Reckoning Methodism: Mission and Division in the Public Church

By Darryl W. Stephens

Reckoning Methodism addresses the brokenness of The United Methodist Church (UMC) in the United States. Homosexuality is but one of several fault lines with decades-long histories in this predominantly White denomination. Demographic shifts, racism, and imperialism are heavily implicated in the current state of division. What, then, is the true nature and mission of this church?

The UMC is the public church divided. Distinct missional theologies arise from competing commitments and priorities. When Methodist programmatic initiatives--such as vital congregations, environmental witness, and volunteers in mission--fail to account for these differences, denominational unity is weakened. Constructively, this book seeks historical clarity, collective repentance, charismatic learning, and institutional courage as United Methodists reckon with inherited animosities and divisions. This book provides no answers or programmatic fixes. Rather, it provides possibilities for repairing past harms as United Methodists seek ways to continue living out their Wesleyan faith. Reckoning with the public church divided, we glimpse the nature and mission of the church--not only as it has been but also as it could be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781666775655

Darryl W. Stephens

Darryl W. Stephens is director of United Methodist Studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is author of Methodist Morals: Social Principles in the Public Church’s Witness (2016) and Out of Exodus: A Journey of Open and Affirming Ministry (2018).

Book preview

Reckoning Methodism

Mission and Division in the Public Church

Darryl W. Stephens

Reckoning Methodism

Mission and Division in the Public Church

Copyright © 2024 Darryl W. Stephens. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-7563-1

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-7564-8

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-7565-5

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Stephens, Darryl W., author.

Title: Reckoning methodism : mission and division in the public church / Darryl W. Stephens.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books,

2024

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-6667-7563-1 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-6667-7564-8 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-6667-7565-5 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: United Methodist Church (U.S.)—Doctrines. | United Methodist Church (U.S.)—History. | United Methodist Church (U.S.)—Government. | Church controversies—Methodist Church.

Classification:

BX8388 .S74 2024 (

paperback

) | BX8388 .S74 (

ebook

)

version number 03/01/24

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One: Imperialistic Mindset

Chapter 1: Point of Reckoning

Chapter 2: Global Ambition

Part Two: Missional Divergence

Chapter 3: Measuring Anxiety

Chapter 4: Mission Theology

Chapter 5: Mutual Encounter

Part Three: Lived Faith

Chapter 6: Historical Clarity

Chapter 7: Environmental Holiness

Chapter 8: Risking Love

Part Four: Tools for Reckoning

Chapter 9: Healing Congregations

Chapter 10: Dealings and Division

Concluding Reflections

Bibliography

To my siblings in Christ who have been denigrated, denied, refused, abused, rejected, or ejected.

Preface

I am a child of United Methodism, a US-centered church in the midst of divorce. As a White Christian in the United States, I have inherited the DNA of conservatives, progressives, centrists, institutionalists, and others in United Methodism. I am complicit in all of their failings. Their battles, fought openly in this broken home, rage within me. I have internalized both the shame and the pride, the oppression and the control, the love and the abuse. My church family system is scarred with unhealthy relational dynamics that I struggle to recognize, resist, and resolve—or risk repeating in the next generation. This family also includes many members who are not fully aware of the antagonism simmering within this household for generations. For this Methodist middle, the extremes seem exceptional rather than the rule, making it more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that dysfunction has become the norm at the denominational level. This is the legacy I have inherited. As my ecclesial parents separate and divorce, I am caught in between. Who has custody on Sunday morning?

This is a study both political and personal. I write from a White, US perspective as a scholar of the church, bringing a disciplined eye to the study of US institutions and White Christianity. I am a life-long member and an ordained deacon in The United Methodist Church (UMC). I have served in denominational leadership and currently serve on a conference Board of Ordained Ministry. As a White, heterosexual male clergyperson, I have benefited from many forms of social privilege. White privilege both shapes and limits my ability to critically examine structures of power within the UMC and US culture more broadly. Yet, I am committed to uncovering systems of oppression and working toward justice—even and especially in the church.

Reckoning Methodism is my attempt to come to terms with this ecclesial inheritance. I am still coming to terms with White Christianity and my own place within it. As a child of divorced parents, I recognize the brokenness. I also recognize the natural tendency of impacted children to try to reunite their parents, striving to save the marriage at all costs. At one point, I thought it possible to bring these estranged parents together for reconciliation. Reconciliation is not a possibility, however, if past harm has not been acknowledged. Any potential for reconciliation requires a reckoning. Here are a few observations.

