A Quarter of Mainline Methodist Churches Left the Denomination Last Year. Now What?
Over 4,300 exited churches so far have joined the new Global Methodist Church (GMC), which includes churches from the U.S., Africa, the Philippines, and Europe. Many more U.S. churches will join, but some are skittish about losing autonomy. U.S. Protestant Christianity is increasingly nondenominational, with younger people rarely guided by once-strong multigenerational denominational loyalties. Nearly all U.S. denominations, liberal and conservative, are declining. The GMC, in many ways, will echo the nondenominational world.
This month is the 100th anniversary of the Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, the stately edifice sitting across from the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court. Built to house Methodism’s advocacy for Prohibition, the “Methodist Vatican” was derided by Clarence Darrow as the “most brutal, bigoted, ignorant bunch since the Spanish Inquisition.” Its locale, he said, allowed Methodist busybodies to “smell Congressmen’s breath on the way to the Capitol.”
Since 1924, Methodism has suffered a long downward spiral from its peaks of American influence. For most of the 20th century, it was America’s largest Protestant institution. Last year, it suffered a schism over sexuality, resulting in more than 7,660 mostly traditional congregations quitting the denomination. This exodus, perhaps the largest church schism in America since the Civil War, represents 25 percent of United Methodism’s once 30,000 U.S. churches.
Exodus
The deadline for churches to exit United Methodism, which was America’s third-largest religious body, was December 31. Exiting churches needed approval from governing regional bodies, and the last such vote was December 14, when the Texas Conference, centered around Houston, approved four more church exits for a total of 319—or 51 percent—of its once 621 churches.
Conservative congregations were anxious to exit under a temporary church law before the next governing General Conference on April 23 to May 3, 2024, in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s widely expected, absent many traditionalists, to finally liberalize the church’s policies on marriage and sex. United Methodism will be nearly the last of the once paramount mainline Protestant denominations to liberalize.
Church properties in United Methodism are owned by the denomination through local regional conferences. In 2019, at a special General Conference that reaffirmed traditional teachings on marriage and sex by 53 percent, delegates created the temporary policy to let churches exit with property and assets. Exiting congregations had to vote by two-thirds and pay hefty exit fees to the denomination. Small churches paid thousands of dollars, and larger churches had to pay hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions.
Issues
Unlike other historically liberal mainline denominations, such as the Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodism has never liberalized on sex. That was thanks to delegates from its growing churches in Africa, where there are 7 million United Methodists, compared to less than 6 million in America before the exits. Conservatives in the U.S., aligned with those in Africa, prevented liberalization for decades.
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The Haunting Effects of Sin
In an extraordinary way, the Lord uses the haunting effects of sin to bring his child to the point where we will no longer be able to be haunted by them. By using them to conform us to His image, not only will we avoid sin in the future, but when the accuser rears his head, we will understand that all his work is in vain, and the more he tries to afflict us, the more we will grow. Then, before long, Satan will be looking over his shoulder because greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.
David thought it was over. His sin had been exposed, he had sought the Lord’s forgiveness, and it had been granted. A right spirit had been renewed, and a clean heart had been created. Then came the news that his child was gravely ill. The revelation threw David to the floor in anguish as thoughts of his sin filled his mind. Months had passed, but now his sin had come out of hiding to remind him of his treason against the God of the universe.
Years later, another son rebels, and again David is reminded of the sword that has been driven into his family because of his sin. Another brutal reminder that he, at one point, thought he knew better than the Lord of all creation. In his sinfulness, he desired something that the Lord had forbidden, but David ignored the law because he thought he knew better than his creator what was good for him. Oh, but how that sin has haunted him. How many times he thought he was done with it. He had repented, he had been forgiven, but regardless, it seemed to pursue him. Though it had no hold on his life, and there was no possibility that his sin could exact its wages from him due to the redemptive plan and work of God, it was not going to let him forget.
It seemed to sit in silence for extended periods to make David comfortable. Then as he would be going about his day, there would be those moments when something, whether it was something he saw or something he heard, gave his sin an opportunity to spring up on him and cloak his day with darkness by taunting him of his failures and reminding him of his foolishness.
You see, one or two moments of sin do not simply last for a season. Many times, they have a way of coming back in little reminders which sink your spirits every now and again, and the fact that it comes on when you least expect it is what makes it all the more difficult.
