Lots of people are talking about schism in the UMC. I’m one of them. I don’t want a schism, but I recognize that one may be inevitable. Is it possible, though, that United Methodists could separate into two denominations without constituting a schism?
There have been many schisms, separations, and splinters in the history of the Church, but two stand out as most significant. The first is the schism between the East and West, which actually took place over centuries, but was made official in 1054 when Cardinal Humbert, the envoy of Pole Leo IX, walked into Hagia Sophia and placed a document on the altar a document excommunicating Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius. Even after this time, Eastern and Western Christians lived and worshipped together. Eventually, however, a state of affairs emerged in which these eastern and western churches no longer recognized one another’s sacraments (including ordination), teaching authority, and liturgical traditions. There were other consequences as well, and over time they became two entirely separate communions.
The second major schism is of course the Protestant Reformation. We normally date the beginning of the Reformation to 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the church in Wittenberg. As with the first schism, however, this one was a long time in coming. The result was that we ended up with more Christians in separate communion from one another, without recognizing one another’s sacraments, ordination, liturgy, and teaching authority. Luther and many others were excommunicated. It wasn’t long, moreover, before Protestants began to break off from one another, each group insisting that it had the proper way to interpret scripture and the Christian life.
Ben Witherington of Asbury Seminary has recently written a blog post calling for another of these Protestant separations. He argues for the formation of a new Christian denomination that could be called something like the Progressive Methodist Church. Those United Methodists who cannot or will not live within the boundaries stipulated in the Book of Discipline, he says, should be allowed to go their own way in peace. They should be able to keep their properties and pensions. We should make all this as painless as possible, because the state we’re living in now can’t continue.
I’m not ready to endorse this idea, but there is something appealing about it. We have to find some way to let some air out of the balloon, or it’s going to pop. The last General Conference was a madhouse. I’m certain that the next one will be worse.
So let’s say we took Dr. Witherington’s advice and separated amicably into the Progressive Methodist Church and The United Methodist Church. This would not necessarily constitute a smaller scale version of the Great Schism of 1054 or the Protestant Reformation. It seems likely, for example, that we would recognize one another’s sacramental authority. Implicitly, then, we would recognize the ordination of the people who performed the sacraments. After all, we recognize the sacramental authority of many different traditions. In fact, the UMC is already in full communion with the ELCA (which ordains gay and lesbian people), which means, among other things, that we may exchange clergy with one another. We implicitly recognize the ordination of very broad range of traditions by recognizing the baptism of virtually every other Christian group. Last I checked, we don’t ask if the person who performed the baptism was gay. Problems could arise if the baptism was in some name other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but that’s probably about it. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, ELCA, PCA, PCUSA, UCC, Southern Baptist—it doesn’t really matter. If the minister was ordained in his/her tradition, we recognize his or her sacramental authority. It would require a full-communion agreement to bring their ministers into our churches, but we nevertheless implicitly state that their ordination is valid.
If the UMC separated into two different denominations, would we be less generous with one another than we are with, say, the Lutherans? It seems unlikely. What we’re talking about then, is not a schism, but a separation.
You may say, “You’re splitting hairs, here, Watson! You’re arguing semantics!” No, imaginary interlocutor, I am not. For Christians to recognize one another’s ordinations and sacramental authority is one of the most important ways in which we can promote unity in the body of Christ. It is the opposite of schism, and it is much more important than a denominational structure or some other formal means of identifying various Christian groups. Why? Sacrament is where the real action is in Christianity. The sacraments are where we most directly encounter God. When we say that we recognize one another’s sacraments and ordinations, we’re saying that in these sacramental activities, God is really showing up. Christ really is mediated to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Is there anything more important than that?
David F. Watson 
David,
I am working on a blog post on this very subject. I wonder if we already have such a thing in the Scriptures and in the history of Methodism. I have been studying Acts 15 where the church blesses a divergent group from the predominant view in dietary laws of the Jewish people. It is a profound missiological moment in the early church. For the sake of the mission the Jewish leaders were willing to allow Gentile believers a pass so to speak on something very important to Jewish believers.