Disagreement and division. Still the largest of the old mainline denominations in the United States, the UMC faced increasing division in 2023. The presenting issue was homosexuality. Conservatives sought to maintain this church’s proscriptions against same-sex marriage and the ordination of self-avowed practicing homosexuals. Progressives sought to overturn these ecclesial laws and affirm LGBTQIA+ persons in all ministries of the church. Disagreement yielded to deep division.

Estrangement and separation. The forces uniting Methodists in 1968 to form the UMC proved insufficient to hold them together a half-century later. The unlikely marriage of political activism, conservative social values, and a wide swath of well-meaning White middle-class churchgoers soured. In the twenty-first century, United Methodism still represented a broad, political cross-section of White US society. However, as US politics grew increasingly polarized, so did this denomination. Differences of opinion grew into outright animosity. Members became estranged, separating into like-minded caucuses and congregational enclaves mirroring their own opinions. They fought to claim the soul of their church, culture, and nation.

Control and abuse. Increasing legalism evidenced the battle for control within the UMC. Political jockeying, legislative maneuvering, judicial contestations, and church trials became the primary avenues of interaction among United Methodists on opposite sides of the aisle. Control rested with the majority conservative vote at General Conference 2019. Self-declared protectors of orthodoxy and holiness enacted harsh punishments for disobedience. Conservatives sought to exercise their power by forming a new denomination while also maintaining control within the UMC. These efforts echoed patterns of privilege deeply ingrained in patriarchal traditions of Christian practice. Progressives countered through formal and informal channels, wielding the tools of the oppressed to make their case for justice, including protests and acts of biblical obedience and ecclesiastical disobedience. LGBTQIA+ persons—more often talked about than included in talks—were treated harshly. Those who remained in the UMC suffered what can only be described as an abusive relationship within this denomination. Centrists became increasingly complicit in this abuse, continuing to profess love toward their gay and lesbian siblings in the faith while tolerating and upholding discriminatory structures in the name of institutional unity.

Brokenness and divorce. As of 2023, United Methodists in the United States were no longer united in any meaningful sense of that word. This church was broken, presumably over the inclusion or exclusion of gay and lesbian persons. The ties that bind had already been loosed. The marriage had ended in all but name. In the UMC, there was much regret and brokenness, to echo the UMC’s Social Principles on divorce. The Social Principles also acknowledge, Although divorce publicly declares that a marriage no longer exists, other covenantal relationships resulting from the marriage remain.¹ In the UMC’s situation, these relationships included the many congregations rent apart by this slowly unfolding divorce. Individual relationships also suffered. The main tasks remaining before the UMC are how to divide up shared assets and provide for the children.

My ecclesial parents have bequeathed a tradition laden with White privilege and division as well as the potential for growth in the love of God and neighbor. I hold dear certain parts of this tradition even as I grieve, working through my denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Grief is hard, spiritual work, and grieving about church is only more so: ritualized denial, righteous anger, sacred bargaining, the valley of the shadow of death, and handing it all to God. This study reflects all these emotions and responses, offering deep critique as well as hope, seeking justice as well as healing. Readers may find my tone too pessimistic at times or too hopeful at other times. We each grieve in our own way.

1

. UMC, Book of Discipline

2016

, ¶

161

.D.

Acknowledgments

As is the nature of scholarly writing, this project has been both a solitary and a communal endeavor. I have benefited from feedback and assistance from many people, though any remaining shortcomings or errors are my own responsibility. I would like to thank the following persons who agreed to be interviewed about their faith and experiences in The United Methodist Church: Andrea Brown, Marge Cumpston, Ruth Daugherty, Amy DeLong, Cathy Velasquez Eberhart, Timothy Eberhart, Jaydee Hanson, Carolyn Kendall, Dorothy Killebrew, Sue Laurie, Mary Merriman, Jenny Phillips, Tweedy Sombrero Navarrete, and Wesley White. Thank you also to Jessica Kahler for the front cover photo.

I express much appreciation as well for the following, who provided me with timely and valuable collegial support, encouragement, and, at times, critical feedback: Cynthia Astle, Andrea Brown, Kevin Carnahan, Susan M. Knipe, Karen A. McClintock, Rebecca Nyros, Kevin O’Brien, Hendrik R. Pieterse, David W. Scott, Ian Straker, Wesley White, and the staff of United Methodist Women (now United Women in Faith). Assisting me with research questions at various points in the project were William Furones, Dennis Hutchison, Frances Lyons, David W. Scott, and Mark Shenise. This project would not be the quality that it is without their support. Additionally, I would like to thank the following for permission to reuse and revise my previously published writings: Taylor and Francis (Routledge), Currents in Theology and Mission, FaithTrust Institute, International Journal of Practical Theology, Journal of Religious Ethics, Methodist History, United Women in Faith, and Witness: The Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education. Each instance is cited and noted at the appropriate point in the text.

