Conservative Methodist Exit Nears End Point

 The American Spectator | USA News and Politics 

 "The window that opened in 2019 to allow United Methodist churches to depart their embattled denomination closes in a week or so, at the end of the year, and at this late hour, approximately one-fourth of the member churches that constitute Protestantism’s second-largest denomination have climbed through that window.

"In the largest U.S. church schism since Civil War times, nearly 7,700 churches of the roughly 30,000 in the United Methodist Church (UMC) have voted to take their property and go elsewhere.

"The issue of contention in the 19th century was slavery. Today, in the UMC, it’s LGBTQ-related issues. Liberals have been defying denominational rules banning same-sex marriages and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” and conservatives have been taking advantage of a temporary rule passed in 2019 that allows their congregations to vote on whether to leave, taking their property and buildings with them.

"The number of leavers is greater than expected — Methodist insider Mark Tooley earlier this year put the low-ball number at 3,000 leavers, with an upper limit of 5,000. In actuality, a massive rush for the door by 5,642 departing congregations in 2023, the last year the deal is in effect, brings the current total to 7,659.

"How Things Got to This Point

"The UMC, as a church body, has resisted the tsunami of LGBTQ fervor that has swept through the rest of liberal Protestantism. Indeed, it has endorsed at every general convention since its initially passing in 1972 a stricture in the denomination’s Book of Discipline that declared the practice of homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

"The vote at its most recent conclave, a special session of the General Conference in 2019, was more nail-biter than previous totals, however, as the group upheld, by a 438–384 count — that is, by a mere 54 votes — the church’s ban on same-sex marriage and “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy. Buoying the conservative tally was the presence of a sizable African contingent who, as a group, hew to much more traditional views regarding marriage and sexual issues. (READ MORE from Tom Raabe: On Drag Queens and the Methodist Breakup)" . . .