The Methodist Church: How Cultural Clashes Are Changing Religion

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Alyssa Hurst:

You're listening to RadioEd.

Lorne Fultonberg:

A University of Denver podcast.

Nicole Militello:

We're your hosts, Nicole Militello.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Lorne Fultonberg.

Alyssa Hurst:

And I'm Alyssa Hurst. It may not be considered polite to talk religion, but that's exactly what we're up to today. And why not? Religion is emotional, it's political and it inevitably shapes so much of what's happening in the world today. Now, tensions between tradition and progress are running high, and that's particularly evident when you take a look at the United Methodist Church, where more traditionalist members are considering breaking away over same sex marriage and the acceptance of LGBTQ clergy. Methodism is the second largest Protestant denomination in the country, and has millions of members across the globe. With influence like that, this is bound to be a fascinating story, but it also has real consequences for Methodists and beyond. I spoke with religious studies professor Gregory Robbins, who shared details of the potential split and what it might really mean for the state of religion in the US.

Alyssa Hurst:

Can you start by telling me a little bit about the Methodist denomination in general and what's unique to it here in the U.S.?

Gregory Robbins:

Methodism came to the United States in the 18th century, and founded by John Wesley. It was a reform movement within Anglicanism in the 18th century. It is a movement that is characterized by hope and this idea of God's grace that comes before a conversion, but a unique emphasis within Methodism is this idea of the possibility of the sanctification of life, sanctifying grace, a gift which brings holiness to the individual's life. It is also a denomination that is characterized by its interest in social justice. From the 18th century with industrialization in England and the difficult life that people in the factories lived in the tenements, Methodism has always been interested in social justice and continues to be as a modern denomination that now is a worldwide denomination. It's important to think of Methodism as maybe the largest ecclesiastical democratic group in the world. There are about 12 million United Methodists in the United States, and globally, 80 million Methodists. The way in which the church is organized is quite democratic, and so as an institution it's a force to reckon with.

Alyssa Hurst:

Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit about this split that they're looking at right now?

Gregory Robbins:

The split is entirely focused on LGBTQIA issues, and about whether or not the denomination should ordain those people to its ministry, but also to accept same sex unions. And, in a sense, it represents that war between Christian faith and culture. Many years ago in the 1960s, a theologian named H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a book called "Christ and Culture", and he ultimately, you know, his desire was to talk about Christ above culture. And, to a certain extent, this is what the denomination, or some factors of the denomination, are trying to assert — this idea of Christ over culture — because culture has left the church on that issue.

Alyssa Hurst:

So, is this split happening along generational lines? Is this old versus young? Are there any kind of sides that we can see clearly here?

Gregory Robbins:

I think the most important takeaway is that this is a split along global lines. In the United States, there are 54 annual conferences which govern the church, and globally, then, there are 70 others, many of which are in Africa and the African church is very conservative and is calling the shots here. However, I also point out that when I, you know, poll students in my classes and I'm, you know, a professor in the department of religious studies and I teach Christianity and I teach New Testament, the scriptures of Christianity, it's clear to me that among the kids in my class, probably 30% of them are not affiliated with a church at all, but 100% of them are behind their LGBTQIA brothers and sisters. The church has lost that battle among young people.

Alyssa Hurst:

Interesting. So, what would the logistics of this split look like? Is there money involved? What would happen on the ground level in these community churches?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, what happens is you have these conferences, and every conference will be asked to take a vote. The vote requires a 57% approval for a conference either to stay with the United Methodist Church or to join what will be a new traditionalist body. And then, individual churches, okay, so let's say a convention voted 57% or 63%, 75% to stay with the United Methodist Church and not join the traditionalist group. Then, an individual congregation could also vote to leave the conference, but it again would require more than a simple majority, a 57% vote.

Alyssa Hurst:

Very interesting. So, is there money involved in this? How does this look on the higher levels, then?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, what it's going to mean for the United Methodist Church ultimately is that this is a denomination that considers itself connectional. That is, that no congregation is a congregation on its own. It's connected to other congregations and the region and jurisdiction and annual conference. So, it means that congregations will be more individual. Probably the hardest decisions to be made are going to have to do with clergy pension funds. They can work out the congregational part and the property part, but the pension funds are going to be difficult.

