After the departure of 1000’s of traditionalist United Methodist churches from the denomination over the past five years, it would stand to reason that those congregations remaining within the fold are more progressive and open to ordination and marriage of individuals in same-sex relationships.
But the image is way more mixed.
A latest report from the Religion and Social Change Lab at Duke University that checked out disaffiliating clergy from North Carolina’s two United Methodist conferences or regions found that even after the departures, 24 percent of North Carolina clergy remaining within the denomination disagree with allowing LGBTQ people to get married or ordained inside the denomination.
“At least some amount of ambivalence over LGBTQ+ issues amongst UMC clergy is prone to persist for years to return,” the report concluded.
After a four-year COVID-19 delay and the departure of about 7,600 churches—a lack of 25 percent of all its US congregations—the denomination is prone to reconsider the difficulty of human sexuality when it convenes its top legislative body April 23–May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Given that the denomination is a worldwide body, with a whole lot of delegates from Africa and the Philippines, areas way more conservative of their views of human sexuality, it’s unclear whether the measures stand a probability of passing, at the same time as the US delegation is way more open to such changes.
Overall, the Duke report finds that disaffiliating North Carolina clergy were far more politically and theologically conservative than those that selected to stay. Some 85 percent of clergy who left the denomination disagreed with the notion that “all religious leadership positions needs to be open to people in same-sex relationships.”
Leaving clergy members tended to be more homogeneous of their beliefs and to steer somewhat smaller and more rural churches. Nearly all (94%) of leaving clergy were white. More than a fourth of leaving clergy—26 percent—were licensed local pastors, meaning they weren’t ordained and had less advanced ministerial training.
But the report paints an image of a reconstituted denomination that, at the very least in North Carolina, is politically and theologically diverse. Based on clergy’s assessments of their very own congregations, 59 percent of remaining congregations are evenly divided between Republican and Democratic parties, 2.2 percent lean Republican, and 18 percent lean Democratic.
“It could be a mistake to say that the denomination within the US has moved to being virtually uniformly progressive,” said Lovett Weems, director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, who didn’t seek the advice of on the report. “Clearly, those that left were almost universally conservative politically and theologically. But those staying show a more mixed picture.”
A complete of 671 churches across North Carolina left the United Methodist Church: 325 congregations within the North Carolina Conference, covering the eastern half of the state, and 346 congregations within the Western North Carolina Conference, covering the western half. The report was based on the 2 conferences’ updated clergy records and compared with a 2021 longitudinal survey of clergy.
Those churches accounted for some 139,361 members and 1000’s of others who attended frequently or sporadically. The southeastern region of the US has essentially the most United Methodist churches.
The study also showed that 59 percent of North Carolina pastors staying within the denomination said they’re at the very least somewhat more liberal than most individuals inside their congregation.
“For an extended time, studies have shown that clergy in mainline denominations are inclined to be a bit more liberal than their membership. And this just sort of takes it one step further,” said Weems. “We should recognize that the denomination remains to be more middle of the road than on the progressive end of things.”