Finally, much love and appreciation for my wife, Myka, a deaconess, librarian, professor, entrepreneur, and coach.

List of Abbreviations

COP21 21st Conference of Parties

COSMOS Commission on the Structure of Methodism Overseas

Council of Bishops Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church

EUBC Evangelical United Brethren Church

FACT Faith Communities Today

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

LGBTQIA+ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersexual, androgynous, and asexual

LMX Liberation Methodist Connexion

MEC Methodist Episcopal Church

NOMADS Nomads On a Mission Active in Divine Service

SAMHSA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

UMC The United Methodist Church

UMCOR United Methodist Committee on Relief

UMPH United Methodist Publishing House

UMVIM United Methodist Volunteers in Mission

UN United Nations

US United States (adjectival form)

WCC World Council of Churches

Wespath Wespath Benefits and Investments

Introduction

This book is written at a time of increased political fervor, often cast religiously. Political leaders are promoted as saviors, conflicts are depicted in apocalyptic terms, political parties shun adherents who do not conform to their orthodoxy, and competing truths vie for belief. These social and political divisions arise not only between churches but also within churches. To make sense of this reality, this book focuses its attention on the dynamics of one, White-majority Protestant institution in the third decade of the twenty-first century in the United States: The United Methodist Church (UMC).

Why You Should Be Worried about the Split in the Methodist Church.¹ This headline in Politico, a news source that bills itself as the global authority on the intersection of politics, policy, and power, underscored the symbolic if not material importance of this denomination’s division. United Methodists contribute to the moral deliberation of a larger public through their lived witness in neighborhoods and communities, institutional presence, and social pronouncements. In the best of circumstances, the lives, practices, and testimonies of United Methodists inform a broader conversation about society and its goals. In the worst of circumstances, their rancor is both an expression of and contribution to social polarization and alienation. When United Methodists live out and talk about their faith, they represent and have an impact on both the society in which they live and the denomination in which they hold membership. The dynamic of acrimony within the UMC reflects a political polarization extending throughout US society.

The membership of the UMC in the United States is 90 percent White and evenly divided politically.² A survey by Public Religion Research Institute revealed that, among United Methodist clergy in the United States, 38 percent identified as liberal, 23 percent moderate, and 39 percent conservative.³ This big-tent church includes a wide range of political ideologies among its membership. For example, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Jeff Sessions are all United Methodists. The UMC also encompasses a range of agreement and disagreement among White US Christians, though this church extends far beyond the borders of the United States. With over half its membership in Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia, this church includes many diverse voices, cultures, and perspectives—bringing global realities and complications to its inherited mindset of White US imperialism.

Mission and Mindset

What is the true nature and mission of the church? Raphael Warnock posed that question as central to his study of the divided mind of the black church in the United States.⁴ Warnock, bivocational pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and US senator, argued that the Black church in the United States is characterized by competing strains in need of an integrative moment. On the one hand, he saw a tradition of Spirit-centered, soul-feeding piety, focusing on individual salvation with an other-worldly orientation. On the other hand, he observed a tradition of this-worldly public witness, a protest community seeking social and political liberation. Echoing W. E. B. Du Bois, he described the tension between piety and protest within Black Christianity as a form of double-consciousness, recognizing the direct influence of White evangelicalism on the pietistic strand.⁵ He argued that both emphases, evangelical and liberationist, are necessary to the church to witness to a holistic understanding of salvation.⁶ Warnock aimed to promote a full-orbed pastoral and public theology of black liberation through the development of a self-critical black liberationist community—his vision of the true nature and mission of the church.⁷

I share Warnock’s question, though I stand in a much different social and ecclesial location. I am White; Warnock is Black. My ancestors enslaved Africans, and I continue to benefit from structures of anti-Black racism because of the color of my skin. He is descended from enslaved persons and faces racist structures of oppression every day because of the color of his skin. My tradition is White Protestant Christianity, though adherents identify it simply as Christianity. Warnock defined the Black church as the varied ecclesial groupings of Christians of African descent, inside and outside black and white denominations, imbued with the memory of a suffering Jesus and informed by the legacy of slavery and segregation in America.⁸ As a contrasting parallel, I define White Protestant Christianity in the United States as varied groupings of Christians and Christian institutions of European descent, inside and outside the church, imbued with the awareness of Christ’s victory over sin and death and shaped by the legacy of slaveholding and White privilege in the United States. My definition includes White Christian nationalists and other cultural Christians who may have no ecclesial identification, operating wholly outside of the church.

