An ongoing war

It’s time to draw a few conclusions from the recent split of the United Methodist Church.

First, some background: At the 2016 General Conference, so-called “conservatives” created a path for disaffiliation for churches that did not agree with the draconian anti-gay measures they pushed through. The idea was that “progressive” churches could leave the church if they did not like the new rules.

A tidal wave of response made it clear that by the 2020 General Conference, “progressives” would be in control, and all the restrictions about sexuality that “conservatives” had jammed down everyone’s throats would be thrown out.

So “conservatives” bailed. They took the path of disaffiliation that they had created for “progressives” to leave, and they parted ways with their home church. More than 7,600 churches left – about one fourth the denomination. More than half of those leaving decided to join the new Global Methodist Church.

According to one study, 71% of disaffiliating churches came from the Southeast and South Central jurisdictions. These were always more conservative than other areas. In the Northwest Texas Conference, 81% of churches left. In the North Alabama Conference, 52% of churches left.

You should note that most churches that left were in the slave states that once tried to leave the union under the Confederacy.

In the years following the Civil War, these states fought Reconstruction hard. They created a “Jim Crow” system of near-slavery that was only partly dismantled during the human rights struggles of the 1960s. It remains in place, in part, in many areas today, though it goes by many misleading and prettified names.

In fact, I would argue that some of these states remain slave states today. They do not allow the legal enslavement of other human beings, but they still promote public policies that exalt some people at the expense of others and oppress or enslave other people to do it.

Some observers see the creation of the Global Methodist Church in terms of the 1845 split of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a split that created a Northern church opposing slavery and a Southern church embracing slavery.

I go even farther than that. I see the revolt against the United Methodist Church as a rebellion against freedom that seeks to form a new Confederacy where forms of human slavery are prettified, justified and promoted.

In their efforts to leave the United Methodist Church, many “conservatives” said that the UMC no longer believed in biblical authority. “Progressives” replied that the issue wasn’t biblical authority but rather biblical interpretation.

I think both sides were wrong. Though biblical authority was talked about a lot, the real issue was always culture. “Conservatives” don’t want to rub shoulders with gay and lesbian people, just as others before them (and many still today), don’t want to rub shoulders with Black people.

Southern culture was always about the pride of hierarchy. True Southerners always knew their place, from “poor white trash” to the elites who ruled the roost from their palatial plantation houses. Blacks fit in only as slaves. Gay and lesbian people don’t fit in at all. Their very existence threatens the social order.

White male supremacy ruled Confederate culture. It still does. White males dominate. There is no room for the non-white non-male, especially those who reject male supremacy altogether by rejecting the male-female binary where males always rule by divine authority.

Sometimes we talk about “culture wars” as if they take second place to political or ideological conflict. I don’t think so. I think culture wars are now, and always have been, the ruling factor in all our national conflicts. You’re either with me and my kind or you’re against me and my kind. My kind always has the blessing of God and history, because we’re better than you, and that’s God’s simple truth, so there.

The United Methodist Church is far from perfect, I can testify to that. But it opposes slavery of any kind, so it is standing on the side of truth, justice and the Jesus Way, against all other forces in today’s culture wars. The recent split in the church is still more evidence that our culture wars are far from over.

The question is how we are going to live together, as Methodists and as Americans, when one side simply denies the legitimacy of the other.

You may accuse me of harboring the very attitudes I condemn. Not so, I say. I am willing to live with those with whom I disagree. If only they were willing to live with me and others like me.