(ANALYSIS) A fit slogan for the April 23-May 3 General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) could come from Yogi Berra, whether “it ain’t over till it’s over” or “it’s déjà vu all over again.”

Or on a more literary level, there’s “the past is never dead. It’s not even past” from William Faulkner. The following seeks to summarize the complexities surrounding this all-important event in Charlotte, including a future high-stakes fight for Africa. 

The UMC has just suffered America’s worst schism since the Civil War, with 7,658 traditionalist congregations, a quarter of the former total, departing as of New Year’s Eve. The Charlotte gathering will once again deal with the central problem that has plagued this prominent denomination for most of the 56 years since it was founded through a merger. 

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At issue is the authority and interpretation of the Bible, always crucial for Protestants, with the focus on sexual morality. Amid epochal liberalization in western culture, should the church allow actively gay clergy and same-sex marriages, which would also implicate heterosexual morality? 

The UMC’s previous General Conference in 2019 reaffirmed traditional sexuality teachings, which LGBT advocates in the church continually defy. The delegates there knew a split was unavoidable and approved an orderly one-time-only deal to let U.S. congregations leave through 2023 without handing over their buildings and assets. (The next General Conference in 2020 was then postponed three times until 2024 over COVID-19 logistics.)

“The season of division is over” and the 2019 “disaffiliation” property deal for breakaways must now cease, insists the Rev. Mark Holland, executive director of the “compatibilist” Mainstream UMC organization, launched in 2018 to win full LGBT inclusion. (Holland, a former mayor, was Kansas Democrats’ losing 2022 U.S. Senate candidate).

Meanwhile, the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA), founded in 2016 to rally traditionalists, is among those contending that U.S. congregations should get an extension and be allowed to leave if their bishops or district superintendents asked them to wait and see whether the UMC officially moves leftward.

It's possible that progressive delegates at Charlotte will figure that this year it’s politically wise to merely approve softened sexual language in the proposed rewrite of  the UMC’s Social Principles document, but delay decisive LGBT legislation till a 2026 special General Conference that the UMC bishops authorized last November. 

The major pending factor here is the UMC “scramble for Africa,” in the phrase of Simon Mafunda, the chief WCA operative on that continent. Other “mainline” Protestant denominations that recently liberalized LGBTQ policies exist only within the U.S. But the UMC includes large, fast-growing jurisdictions in Africa and Asia whose tradition-minded General Conference delegates have repeatedly joined the now-diminished U.S. conservative ranks to prevent sexuality changes. (Europeans mostly align with the U.S. “inclusivists” such as Reconciling Ministries Network).

The UMC bishops ruled that these overseas churches were not covered by the 2019 property walkout deal. So traditionalists now argue that in fairness the 2024 conference should grant them the same freedom to leave that Americans were granted. By official count, the UMC has 5.4 million U.S. members and 4.6 million overseas, but traditionalists say Africa alone encompasses half or more of the UMC’s membership, perhaps 6 million. (At Charlotte, Africans will have only 32% of the 862 delegates).

Which brings us to “regionalization,” a related concept in several of the 1,100 bills submitted for action at the Charlotte meeting. Holland, among others, believes it’s “a win/win proposition” to let UMC regions set varying policies to fit their ministry contexts. “The United States and Western Europe would allow ordination and marriage for LGBTQ persons,” he predicts. Africans and Asians would be free to maintain their traditional moral beliefs and apply church discipline accordingly.

This concept, which has been proposed before, would dramatically supplant the “connectional” system that has been a historical Methodist hallmark, making United Methodism less united and more like a federation. The U.S.-based denomination could thereby enact liberal policies yet hope to retain the loyalty of millions of overseas members. Bishops in Africa and the Philippines are on board. 

But traditionalists contend that it's healthier for a church to be unified on such basic matters and, whatever bishops prefer, African parishioners overwhelmingly want their church to uphold tradition. 

The chief option to continued UMC affiliation is the new Global Methodist Church. Its current roster of 4,407 congregations is heavily American but, as the name implies, it looks for recruits among the millions of fellow-minded traditionalists in Africa and the Philippines. The GMC will be organized at a Sept. 20-26 General Conference in Costa Rica. 

Interested Methodists, and others, can follow the daily action in Charlotte via the denomination’s official UMNews agency and the two interest groups cited above.

Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.