The Long March Claims the Methodists

Chaplain at UMC convention on May 1st. Crucifixes not
required, just your obeisance to the rainbow. (WSJ photo)

The Methodists are among the last Protestant denominations to bend to the cultural winds: [bold added]

The United Methodist Church at its General Conference last week voted by large margins to lift its ban on practicing homosexual clergy and to eliminate from its “Social Principles” the statement that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. The decision is significant for what has long been one of the nation’s biggest religious groups, with more than five million members.

As with every other mainline Protestant denomination in America, there has been a long struggle over the church’s traditional teaching that homosexuality is wrong and that marriage is between a man and a woman. The UMC stood its ground for longer than many other denominations, even reaffirming its position and strengthening the penalties for breaking the rules in 2019. That, however, was also the year the UMC adopted a policy that allowed congregations to leave the denomination with their property. Traditionalists did so in droves, with more than 7,000 American churches departing in the past five years, preparing the way for the progressives’ triumph.

The recent changes weren’t surprising. Liberal Protestantism has always been a religious reflection of the broader culture. In the 1950s that meant supporting the Cold War, with John Foster Dulles being perhaps the most prominent liberal Protestant in public life. The 1960s, the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement changed that. Liberal Protestants continued to do what they have always done, adding a pious blessing and an air of divine sanction to the cultural politics of the day, but the politics moved left. As the notion of civil rights fused with the sexual revolution, supporting abortion, homosexuality and then transgenderism became the imperative of divine love.

We saw this phenomenon occur in my Episcopal Church decades ago. When non-chaste homosexuality became approved--not just in congregations but in priests and bishops--the Progressive takeover began, and millions left the Episcopal Church.

Today Progressives' triumph is complete (my retiring Bishop admiringly quotes Marx), with clergy openly lobbying not only for LGBTQ+ causes but for giving illegal immigrants the rights of citizens, free medical care for all, and the forced conversion of fossil-fuel power to wind and solar.

Someday I'd like them to explain why they repudiated nearly everything the Church told us 50 years ago, and why today's principles are the Way, the Truth, and the Light. But I'm not holding my breath. As Marx--the one whose followers didn't kill tens of millions--said, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."