Home Christian News What Happened to United Methodists’ Proposal To Split the Denomination?

What Happened to United Methodists’ Proposal To Split the Denomination?

There were other factors, too: Yambasu, the driving force behind the protocol, died in a car accident in August 2020, pointed out the Rev. Tom Berlin of Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia, who represented centrist organizations in the protocol negotiations. The Rev. Junius B. Dotson, who negotiated on behalf of a number of centrist advocacy groups, died of cancer the following February.

Finances also had factored into the negotiations, Berlin said. Two and a half years into a pandemic that forced many churches online in its early days, he can’t say if the figures they considered remain valid.

And the denomination’s Judicial Council since has decided that annual conferences cannot unilaterally decide to leave the denomination.

“The protocol legislation is alive and well. What we did is we tried to help people understand we don’t think it’s got the support it once did, and we’re the authors of it. It’s not that I’m happy about that. It’s just that I think I have a responsibility of transparency to share with a larger church where people are at,” Berlin said.

Jan Lawrence, one of the signers of both the protocol and the Protocol Response statement, sees an opportunity to imagine something new.

The world is a different place than it was at the beginning of 2020, noted Lawrence, head of the LGBTQ-affirming Reconciling Ministries Network. Separation — one of the primary purposes of the protocol — already has started.

Everybody wants to avoid the bitterness of the 2019 special session, she said, which means “somebody’s got to come up with something new and what that new thing is.”

“The conversations haven’t gone far enough to really have a concept of what that might be, but by us walking away from the protocol, it gives room for those conversations to happen,” Lawrence said.

Jay Therrell. Courtesy of Therrell

Not everybody is as optimistic. The Rev. Jay Therrell, who recently became president of the theologically conservative Wesleyan Covenant Association, sees a denomination in chaos.

Therrell said Wesleyan Covenant members were disappointed by the Protocol Response statement and still believe the protocol is the best way for Methodists to move forward. His predecessor — the Rev. Keith Boyette, who now heads the Global Methodist Church — had been part of protocol negotiations.

“To us, it feels as though they have chosen to make what is already a very difficult situation even more so,” Therrell said.