White Christianity, as a whole, holds onto a triumphalist Christology supporting structures of White privilege in contrast to the suffering Jesus Warnock recognized in the Black church.⁹ The entrenched support of Whiteness is the subject of Robert P. Jones’s book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.¹⁰ William B. Lawrence interrogated this legacy in his book When the Church Woke, noting the racist complex with its sense of White superiority permeating past and present within US Methodism.¹¹ Where Warnock and other members of the Black church live within the conflicting intersectionality of being black and Christian in America,¹² I and other White Christians in the United States live with the privilege and complicity of being White and Christian, often identifying more with Christ’s lordship than Jesus’s suffering. Furthermore, while the legacy of slavery and segregation is often a point of explicit reference and lament in the Black church, the legacy of slaveholding and White privilege is rarely acknowledged in White Christianity.

Our differing social and ecclesial locations demand different responsibilities as we reckon with the traditions of our respective churches and communities. Warnock and I are both self-critical about our respective church traditions; however, differences in location and perspective necessitate a contrast in studies. Warnock addressed the Black Church, a tradition united in relation to the White culture against which it is defined. The White church, though, is not united and cannot be viewed in contrast to the White culture from which it arose and in which it is situated. Thus, in contrast to Warnock’s study, The Divided Mind of the Black Church, my inquiry could be cast as an investigation of the divided church of the White mind.

The White mind is not divided, at least not in the sense of experiencing the racial double consciousness that Du Bois so famously depicted among Black folk. The White mind in the United States is not divided because the White experience is all too normative, prompting little moral dissonance in situations of racial inequity. For example, Gary L. Roberts, in his history of Methodist involvement in the Sand Creek massacre, wrote about the white American mindset as a sense of cultural superiority among Anglo-Americans, relating this viewpoint to Manifest Destiny, which I discuss in chapter 6.¹³ Today, this mindset continues to entwine nationalism and Whiteness and Methodism among US adherents. White Christianity easily yields to a conflation of Christianity, power, and nationalism—maintaining structures of White privilege. In 2016, the General Commission on Religion and Race of the UMC reported on continued racism and cultural discrimination in the Church and the U.S.-centric mindset favored within the organization of the UMC.¹⁴ Thus, when I refer to White privilege and racism, I refer to structures rather than personal biases and choices. Combined with a sense of US exceptionalism, this legacy is what I call the inherited mindset of White US imperialism or a mindset of White supremacy or, simply, the White mind. These terms are meant to implicate all White persons living within and benefiting from structures of racism, myself included.

The White mind shares experiences of privilege even as reactions to that privilege vary. White institutions and their members respond or react to this inherited mindset in diverse ways—through antiracism work, through new structures of paternalism and discrimination, and even by trying to ignore race. Some focus on evangelism and otherworldly salvation, hoping to transcend race by ignoring its material implications. Others engage in social justice work, recognizing the sin of racism but resisting the sacrifices required for reparations. Many participate in ministries of mercy, paying penance through service for racist structures they are unwilling to confront and change. Competing factions of Whiteness struggle against each other to define the true nature and mission of the church. The White church tradition is divided, struggling to define itself in relation to a culture in which its hegemony is waning.

The Public Church

When United Methodism actively engages in the issues of the day, it functions as the public church. The public church is a sociological category describing a contemporary manifestation of Ernst Troeltsch’s church type, in contrast to sectarian or mysticism types.¹⁵ Steven M. Tipton described the public church as that form of religion that dares to engage in the messiness of the moral argument of our public life, that risks worldliness for the sake of faith.¹⁶ The public church is characterized by the coherence of its disagreement—it functions within a larger public, engaging in the give and take of deliberation about the common good. In the public church, one finds the questions, fears, disagreements, and hopes debated across society. However, the public church expression of Christianity has been under attack since the mid-twentieth century. Orchestrated attempts to undermine the mainline, particularly its social justice ministries, are well-documented in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church (US), and the UMC.¹⁷

