In the May 2020 issue of First Things, Kevin M. Watson, Assistant Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, observes:
As a corporate body, the UMC in America is functionally in accord with progressive sexual morality, even if its official positions are not.
Put sharply, while progressives have failed repeatedly over more than forty years to change the denomination’s position on same-sex marriage, they have succeeded in making the church ungovernable….
One can certainly say that the United Methodist Church is a failed experiment in theological pluralism. But that line of analysis does not go back in history far enough. The mistakes made at the founding of the UMC were largely predictable based on previous developments, for the history of Methodism in America is one of conflict over cultural accommodation.
Read it all at First Things.
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