The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
United Methodists at Charlotte conference face ‘historic’ choices
Decisions will drive future of denomination.
The General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the first one that Robin Dease is attending as a bishop.
And it’s likely the last one that retired Bishop Sharon Zimmerman Rader, who lives in Evanston, Illinois, plans to attend.
Both women want to be at the policy-making quadrennial conference to witness what some say is a seismic shift in how the denomination moves into the future, including how it responds to full inclusion of the LGBTQ community.
The 11-day conference will draw as many as 7,500 people from around the world, of whom 862 are voting delegates.
According to the UMC, 56% of the delegates are from the United States and 32% are from Africa. The rest are from Europe and the Philippines.
The conference will consider petitions that could reshape the structure of the denomination through regionalization, remove controversial language around the issue of human sexuality, revise its social principals to guide how it responds to the world’s most pressing issues, address the denomination’s budget and even how many bishops are in the denomination.
There are serious issues to be debated and discussed, and there will be prayer, sermons and 18 worship services.
In all, more than 1,000 legislative petitions will be heard by delegates that include clergy and laypersons.
‘Every 50 years’ there’s a shift
“Everything we’ve been fighting about is all coming to a head at this particular General Conference,” said Dease, who was installed in 2023 as bishop of the North Georgia Conference, which covers the area north of Macon.
“Every 50 years there’s a shift, and when you go back and look at where the shift has occurred, it’s always around some pressing issue and it’s always been around inclusion,” said Dease. “Are we going to include Blacks? Are we going to include women? And, now, here we are, are we going to include LGBTQIA? Every 50 years there’s something that shifts the Church. Something that causes breakaways, that causes separation, that causes schisms and that causes conflicts.”
Rader, the retired bishop who lives in Evanston, has attended General Conferences since 1976, her first time as a seminary student.
She and her husband felt it was important to be in Charlotte.
“It’s kind of middle time where we can decide are we going to move forward into a new way of witnessing and living together or are we going to be stuck?”
“This is going to be a historic General Conference,” said the Rev. Brett M. Opalinski, assistant dean of Methodist Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and a delegate to the conference. “I tell my students that they will be teaching about the conference for years to come. This is going to go down in United Methodist history.”
It’s been a difficult season for United Methodists with hundreds of congregations leaving the fold.
“There’s been a lot of sadness and grief, but I think this is an opportunity for a new beginning and to live faithfully into this modern age,” said Opalinski. “I do think that if the language doesn’t change we will have to think about the impact on many young people who are discerning a call into ordained ministry and even through discernment whether to live out their faith in the United Methodist Church.”
Book of Discipline
The Book of Discipline outlines the doctrine, administration, organizational work and procedures of the UMC. It considers homosexuality incompatible with Christian teaching. It prohibits clergy from performing same sex marriages or union ceremonies and doesn’t allow “selfavowed practicing” members of the LGBTQ community to be ordained or consecrated as bishop.
The divisive issue for decades has created a wide schism in the denomination.
A recent study by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., found that between 2019 and Dec. 31, 2023, the United Methodist Church lost a quarter of its total churches in the United States.
Conservatives, some of whom call themselves traditionalists, have cited a number of reasons beyond human sexuality including fears the denomination was becoming too progressive and would interpret Scripture differently.
Some have become independent; others have joined other Methodist denominations, including the more conservative Global Methodist Church.
Since 2022, more than 330 churches have left the UMC’s North Georgia Conference, which covers the state north of Macon. That represents about 38% of the conference’s churches and 27% of its members.
Today, the conference has about 440 churches remaining — but nearly a dozen new congregations are forming.
The smaller South Georgia Conference of the UMC has lost about half of the congregations since 2020, according to spokeswoman Kelly Roberson.
Although much of the focus in on human sexuality, other issues are being closely watched.
A major proposal concerns regionalization. Under the plan, there will be four regional conferences — Africa, Europe, the Philippines and the United States -each having the same power and duties to pass legislation in their respective regions.
“This will allow for the United Methodist Church, as a whole, to be less U.S-centric and give greater voice and latitude given for each region to decide logistical aspects of ministry in a way that makes sense for that context,” said Emory’s Opalinski.
The Rev. Michael D. Stinson, lead pastor of East Point First Mallalieu United Methodist Church, will attend the General Conference but is not a voting delegate.
“I’m not for regionalization because I think that makes us into five different churches under the United Methodist banner with everyone doing things different,” he said. “I think it will end up separating the church even more.”
United Methodists have “been going around the mulberry bush for too long,” said the Rev. Edward J. Landrum, pastor of Moore’s Chapel UMC and president of the Carrollton Ministerial Coalition.
“We should be a denomination that’s welcoming to everyone.”
By Kelly Yamanouchi
Atlanta-based Norfolk Southern reported a precipitous decline in first quarter profit, tallying hundreds of million of dollars of expenses in the fallout of a fiery derailment of a train carrying hazardous materials in East Palestine, Ohio, more than a year ago.
The company recorded $592 million in expenses in the first quarter related to the East Palestine derailment.
That’s after Norfolk Southern already had tallied $1.1 billion in charges for its response by January.
Earlier this month, Norfolk Southern announced a $600 million settlement agreement to resolve a consolidated class action lawsuit filed against the railroad after the East Palestine derailment. The $592 million expense includes the benefit of $108 million in insurance recoveries as well as other cleanup costs.
Norfolk Southern said the settlement of the class action lawsuit “does not include or constitute any admission of liability, wrongdoing or fault.”
Norfolk Southern Chief Financial Officer Mark George said during an investor conference call Wednesday that the settlement “addresses the most significant remaining legal exposures for our shareholders.”
Wednesday, the company reported $53 million in quarterly net income, down from $466 million in the first quarter of 2023.
The company saw its railway operating revenues decline to $3 billion in the first quarter, down 4% from a year earlier. Its railway operating expenses increased about 17% compared to a year ago, to nearly $2.8 billion.
The railroad said it is seeing pressure on its coal business and exports because of the Baltimore bridge collapse and port closure, resulting in a $25 million to $35 million revenue impact per month.
In late January, the company said it would cut 300 people from its management staff over the following several months to reduce costs.
Wednesday, Norfolk Southern said its first-quarter cuts will result in a reduction of about 350 non-union employees from its workforce by May through voluntary and involuntary separations. That resulted in $64 million in charges, mainly for separation payments.
The railroad is facing a takeover attempt by an activist investor group based in Ohio that has argued for the replacement of Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw and replacement of board members. Norfolk Southern has mounted a vigorous defense and rolled out some of its own reforms, including the replacement of its chief operating officer with John Orr, who was Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s chief transformation officer.
The appointment of Orr as COO cost Norfolk Southern $35 million, the company disclosed Wednesday. That includes $25 million Norfolk Southern previously said it had agreed to pay CPKC for a waiver of Orr’s non-compete provisions and other “financial and commercial considerations.”
Orr also said his “first official act” on the ground was to visit East Palestine to understand “the scope and scale of the commitment that NS has made to that community. I’ve never experienced anything like that. And so I came in with a bias and really had to understand the magnitude of that ... and how that could have had a more lasting impact across not only on NS but the sector.”
Both Norfolk Southern and the activist investment firm, Ancora Holdings Group, have flooded shareholders with messages promoting their respective positions and strategies as the May 9 shareholder annual meeting for a vote on the matter approaches.
Norfolk Southern disclosed Wednesday that it recorded $21 million in “costs associated with shareholder advisory matters” in the first quarter.