The Case of the Global Methodist Church (GMC) and the United Methodist Church (UMC)
What Happened
Mainline Protestant churches in America have changed dramatically as debates over LGBTQ+ inclusion have moved to the center of church life. The Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and United Methodist churches have all felt the impact. In the United Methodist Church, however, the impact has been especially sharp.
Between 2019 and the end of 2023, only about 25 percent of U.S. United Methodist congregations, 7,631 churches representing roughly a quarter of the denomination’s U.S. membership, were approved to leave. About 75% who accepts LGBTQIA+ remained in United Methodist Church in U.S. Many of the of the 25% who left, joined the Global Methodist Church, which launched in May 2022. In 2024, the UMC’s General Conference went on to remove its restrictions on ordaining gay clergy and on same-sex weddings.
Why did the division run so deep among Methodists in particular? One reason may be that Methodist theology carries a deep and distinctive emphasis on God’s grace: God’s free, unearned favor toward humanity. Anyone who is baptized and confesses Jesus Christ is welcomed. The question that divided Methodists is what that welcome means for how we live afterward.
The Case of Those Who Stayed
Those who remained in the UMC argue that the gospel calls the church to be fully inclusive. They point to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19–20, which sends Christians to make disciples of all nations, and to Galatians 3:28, which declares that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In their reading, these passages mean the church must welcome LGBTQ+ people without reservation.
Some on this side have been sharply critical of those who left. Writing in BU Today in May 2024, Rev. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, put it this way:
“The fundamentalists leaving the denomination, purportedly on biblical grounds, have not read the Bible—or at least have not read it carefully, faithfully, and fully, especially as regards Galatians 3:28 and similar passages, within the full and fully liberating act of biblical theology.”
The Case of Those Who Left
Those who left read Scripture pointing to Leviticus 20:13, which forbids sexual relations between men: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.” They also point to Romans 1:26–27, ” Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error”
For them, these and similar passages show that homosexual practice is sin, and they could not remain in a denomination they believed was setting that teaching aside. It is no wonder, then, that Christians do not speak with one voice on this issue.
Galatians 3:28 Reconsidered
It is true that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. But Paul’s letter to the Galatians was written to settle a specific dispute about Law and Grace. Some were insisting that Gentile believers be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses in order to be saved. Paul argued passionately that they did not need to: Jews and Gentiles alike are saved by grace through faith, not by the works of the Law.
Read in that setting, Galatians 3:28 is a statement about salvation, not a statement that the differences between people, or the moral teaching of Scripture, no longer matter. What Paul is saying is that all of us, LGBTQ+ or not, are saved by grace in the same way. The verse removes every barrier to coming to Christ; it does not remove the call to holiness that follows.
The Deeper Issue: How We See Sin
The Bible speaks constantly about sin, yet sin has gradually faded from much of Christian conversation. Both traditions still hold to the same historic Methodist teaching. Article XII of the Articles of Religion, retained by both the UMC and the GMC, states:
“Not every sin willingly committed after justification is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Wherefore, the grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after justification. After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin, and, by the grace of God, rise again and amend our lives. And therefore, they are to be condemned who say they can no more sin as long as they live here; or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent.”
Both churches, then, agree that believers can still sin, and that repentance and forgiveness are always open. The disagreement is over what counts as sin. I would suggest that the schism is not finally about conservatism or about LGBTQ+ people. It is about how Christians see sin, and behind that, how they see God.
Two Pictures of God
Every Christian believes God is kind, loving, generous, merciful, gracious and forgiving. Picture a grandfather sitting in the living room while his grandchildren play around him. In one picture, his love shows itself mainly as welcome: he delights in the children and lets them be. In the other, his love also shows itself as correction: he calls the children to order when they are about to harm themselves or others. Hebrews 12:6 describes this second kind of love: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
If God is holy, pure, loving, merciful and forgiving, and calls His people to be like Him, then any deviation from His standards is sin, and sin matters. As 1 Peter 1:16 says, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” If love is understood mainly as acceptance, sin will naturally seem less serious. So perhaps the quarter of United Methodists who left did not fail to read the Bible “carefully, faithfully, and fully.” Perhaps they simply believe how God’s redeeming grace works through.
Bodies, Calling and Holiness
Christians believe God is perfect. Yet in this fallen world, some people are born blind or with other limitations. Whatever our condition, we are called to serve God as we are, and that does not stop anyone from seeking healing; Jesus healed the blind and the sick and even raised the dead.
Jesus also spoke of eunuchs in Matthew 19:12: some were born that way, some were made so by others, and some “made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” The church has long read that last group as people who gave up sexual relationships altogether in pursuit of holiness. Their example points toward restraint for the sake of God, not toward an exemption from His standards.
For that reason, if someone changes their body and then engages in conduct that Leviticus 20:13 forbids, it is difficult to cite Galatians 3:28 in their defense. And a vision of the Christian faith without the distinction between male and female conflicts with historic Christian teaching that God created humanity “male and female” (Genesis 1:27).
Conclusion
It is not that one side loves people and the other does not, nor that one side reads the Bible and the other does not. Both sides confess the same Lord and the same grace. They differ on what that grace asks of us once we have received it. If Christians on both sides of this division will return together to the question of who God is and how He regards sin, studying it from Scripture rather than from caricatures of one another, they may yet find common ground, restore some harmony in their relationships, and move toward the unity Christ prayed for.
Sources
- Lewis Center for Church Leadership, “Twenty-Five Percent of Churches Disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church,” January 2024.
- Robert Allan Hill, “POV: Schism in the Methodist Church Explained,” BU Today, May 29, 2024.
- The Articles of Religion, Article XII, “Of Sin After Justification,” in The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church and The Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church.