Alyssa Hurst:

So, I certainly haven't seen anything like this before, but maybe you have, having a little bit more expertise in this. Is there precedent for this kind of split?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, it certainly happened in the Episcopal church, with first the ordination of women in the late 1970s, but then also the same sorts of issues around ordaining clergy and same sex unions. And so, there are conservative wings of the Episcopal church that broke away from the Episcopal church in the 1980s.

Alyssa Hurst:

How did that play out? How did that pan out for them?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, I mean, it meant lost membership. It meant hard feelings, but ultimately it's worked out OK.

Alyssa Hurst:

Do you think that will be the case here? Is this a risky move for the Methodist church, or is this something that could make it stronger?

Gregory Robbins:

I don't think it's a risky move. I think it's pretty much inevitable, and it will be difficult at the beginning, but I think both groups will be happier in the end.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure. So, how contentious is this looking right now? Are they seeing it more as a divorce or like a Gwenyth Paltrow conscious uncoupling?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, the way I've seen it ... I was recently at a conference at the Iowa School of Theology and they had a panel, and it's just, it has promoted very thoughtful conversations within congregations where they're being quite open about where they are and where they might be going, and I think that's a good thing. It's not simply being controlled by the clergy or by the bishops, but by thoughtful people within the congregation.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure, that definitely seems like a positive source of conversation. I have this quote that I read in the New York Times that really stuck with me in an article about the split. It says, "We tried to look for ways that we could gracefully live together with all our differences. It just didn't look like that was even possible anymore." So, I'm curious if this split will likely end this pain and the problems that they're having or if it will help them move forward? You talked about this a little bit in your last answer, but ...

Gregory Robbins:

I think it will ease the pain. But, I want to come back to a point that I made earlier, that this has to do with international differences, global differences, and not simply dividing young between old or Southern between Northern in the United States. It's a much larger issue. What's dictating the stance, particularly in Africa in the global South, for example, is the power of Islam over and against Christianity, and the idea of how Christians in the global South are not seen as giving into American liberalism and losing an authentic voice against a religious tradition that is fiercely anti-LGBTQIA.

Alyssa Hurst:

Very interesting. Here in the U.S., What does it look like? Do you think the United States Methodists will probably fall into this more liberal view versus the traditional denomination that looks like it's going to split off?

Gregory Robbins:

I think that's right.

Alyssa Hurst:

OK. So, I'm curious what the younger generation's role in this. Are they turning away from the church? Are they leading this charge in the U.S.? Are they working to reform the church? What kind of role are they taking?

Gregory Robbins:

So, I think I'm pretty confident in saying that about a third of younger folks have left religious traditions.

Alyssa Hurst:

Interesting.

Gregory Robbins:

And, they're interested in religion as an important phenomenon — that they need to understand religion and the role that religion plays in the modern world. It's a key part of the puzzle for understanding the modern world. So, they're not disinterested about religion, it's just that they don't find themselves practicing a particular religion. Some of them have left more traditional denominations to join nondenominational churches, community churches, churches that often have lively pop music and a different, less formal style of worship.

Gregory Robbins:

Yet, I also find that students can be very critical of those nondenominational churches as well, because they want them to be authentic. They want them to really be concerned about the people who are going there and not just about numbers, and they really are suspicious of religious traditions that have wedded themselves to capitalism. So, there's a kind of anti-capitalist, anti-materialist. They despise religious traditions that are constantly talking about money and about numbers and about market share.

Alyssa Hurst:

Very interesting. So, as you mention, there's kind of this decline in general in terms of churchgoership. Since 1948, that's been on a steady decline, and now only 50% of Americans are reporting that they regularly go to church or belong to a religion. What do you think is behind that decline on the broader scale?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, I think it's simply following the secularism that affected Europe, you know, 40, 50 years ago, and we're just catching up to the secularism. But, you know, modern life offers many alternatives now on Sunday, that families that have spent a whole week hauling kids to soccer lessons and hockey games and music lessons and whatever, are just exhausted by the time Sunday comes around and there are lots of alternatives.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure. So, I want to go back to the Methodist church for a second and just ask, what will congregations gain or lose from a split like this? Like, down on the ground level in these little community churches, what is happening to them because of this split, positive or negative?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, again, you know, if you've talk to Methodists, serious Methodists, one of the things they cherish about the denomination is this idea of connectionalism. What will happen, and really what has happened in Christianity throughout America — it happens to Jewish synagogues, it happens to Islamic mosques — that, to be in America means that your polity becomes more congregational. By that, I mean that the decisions are made in the individual parish, in the individual congregation. I wonder, then, if you won't have more individual statements or individual input about who the pastor is, the declining maybe authority of the bishop. Of course, it will depend on whether you stay with the regular United Methodist system, the progressive United Methodist system, or the traditionalist United Methodist alternative.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure, sure. One thing we've talked about in the past is that there are already LGBTQ clergy members in the Methodist church. So, if they're voting on whether or not that's okay right now, how are there already these people working?