In early Methodism in America we also did something for the sake of the mission. Richard Allen and African Methodist Episcopal Church broke from the Methodist in 1816 but kept all of the same doctrine. We share common doctrine and polity. We are part of the pan-methodist commission together.
My wonder is can we offer an internal split for the sake of the mission?
Good points, Stephen. I really don’t know if we could pull this off. These kinds of splits can be extremely bitter, and I could foresee a denial of full communion between the two or three different denominations that emerged.
I appreciate your ongoing discussion of schism/separation in the UMC. However, even with a full communion agreement, there’s not only a theological component to this question (I err on the side of both institutional and liturgical church unity), but practical dimensions to this question as well. Is a progressive UMC denomination even viable? Current predictions about Methodism in the US show that the UMC, along with virtually every other mainline/historical denomination, is structurally unsustainable over the next 50 or so years. How would a smaller, progressive version of the UMC be any more sustainable than the current version? Denominationalism, and Christianity in general, is dying in the US (even the Southern Baptist Church is seeing slight decline, albeit not like the UMC). The progressive jurisdictions in the US are the jurisdictions that are bleeding members at the fastest rate, and are numerically the smallest. Are those church bodies even sustainable over the next 5 years if they split, let alone 50 years? Plus, how many progressive Methodists are functionally different from the Episcopal Church or ELCA in theology and polity? It might, ironically enough, reveal enhanced church unity in one way if progressive Methodists found church homes in those bodies, even as I would regret their departure (in most cases) from the UMC.
What further complicates this discussion is the fact that the UMC is international. If the denomination splits, the “conservative/traditional” component likely becomes a majority international denomination, and I quite honestly doubt that most annual confrence offices, or even us pastors for that matter, would appreciate the financial adaptations necessary to sustain a growing-but-poorer church body. I’m not saying those changes wouldn’t be good for the church, but they’d be more painful than much of the suburban big church conservative Methodist crowd realizes.
Finally, some bishops may say that the UMC will split in three, but how? This is in response to the comment section. See sections above re: institutional viability and the international nature of the UMC.
All good questions, Joseph. I don’t really know how all this would go down.
As for your points about a Progressive Methodist Church, I would anticipate that it would follow the same patterns we have seen in the UCC, Episcopal Church, and PCUSA.
I propose that if this “split” occurs, we should just call ourselves the Republican/Conservative United Methodist Church and the Democrat/Liberal United Methodist Church. That way we will not obscure the extent to which the Church has fallen to worldly politics in the process.
Funny.
Kevin – amen. Our language, tone, and tactics are driven much more by the culture wars of cable news than the gospel and the church.
David, I wonder if such a separation would be as tidy as some expect. I think assuming it would be like the pre Civil War split assumes a regional unity that is not present now. Depending on where you are in North Carolina, you find UMCs in very different places. I suspect this is true for many other places around the country. Besides that, there are entities like camps, hospitals, seminaries, general agencies, and the like. What would become of those? I suspect a shattering is more likely than a separation, like the wide varieties of Lutheran or Presbyterian options, none of which is particularly strong. In any case, I’m just not ready to entertain a separation or schism.
“Shattering” is the same word I usually use when people ask for my prognostication.
It’s also the case that people are in flux. Convictions are fluid. Just because we “successfully” divide at one point doesn’t mean that the purity of the resulting bodies will last more than a few days.
“Shattering” is a very appropriate word for what is likely to happen.
Drew, I’ve no doubt it would be both messy and ugly. Local churches would split. Seminary faculties would divide. General agencies would collapse. It would be terrible.
The question, though, is what alternatives we have when a vocal minority of leaders in our church will not respect the decisions of our international governing body, the General Conference. They will neither hold themselves or one another accountable to the Discipline. I’d be quite interested to hear suggestions regarding how we might deal with this situation.
As the expression goes, “the fish stinks from the head.” If bishops won’t enforce the BOD, they shouldn’t be bishops. That is more a commentary on the role (historic and UMC polity) of the episcopal office than the current polarization. Of course, that result is easier said than achieved.