American church.

Unlike most previous general conferences, the battle over LGBTQ+ rights will be somewhat secondary to the deliberations about the future of the international church.

Decisions on historic proposals to remove anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions are still up for debate, but their success will largely depend on the outcome of the regionalization proposal.

Noticeable changes might soon follow depending on what the UMC General Conference decides.

Regional United Methodist bodies in the U.S. are set to meet this summer.

Pending the UMC General Conference’s budget approval, jurisdictional conferences — comprised of groupings of annual conferences — will decide whether to reduce, maintain, or increase the number of bishops.

Due to proposed cuts to a fund that pays bishops’ salaries, many jurisdictional conferences are expected not to add new bishops to replace outgoing ones.

Previous splits and schisms are nothing new in the Methodist Church.