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What Is Divine Simplicity? And Why It’s Simple to Understand
Some today find divine simplicity to be a strange doctrine because it means God can not be made up of a combination of things. So how can God be Father, Son, and Spirit? I find this objection even stranger because those most known to affirm the Trinity such as Athanasius and Augustine found no such problem!
Divine simplicity is the answer to the question, “What is God made out of”? Is he like us, body and spirit? No. Jesus says God is Spirit (John 4:24). Is he matter and form? No. Genesis 1 and John 1 say God made all “matter.” He is not a creature, but the Creator. God is simple.
Despite how basic this doctrine of God is, many today question its truthfulness. Some claim that no Bible verse teaches the doctrine. Others believe simplicity means that God cannot genuinely be Father, Son, and Spirit. Still others simply think divine simplicity does not make sense.
I disagree. Divine simplicity is the second most basic doctrine in Scripture—after the fact that God exists. It is both biblical and simple to understand. And lastly, divine simplicity guarantees that God is Father, Son, and Spirit—that God is one and three.
Let me explain.
Is Divine Simplicity Biblical?
Since Divine Simplicity is the answer to the question “What is God made out of,” it is biblical insofar as the Bible tells us what God is. Everyone agrees that the Bible tells us who he is: Father, Son, and Spirit. But does it say what he is?
Straightforwardly so. Jesus tells us that God is Spirit (John 4:24). By contrast, Jesus says humans have bodies and souls (Matt 10:28). In Paul’s language, we might say we have an inner and outer man (2 Cor 4:16).
And this is why Jesus is so special. Remaining what he was (Spirit), he became what he was not (human). Or in John’s language, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Or as Hebrews says, Jesus partook of flesh of blood like we have (Heb 2:14). The point is that as God, Jesus has no flesh and blood. God is Spirit (John 4:24).
So by denying that God by nature has flesh and blood, we affirm that he is simple—Spirit.
From here, we can ask all sorts of questions about the revelation of God in Scripture. Is God made up of matter—material things like we are? Well, no. He has no flesh and blood. He has no human body. He has no nerves. He has no eyeballs. Those are created things. But Genesis 1 and John 1 say that all things came into being through God’s creative activity.
If God was made up of material stuff, he’d be a creature. But he is the Creator. So by denying that God has material stuff, we affirm that God is simple.
To me, this has to be one of the most simple doctrines in Scripture. Although, I can understand why some people get confused. Sometimes, divine simplicity doesn’t seem to make sense when we read about it.
Does Divine Simplicity Make Sense?
By asking the question “What is God made up of?”, we might answer: well, he is not made up of quarks and neutrons. That makes sense to us who live in the 21st century. But if you told someone living in AD 1220 that God is simple because he has no quarks and neutrons, they’d think you were out of your mind!
But here is the thing. Christians have affirmed that God is simple for 2,000 years. The combination of things that God can be made up of changes over time, given the language people use and what seems normal to them.
We think quarks and neutrons are normal. Medieval Christians thought potentiality and actuality were normal. They might say, God is pure actuality, and it would make sense like gravity, neutrons, and quarks might make sense to us. It is the language of our day.
Since the doctrine is as old as Christianity (really, it is eternal), people have used language normal in the 500s, 800s, 1200s, and 2000s to speak of God being simple.
We don’t talk about potentiality and actuality, or God being pure act today.
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Historic RPCNA Church Building Destroyed in Selma, AL Tornado
Selma, Alabama, experienced a devastating tornado on Thursday. Selma is rich in history. One bit of history many may not know is that Selma is home to the only predominantly African American RPCNA congregation. In 1874, Rev. Lewis Johnston’s the first African American to be ordained in the RPCNA, went to Selma to establish a school as well as to preach to freedmen.
On Thursday, January 12, 2023, the building of the Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), one of its historic congregations, lost their 19th century building to a tornado. The Selma congregation and the ministry out of this building has changed the course of Black history in the South and human history for so many. From Knox Academy to Claude Brown’s legacy, good kingdom work has been done in this place for well over a century.
Selma, Alabama, experienced a devastating tornado on Thursday. Selma is rich in history. One bit of history many may not know is that Selma is home to the only predominantly African American RPCNA congregation. In 1874, Rev. Lewis Johnston’s the first African American to be ordained in the RPCNA, went to Selma to establish a school as well as to preach to freedmen. The church was built in 1878, and it has stood for 145 years. On Thursday morning it was destroyed in the tornado. Please keep the people of Selma and the surrounding areas who were impacted by the tornado in your prayers.Read more on the tornado’s destruction in Selma.
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