Gregory Robbins:

Well, I mean, they've had to live a lie, and you know, they had to keep kind of undercover about it. So, when I was with this Renewal panel last week with the Methodist Church, I mean, there were a couple of candidates who were preparing for ordination, but then they don't know what their status might ever be until this gets decided this summer, and that's very painful to see.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure, absolutely. You mentioned, I mean, that this is much more than a local issue. This is very global —

Gregory Robbins:

But, it's also very local in the sense that the bishop of this particular conference, Karen Oliveto, is a lesbian woman who is married.

Alyssa Hurst:

Right.

Gregory Robbins:

And, she's been tried by the United Methodist Church, and her sentence is kind of pending. And so, it's for folks in Colorado, this is an intense issue.

Alyssa Hurst:

I mean, based on our conversation, this is not just the Methodist Church that is experiencing these kind of issues that are dividing people, so can you tell me a little bit more about that and how this is kind of expanding beyond the Methodist Church?

Gregory Robbins:

I think you have to distinguish between Protestantism and orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, and that the Roman Catholic Church, for example, in America is becoming increasingly Hispanic, so you have to reckon with what those sorts of changes have to do with the future. Again, with the Orthodox church, you have an identification along ethnic lines, and it's also an aging church. You have to do with the age of the congregations, the ethnic identity of the congregations. With Protestantism, the mainline denominations are tending to decline, or at least to age as well. Whereas, nondenominational churches, they tend to have a younger demographic, but it's also a demographic that is not necessarily loyal, they don't stick with the nondenominational church. You know, sometimes people attend because it's close by in the neighborhood. But, then if they move to a different neighborhood, there's no loyalty.

Alyssa Hurst:

With the Catholic Church, we're seeing kind of this split with this current pope who seems to have a little bit more progressive ideas and the former pope who is still alive and still kind of outspoken about his ideas. So, how is this looking in the Catholic Church specifically, or how is that playing out?

Gregory Robbins:

It plays out, again, along geographical lines.

Alyssa Hurst:

OK.

Gregory Robbins:

So, the church in South America, of course, would be wildly favorable to France. The church in Africa is much more conservative.

Alyssa Hurst:

Are those lessons that we can apply to the split here with the Methodist church as well?

Gregory Robbins:

I don't know. I'll go back to the point I made about Christ and Culture, the Niebuhr book in the sense that, it strikes me that the United Methodist Church, whether it had taken the conservative stance or the progressive stance could have taken a prophetic stance. But, as the case is now, culture has marched on, and so now whatever decision they make seems regressive or absurd.

Alyssa Hurst:

That's kind of one of the central tensions here with religion today, is this balancing of modern day culture, and as you mention, social justice and these issues that people are very fired up about, with the traditions that come with being part of a church. How can a church effectively balance that? Can you solve the problem of religion right now?

Gregory Robbins:

I don't think so. I think to be clear minded about where you stand vis-a-vis culture, and how you plan to engage cultural changes, and what ditch is worth dying in.

Alyssa Hurst:

Are there any churches out there, or even small clergies that you've seen that are handling these kind of changes really well or in a way that you see and admire?

Gregory Robbins:

I think the Episcopal church has done a fairly good job of addressing these issues in a way that that represents that people may not agree and may peel off, but in the sense that they have moved, for example, to write liturgies that celebrate same sex unions, that they have attempted to embrace and support women clergy, for example, and to really remove the glass ceiling, if you will, for women in leadership roles. So, to move, unlike the Church of England did, it does now ordain women bishops, but from the beginning, the Episcopal church said that if it were going to ordain women, we're also going to allow women to be bishops. For example, here in Colorado, the Bishop of the Episcopal church in Colorado is not only a woman, but she's an African American woman. You see that once the decision was made, you make the decision fully and all of the implications that go with it.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure.

