NEWS ANALYSIS: Are Methodists Headed for a Baptist-Style Conservative Takeover?

c. 2004 Religion News Service PITTSBURGH _ The United Methodist Church, with congregations in all but 133 of the nation’s 3,350 counties, prides itself on being the quintessential American church. Its 10 million members are black and white, north and south, George W. Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. As someone once said, if you want […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

PITTSBURGH _ The United Methodist Church, with congregations in all but 133 of the nation’s 3,350 counties, prides itself on being the quintessential American church.

Its 10 million members are black and white, north and south, George W. Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. As someone once said, if you want to find out what America is thinking, start by asking the Methodists.


But now, some in the nation’s second-largest Protestant church say conservatives have planted the seeds for a hostile takeover that would move the solidly middle-America church hard to the right.

It is, they say, eerily similar to the conservative resurgence that began in the Southern Baptist Convention exactly 25 years ago.

“The United Methodist Church is not where the Southern Baptists are, nor do I think we will be,” said the Rev. J. Phillip Wogaman, an ethicist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. “But there are clearly some in this church who would want to see us go that way.”

While the Baptist insurgents focused their attention on doctrinal purity in seminaries, conservative Methodists have pitched their fights on homosexuality. At this week’s General Conference meeting, they succeeded in tightening the church’s gay policies:

_ Delegates rejected, 527-423, an effort to acknowledge that “Christians disagree” on the sinfulness of homosexuality.

_ By a vote of 497-418, delegates extended a national funding prohibition on groups that “promote the acceptance of homosexuality” to local conferences.

_ Delegates added, by just 10 votes, “conducting ceremonies which celebrate homosexual unions or performing same-sex wedding ceremonies” to the list of “chargeable offenses” for clergy.


Other conservative-led efforts to abolish the Methodists’ left-leaning social policy agency, overhaul its women’s division and stack its highest court with allies were less successful.

Progressives who lost on almost every gay-related initiative saw the votes as symptomatic of a well-funded campaign to move the church to the right.

“We are becoming increasingly legalistic, moralistic, and it chills me to the bone,” said Don Cunningham, a retired pastor from Alameda, Calif. “We are sinking to deep, deep levels.”

Last year, a book, “United Methodism at Risk,” said as much. It argued that the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy and the independent Good News movement were trying to reshape _ in a conservative direction _ the United Methodist Church, along with the Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church (USA).

Evangelicals insist they are not pushing a right-wing agenda, but rather resisting the “radical assertions” of gay advocacy groups that would move the church to the left.

“I’m more than comfortable with where we are at, but not at all comfortable with where they want us to go,” said the Rev. Maxie Dunnam, a delegate and president of the evangelical Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky.


Could conservatives build on their success to launch a Baptist-style takeover? Experts say it is possible, but would be difficult.

Political realignments, like weather patterns, take time to develop and often can be hard to predict. With conventions only every four years (Southern Baptists meet annually), Methodist change comes as slowly as the barges pushing their way up the Allegheny River here.

Conservative Baptists enacted their agenda by electing a series of presidents who named allies to crucial appointments that gave them control over boards, agencies and seminaries.

Methodist bureaucracies are more entrenched, and there is no churchwide executive who can steer the agenda. Liberal Methodists continue to dominate the 14 church agencies _ of the 63 directors of the Methodists’ Board of Church and Society, only about a dozen are considered evangelicals.

The Rev. Jim Heidinger, president of Good News, said his group is trying to recruit more delegates to the legislative conventions who can then help “penetrate” the powerful agencies.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to have the local churches acting one way while the national leadership does something different,” he said.


Mark Tooley, who monitors the Methodists for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, conceded the agencies still drive the church, but “that’s less and less important as they decline in financial resources, staff and prestige.”

Southern Baptists and conservative Methodists share a strong base of support in Republican-voting states, but Methodists are more scattered _ and more diverse _ nationally than the Baptists.

Strong-willed liberals in the northern third of the country will continue to resist a move to the right. However, they are losing representation at all levels to fast-growing churches in Africa and Asia, who have emerged as faithful conservatives allies.

Tom McAnally, who served as the church’s top spokesman for more than 20 years, said “a middle that is wider than most” will keep the church together.

“There’s enough checks and balances and regional and cultural diversity in the church to keep one group from overwhelming the other,” he said.

When the dust finally settles, the power struggle may ultimately be as meaningless for rank-and-file Methodists as it has been for most Baptists, said Bill Leonard, dean of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University.


“These debates over who controls the denominations are fascinating because increasingly, denominations matter less and less to local churches,” said Leonard, a moderate veteran of the Baptist battles.

“Even if there were no crisis to divide members of denominations, local churches and regions are disengaging economically and organizationally from those national groups.”

DEA/PH END ECKSTROM

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