In 2016, I argued, both descriptively and prescriptively, that United Methodism is best understood as the public church.¹⁸ My vision for the UMC in 2016 was not unlike Warnock’s insistence on an integrative moment in the Black church’s theology, practice, and community.¹⁹ To fulfill the potential of the public church, I argued, United Methodism needed to grapple with the challenges of worldliness by redeeming politics and community, liberating oppressive structures, and growing in sanctified wisdom as a denomination.²⁰ Holding evangelical, social justice, and other commitments together requires ongoing moral deliberation and relationship. According to Tipton, public life is enhanced—within the public church and more broadly—when members are willing to keep listening to one another and trying to persuade one another by example and by critical, conciliar dialogue.²¹ This is also the nature of covenant, as described by Robin W. Lovin.²² However, I have come to realize that this is not the case within the UMC; there are too many United Methodists who have decided not to try anymore to understand or persuade.²³ United Methodists with diametrically opposed views ceased genuine dialogue decades ago.

In the 2020s, the UMC experienced a splintering, the beginnings of a significant institutional realignment.²⁴ The last major schism in US Methodism, into Northern and Southern branches in 1844, anticipated the US Civil War. Despite the end of armed conflict and a reunited Methodism, those lines of geographic and ideological division are still apparent—in church and society—over 150 years later. Since the early 1990s, influential groups of United Methodists have ceased moral debate on the issues that most divide them. Measured deliberations have yielded to political power plays. On the denominational level, United Methodists talk at each other and do not listen to one another. Many are openly antagonistic toward those with whom they disagree, putting at risk the viability of the UMC as a united institution.²⁵

A Process of Reckoning

Reckoning Methodism addresses the brokenness of the UMC; it is a case study of the public church divided. Race is not the primary topic of most chapters but is constantly in the background when not in the foreground. Thus, I agree with David A. Hollinger’s observation, Race does not explain everything, but it is intertwined with religion at virtually every point in the history of the United States.²⁶ The same is true of that most quintessential of White US denominations—the UMC.

My analysis of the UMC’s divisions provides an interesting contrast to Hollinger’s analysis of the American fate of Christianity, in which he depicted an ongoing battle between evangelical and mainline (ecumenical) Christianity.²⁷ Both books focus on divisions within White Protestantism in the United States, both note its waning influence during this time of dramatic cultural change, and both grapple with the undercurrent of White racism. Hollinger presented an instrumental understanding of the nature and mission of the mainline church, the other Protestants. In his depiction, ecumenical Protestantism—including United Methodism and in contrast to evangelicalism—was the force of democratic progress within a maturing republic. Their more cosmopolitan Protestantism arose from differences in education, theology, class position, and cross-cultural contact, he argued, explaining why ecumenical Protestant leaders did more than most of their white Christian contemporaries to diminish racism, sexism, imperialism, Orientalism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism and to advance justice.²⁸ This worldliness led to increased secularization among mainline Protestants and within US society more broadly, he argued, ceding the Protestant religious sphere to evangelicalism. Rebutting the popular sociological thesis of Dean Kelley, that conservative churches were growing because they maintained higher expectations than their liberal counterparts, Hollinger argued the opposite: whereas ecumenical, mainline Protestantism engaged in the struggle for racial justice and social justice as a commitment of faith, [e]vangelicalism made it easy to avoid the challenges of an ethnoracially diverse society and a scientifically informed culture.²⁹ Thus, mainline churches lost membership due to their expectation that members engage in difficult conversations about race, poverty, and other structures of oppression.

There is much in Hollinger’s interpretation of history with which I agree—and nuance I find lacking. His response to Kelley’s thesis is compelling. His recognition of the ever-present dynamic of White racism is accurate. However, his binary distinction between cosmopolitan ecumenical Protestants of the mainline and scientifically uninformed evangelical Protestants is reductionistic. The UMC includes both evangelical and ecumenical Christians within one mainline denomination—as well as many others who do not neatly fit into these labels. This reality complicates Hollinger’s analysis. Furthermore, ecumenical Protestants can be just as parochial and uninformed as those who do not share their (presumably) more educated viewpoint, and evangelical Protestants have proven themselves quite sophisticated in their rhetoric, use of media, and international engagement. Both groups of White Protestants share an inherited mindset of racial superiority, even as they respond to this legacy in multiple and divergent ways. Hollinger’s history lacks sufficient attention to the dynamics of power and paternalism and differences in missional theology and engagement to elucidate the divided church of the White mind. Finally, he imagined ecumenical Protestantism fading into a post-Christian, enlightened society experiencing progressively more justice for all, while evangelical Protestantism turns religion more conservative and becomes more isolated from an increasingly secularized US democracy. As I reckon with United Methodism, however, I see more than a worldly instrument leading to something beyond Christianity.³⁰ I see evidence of God’s holy disruption and the potential for repentance and transformation.

