Thread by @Delafina777

Okay, I dunno, maybe this is too conspiracy theory-ish, but I just found kind of a creepy thing.

First, some context: in case you don't already know about this, the United Methodist Church is currently dealing with a ton of conflict over their recent anti-gay policy crackdown. Basically, they went back to anti-gay language from the 1970s, then made it MORE homophobic.

And I've been following this fairly closely because my congregation shares a building with a Methodist church, and because my dad is on the board of a Methodist church, and this has been a big deal for both those congregations.

And it's looking like the Methodist Church is going to schism over this. It sounds like they're already assuming they're going to lose most of the West Coast congregations, and if my dad's church--midwestern, politically mixed, don't ask don't tell on voting--is any indication...

...they're going to lose more than the West Coast. The denomination might basically split in half in the US. So why is this a big deal?

Well, it's sort of an indication that resisting political polarization might be impossible.

So, here's the thing. The United Methodist Church is the second-largest actual *organized* Protestant denomination in the US. (Non-denominational evangelicalism is bigger, I think, but as far as formal cohesive Protestant denominations with a central hierarchy go.)

There's another element in that chart from the Pew Forum I posted above (here's a link to the actual article: pewforum.org/2015/05/12/cha…) and that's that the Methodists are the largest mainline (as opposed to evangelical) denomination.

If you're like me, the terms "mainline" and "evangelical" are probably something you hear a lot, and you might have vaguely uneasy feelings about "evangelical" and none about "mainline," or, like me, find "mainline" vaguely reassuring, but not actually understand the difference.

Fortunately, PBS has our backs here, with a fairly clear explanation of the difference: pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro…

In very brief: evangelicals believe that the Bible is the inerrant divine word, have a stronger emphasis on proselytizing, and place more importance on personal conversion, being born again.

Versus mainline Protestants see faith more as a lifelong journey, generally place slightly less emphasis on proselytizing, and tend to see the Bible as divinely inspired but also as a human-influenced document.

So the fact that the largest mainline denomination might be about to break in half is *hugely significant.* That's a big blow to liberal Christianity.

I didn't initially understand how big, because most of my experience with religious group administration is with a synagogue, and we're pretty decentralized--the Reform movement doesn't really exert a ton of authority, we're on our own as far as budgeting, etc.

But in delving into this--it seems like in a lot of Protestant denominations (I assumed this was more of a Catholic thing), the church hierarchy, not the individual congregation, owns the building, pays at least part of the minister's salary, etc. E.g. justanswer.com/employment-law…

So, leaving the UMC might very well destroy--or at least shrink--a congregation, because they'd have to find a way to pay for space themselves, find a new minister or figure out how to pay theirs, and so on.

And it's the more liberal part of the Methodists that is looking at leaving and taking on that financial hardship and risk of dissolving entirely in the transition.

So here's the other half of this: The UMC is the biggest mainline denomination, and it's also pretty evenly split on political affiliation.

Or sorry, that was an inaccurate way to describe it--it's definitely more heavily conservative than liberal, but it's right in the center of the pack as far as political affiliation.

So, this is America, and religion matters a lot. And as long as the UMC was hanging in there as the largest mainline Protestant denomination, and a middle-of-the-road one politically, there's a powerful organization in which liberals and conservatives are in community.

And, I think, there was a balancing function going on there, in that the UMC wasn't going to throw its weight behind anything too extreme. It's serving an anchor function in Christianity, preventing it from being pulled as a whole to one political side.

Here's where we get to the conspiracy theory stuff. I'm checking FB while running my (now probably cold) bubble bath, and one of my friends has posted this article. newsweek.com/biggest-christ…

Just in case you don't want to click, that article is talking about how the US's largest Christian charity (and eighth largest nonprofit) is funneling money to far-right hate groups, especially anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant groups.

Given that it's the largest Christian charity out there, and I have a family member on the board of a Methodist church, I immediately start googling to see if any of its grants are going to Methodist churches.

And again, I want to emphasize that this isn't some fringe group giving money to hate groups. It's

the. largest. Christian. charity. in. the. United. States.

It has accepted $1.2 billion in donations.

So, in the course of googling to find out if Methodist groups have been getting grants from this foundation, I come across this: twocare.org/the-national-c…

Specifically, this: "Another of Howard Ahmanson’s projects has been the funding of efforts to promote schisms within mainline Protestant denominations, over divisive “wedge” issues such as same sex marriage and the ordination of gay clergy."

"Leading those drives towards schism have been the so-called “Renewal” groups within the Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and other traditionally centrist or liberal Protestant denominations."

So, I'd been assuming that the focus of conservative groups was on shifting these churches more rightward. Because all of the discussion around this makes it sound like the impetus for schism is coming from the liberal side.

This, however, makes it sound like right-wing funding and effort has been going into producing a schism.

And, like, shifting these denominations slightly rightward is probably possible, but more than "slightly" is likely hard, because they're large and established and have been comfortably centrist-to-liberal for a long time.

But what if they're not interested in shifting the largest, most established mainline denominations to be more conservative? What if they're trying to just *destroy* them?

What if the plan isn't to, long-term, make liberal/centrist Christianity more conservative, or even to bleed off membership? What if it's just to end them, quickly, so that the *only* large Christian organizations are evangelical and far-right?

(They're still going to have to contend with Catholicism, of course, which was surprisingly liberal in that Pew study.)

What if this schism isn't the result of the church as a whole getting more conservative, and the liberal congregations--or parts of congregations--reacting naturally by leaving? What if it's engineered?

Because this anti-LGBT move was *sudden* and it genuinely shocked most of the Methodists I know.

Anyway, an organized plan to end mainline Protestantism as a political force in the US and leave only right-wing evangelicalism standing being funded by the largest Christian charity in the country is dark as fuck and scary.

And it's late at night and maybe this is tinfoil-hat stuff, I honestly don't know. It's a late-night rabbithole, for sure.

But I dunno, mainline Protestantism, like I said, serves sort of an anchor function keeping Protestantism as a whole from veering too far rightward.

And when you look at political radicalization, man, that would be a sweeping blow.

Anyway, dunno, going to bed. I hope I'm wrong because this is terrifying and would break my heart if it's true and it works.