Friday, October 11, 2024

Musings on the Evolution of Morality in the Church and Democracy

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., October 12, 2024


The church is in a slow decline, but few pastors are speculating on its future.  As a retired pastor of the United Methodist Church (UMC) I’m an exception to the rule.  I’ve criticized the failure of the church to  advocate moral standards taught by Jesus in politics, and its failure to reform exclusivist Christian doctrine that limits salvation to Christians.


I grew up in Columbia, S.C. and  attended Wesley Memorial UMC in the Shandon neighborhood.  My old church is a sad sign of changing times.  It was renamed Heyward Street UMC as it declined, and is now a mere ghost of its vibrant past.  In the past such UMC declines were mostly in rural areas, but now are evident in affluent suburban areas across America.


The issues dividing the UMC have cultural roots that have split Americans, along with demographic, moral and theological issues; and the problems are not being discussed in the church.  It’s not the neighborhood; near the failing Heyward Street UMC there is a thriving Unitarian Universalist Congregation that doesn’t emphasize Christianity.


At the end of the 19th century the Methodist Church was America’s largest Protestant congregation.  The UMC was formed in 1968, but United is a misnomer.  Most UMC congregations remain racially segregated, with most Black UMC members voting Democratic and most white UMC members voting Republican in a nation with racially polarized politics.


Most white Christians voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and continue to support Trump even after he tried to overturn the 2020 election and praised those participating in the January 2021 insurrection.  It reminds us that the church has failed to promote the moral imperative of the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors of other races as we love ourselves.


The church is the moral steward of American democracy, and the election next month will indicate where our church and democracy are evolving.  They both need altruistic morality to survive.  Over 200 years ago Thomas Jefferson observed that “The teachings of Jesus are the most sublime moral standards ever designed by man;” but the church ignored his sage advice. 


The UMC has split over sexual preferences, and allowed its congregations to choose whether to remain in the UMC or join other churches that are more compatible with its members’ moral preferences.  In the process the UMC never considered doctrinal changes to promote the altruistic teachings of Jesus that could have moderated UMC disaffections.

   

For America’s pluralistic democracy to survive, its people must be reconciled as stewards of democracy to provide for the  common good.  Jefferson understood that; but the church has continued to ignore the universal moral imperatives taught by Jesus.  The choice is ours.  Can the church save itself and democracy from human depravity in religion and politics?            


Notes:


A breakup of UMC churches over L.G.B.T.Q. issues has caused more than a quarter of UMC churches to defect, and the defections continue.  

“At issue for Methodists is the question of ordaining and marrying L.G.B.T.Q. people, a topic that has splintered many other Protestant denominations and which Methodists have been debating for years. In 2019, Methodist leaders opened a window for any congregations to leave over “reasons of conscience,” in most cases allowing them to take their property and assets with them in a clean break if they received approval to depart by Dec. 31, 2023. Many conservative congregations have done just that. “It’s the biggest denominational schism ever,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University. There were eight million Methodists in the United States in 2020, according to the U.S. Religion Census. Between large-scale departures and the broader trend of decline, Dr. Burge said, that number could drop by half in a decade.

The exodus marks a calamitous decline for the broader tradition of mainline Protestantism, which once dominated the American religious, social and cultural landscape. …Remaining congregations and leaders are taking stock of their losses, and looking ahead to a future in which the denomination’s footprint in the United States may continue to shrink (even as it grows overseas, especially in Africa). In Texas, a historic stronghold for United Methodists, more than 40 percent of churches have left.  “It’s significant, and it’s been at a high cost,” said Thomas Bickerton, a lifelong Methodist who is president of the denomination’s Council of Bishops. More than 7,500 congregations have left since 2019, a number that he said was slightly higher than leaders expected when they extended the offer. Next year, Methodists plan to vote on what will likely be their lowest quarterly budget in 40 years. Officially, the United Methodist Church still forbids same-sex marriage and does not allow “self-avowed, practicing” gay people to serve as ministers. But in recent years, some leaders began defying official restrictions on the practices, and the church now has a number of openly gay clergy and two gay bishops. Many anticipate that church law could change — and spur more departures.” See https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/us/the-united-methodist-church-schism.html.


On the relevance of Thomas Jefferson’s Jesus in the 21st century, see https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2019/05/musings-on-relevance-of-jeffersons.html.


Alex Detocqueville was a French aristocrat and intellectual who visited America in 1831, and he observed a mutual relationship between democracy and Christianity on morality that was critical to both.  Detocqueville observed that America’s many Christian sects shared a “Christian morality” that produced common standards of political legitimacy that defined what is right, and imbued American politics with its moral authority.  On the views of both Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville on the moral values of religion in American politics, see Religion, Moral Authority and Conflicting Concepts of Legitimacy (July 1, 2017) at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/07/religion-moral-authority-and.html. See also Musings of a Maverick Methodist on a Universal and Altruistic Jesus, August 19, 2023, at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/08/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on.html.




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