I begin with a discussion of demographic shifts. Homosexuality is but one of several fault lines with decades-long histories in this denomination. White racism and imperialism are heavily implicated in the arguments over homosexuality.

Prominently, the divided church of United Methodism finds concrete expression in divergent approaches to mission. Distinct missional theologies arise from competing commitments and priorities, such as congregational health, evangelistic focus on the exclusivity of Christ, social justice–oriented action, paternalistic benevolences, and interfaith partnership. These five approaches to mission in the UMC—church, evangelism, justice, service, and partnership—are grounded in and motivated by different understandings of the faith Methodists presume to hold in common. When Methodist programmatic initiatives, such as vital congregations and volunteers in mission, fail to account for differences in missional theology, the fabric of denominational unity is weakened—as evidenced during the past five decades in the UMC. Hence, the divided church. Understanding can be achieved only through dialogue and mutual encounter in collaborative projects of shared, material concern.

Then, I offer several constructive examples of lived faith, combining elements of the five approaches to mission mentioned above. United Methodists have tried to address their relationships with the earth and each other through collective repentance. When seeking historical clarity on past sins of the church, though, White Christians are not in agreement about their collective responsibility, particularly toward Native Americans. A call to environmental holiness is another enduring practice within Methodism. Despite the complexity of problems, such as environmental racism, Methodists glean from developments in scientific and cultural knowledge to make a bold witness, even as their views continue to evolve and deepen. A third example of lived faith focuses on a local congregation learning to love their neighbors through open and affirming ministry, leading also to anti-racist commitments.

This book provides no answers or programmatic fixes. Rather, it provides possibilities. Tools for institutional courage, drawn from literature addressing sexual abuse and violations of trust in the church, offer practices of healing. Examining the dealings and division within the UMC, the witness of folks within, without, and beyond United Methodism suggests possibilities for repairing past harm. Healing and reparation are shared, material projects, though. Diverse ways forward for United Methodists must emerge organically from lived communities of faith and regional (annual) conferences rather than through a top-down approach, as is characteristic of General Conference. No matter their understanding of the nature and mission of the church, United Methodists must reckon with the brokenness of their denomination and find ways to continue living out their Wesleyan faith in a culture that still needs their witness.

The methodology is inductive, analytical, and exploratory. I utilize tools of sociological, historical, institutional, and theological analysis. How did we arrive at the present moment? What parts of this tradition need to be examined, critiqued, and dismantled? What do we keep? As a Christian social ethicist, I study institutions, including those to which I belong. I voice a commitment to social justice. I believe that the Good News of Christ supports the common good and liberates the oppressed—and that the church should, too. This study examines an imperialistic mindset, vital congregations, missional theology, radically inclusive love, and institutional betrayal. These are wide-ranging topics. They find commonality in the practice and inheritance of United Methodism in the United States, the branch of Methodism entrusted to me, in which I am enculturated, and with which I must reckon on a daily basis.³¹ Through this study, we glimpse the nature and mission of the church—not only as it has been but also as it could be.

Outline of Book

This book consists of four parts. Part 1, Imperialistic Mindset, situates the UMC historically, sociologically, and institutionally. As the public church, the UMC is fully engaged in the struggles of society—and its tools of power. Chapter 1, Point of Reckoning: At the End of White Christian America, situates the identity struggles of the UMC within White mainline Protestantism in the United States through historical and sociological analysis. Drawing on Robert Jones’s research on demographic changes in the US religious landscape, this chapter exposes racial undercurrents in United Methodist intradenominational debates. Chapter 2, Global Ambition: Unfinished Business from the 2008 Merger, reveals a pervasive US-centrism shaping the UMC and its structures. Comparing the 1968 merger that created the UMC to a 2008 merger that has gone largely unacknowledged, this chapter reveals the UMC wrestling with both its global imperialism and its inability to manage the consequences. This imperialistic mindset is built into the structure of the UMC in relation to central conferences—those outside the United States. With its membership outside the United States now this church’s majority, the UMC faces a reckoning here and abroad.

Part 2, Missional Divergence, examines diverse rhetoric and practices for relating to others in God’s name. This analysis illuminates underlying theological differences within the UMC in the