The Reality of a Church Destroyed in the Name of “Inclusion”
I’m angry, but mostly I’m sad. Something extraordinary has been lost.
Imagine this church: good people and good families, welcoming to all—a “United” Methodist Church (UMC).
Known for its generosity, this church spent significantly more of its money percentage-wise on outreach than many other churches of similar size. Giving was not merely substantial monetary donations but an abundance of hands-on volunteering.
Fellowship, youth groups, Sunday school, and preschool. Community spaces, a food bank, feeding the homeless, providing school supplies, delivering Christmas presents to families in need, clothing donations, dental care, and simply paying people’s rent.
Purchasing animals for families in Uganda, helping to build and maintain an orphanage in Guatemala, mission trips, rebuilding homes for low-income families, disaster response, and relief for victims of fires, floods, and hurricanes.
This church gave a lot.
My children have grown up in this church. My parents were founding members. We had my father's funeral there. I was a leader in worship music. But sadly, this church no longer exists. As someone who mostly keeps my faith private, this is a challenging subject to discuss. I’m angry, but mostly I’m sad. Something extraordinary has been lost.
Through the discernment process, my church held a vote on whether we would disaffiliate from the UMC. More than half of the members voted to leave but failed to reach the 66.7% threshold required for the exit to be validated by the UMC.
This was essentially the worst possible outcome for the church itself. Most of those members will leave the church, taking their donations, time, and compassion elsewhere. Many may be disillusioned and leave church altogether. A once-thriving church has been externally thrown into chaos and now faces reduced membership, financial hardship, and leadership changes.
Whether you believe the split of the UMC was primarily about same-sex marriage or see that as a convenient over-simplification obfuscating deeper issues, the loss is tangible.
In research during the process of discernment, the phrases “Progressive Methodism,” “radical inclusion,” and “doing the work” reminded me quite a bit of the “woke dismantling” of Queer Theory.
“As an activist framework, queer functions as a verb: ‘to queer’ is to ‘challenge the dominance of heterosexist discourses’ (Beemyn & Eliason, 1996, p. 165) or is a distorting, a making the solid unstable’ (Corber & Valocchi, 2003, p. 25). To put it another way, ‘queering’ is a complicating of the taken-for-granted heteronormativity of everyday practices, spaces, and discourses.” - New Discourses (https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-queer-v/)
In a somewhat odd parallel, the systematic dismantling of the church is similar to what appears to have happened to The Walt Disney Company in recent years. Hiding disruption behind demanding kindness is a constant feature of our current culture war.
A church is its people. Many with good intentions will attempt to pick up the pieces, but the price hasn’t been worth the cost. In many ways, the reasons don’t matter much. I sincerely mourn the loss.
I'm very sympathetic, with mixed emotions. We've lost both of our childhood churches - not through votes, but because the less-than-67% were too nice, too accommodating, to stand up forcefully enough against denominational trends. Gradually then suddenly, as the saying goes; this erosion goes back a long way. I recommend a book I found in a thrift shop and have since bought copies for several people (Life on the Vine, by Philip Kenneson) analyzing the unraveling of Western/American Christianity from "in the world but not of it" to most churches comfortable embedded in society as do-gooders, offering transactions and services to attract 'customers' with marketing to build brand loyalty. It's worse now than then (1999), literally shocking what some so-called churches advocate from the pulpit - never mind about the Trinity, no big deal if you don't believe Jesus is God, take whatever you like from the Bible and disregard the rest - to grow their numbers (and income) with very little focus on encouraging one another to grow in Christ.
We pay a good bit of attention to these shifts, and (if it makes you feel any better) I'd bet a lot that it will be the majority leavers who will commit to a new church and deepen their faith, while the rest fall increasingly away (or, following their playbook, move the goalposts to pick a new taboo and split again). The less than 67% have the benefit of being forced to deeper critical examination of their own faith through the process. I'm not saying the other side lacks introspection, only that going with the flow of the dominant cultural narrative allows or requires not thinking too hard in deference to the powers that be as their authority.
No culture war has any place within the church - not your church or my church but The Church "spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity" (CS Lewis). From our own experience looking for a new church more aligned with, well, Christianity, I can't count how many other former members of our church that's lost its way are already in the ones we're exploring. Keep the faith and the faithful find each other.