Gregory Robbins:

If you agree to ordain LBGTQIA people to ministry, if you agreed to bless their unions, then you do it fully and consciously, and by changing the liturgies, for example, to reflect those sorts of decisions.

Alyssa Hurst:

So, obviously the issue here that's dividing the church is same sex marriage, and as you mentioned, LGBTQIA clergy members and ordaining them. Are there any social issues that you see coming down the pipeline that are stirring up these same sort of conversations in other denominations?

Gregory Robbins:

I don't think so.

Alyssa Hurst:

This is the hot button topic of today?

Gregory Robbins:

I think it's the hot button topic.

Alyssa Hurst:

Are other denominations going to have to grapple with this in the coming years?

Gregory Robbins:

Most of them have already. That's why it's, in so many ways, the United Methodist Church has been a progressive voice in this country and really on top of social issues. And so, for them to be kind of the last in the pack on this issue seems unusual. But, then I suppose, denominations addressing issues about climate change and about homelessness, but particularly about climate change. One of the interesting things is that among conservative denominations, conservative Protestant denominations in the United States, evangelical denominations, you find them increasingly engaging in climate change, and that has caused some friction, as you might imagine, because certainly, you know, the current president is a climate change denier, and his base is mostly in the denial phase of climate change, but not among young people.

Alyssa Hurst:

That brings up an interesting point of the relationship between politics and religion. So, I'm curious how that is shaping either this split or the tensions in the various churches right now.

Gregory Robbins:

Well, certainly, you know, the conservative Protestant denominations, often referred to as evangelical, but conservative Protestant denominations are ones that have not and do not accept ordination or blessing of same sex marriages, and they won't. But, oftentimes the politics are completely intertwined. They have been since the 1980s, with the rise of the religious right as a political movement within the country. But, it creates unusual alliances. So, for example, Roman Catholics are strongly right to life, and they are consistently right to life from the beginnings of life and with abortion, but also on capital punishment. But, then capital punishment sometimes gets aligned with the religious right, and gun control, and in ways that make for some uneasy unions and shifting alliances. And, it is the case in the United States that we are living in a time when these alliances are shifting constantly.

Alyssa Hurst:

With the church having this declining membership and experiencing sort of turmoil with splits like these, what is the path forward for success, or is religion dying out? How is this going to play out in the long term?

Gregory Robbins:

I don't think it's dying out. I think we're coming to terms with greater religious diversity, particularly in the United States.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure.

Gregory Robbins:

That religious diversity is uncomfortable for many people in a country that was largely white and Protestant, and you know, among original colonies, only one was aligned with Roman Catholicism and that was Maryland. But, things are very different now and we're a very different country, and I do think, you know, secularism is a force within American society and particularly among young people, but we're going to see a lot of realignments in terms of ethnicity and prominent denominations.

Alyssa Hurst:

The church-going is just kind of rearranging, it's not necessarily going away.

Gregory Robbins:

Yeah, I think that's right.

Alyssa Hurst:

OK. What does a split like this that the Methodist church is experiencing, what does that mean for people who are not Methodist or people who are not religious? Certainly, this has implications beyond just what will happen to the individual members of the congregations.

Gregory Robbins:

You know, it's disappointing, but I think life will go on.

Alyssa Hurst:

Sure. Do you think it has any, I guess, lasting impact beyond what will happen when this initial split occurs?

Gregory Robbins:

In particular, when I look around the neighborhood here at the University of Denver, right across the street is University Park United Methodist Church. Just a little ways down Evans was Evanston United Methodist Church, which is now a religious and interdenominational religious center because the congregation could not sustain itself. All of those congregations at one time were connected to various kinds of ethnic and geographic language communities, and now they're different things. Christianity in the United States is evolving and vibrant and waning in some cases, but always changing and reconfiguring itself. So, this is an interesting time.

Alyssa Hurst:

Well, thanks so much for being here today.

Gregory Robbins:

You're welcome.

Alyssa Hurst:

For more information on Greg Robbins' work at the University of Denver, visit our show notes at du.edu/radioed. Be sure to subscribe, and check back for new episodes every other Tuesday. Aaron Pendergast mixes our sound. James Swearingen arranged our theme music. Tamara Chapman is our managing editor. I'm Alyssa Hurst, today's host and Radio Ed's executive producer. This is RadioEd.