Ultra-Liberal United Methodists Denomination Disbands After 3 Years For These Hilarious Reasons
We are a people of faith committed to living into and out of the wisdom and compassion of the historical Jesus – a brown man of undetermined sexual orientation who arose from a people bowed down under Empire. His prophetic witness calls us to a risky engagement with powers and principalities and compels us to overturn tables of systemic oppression…. In our quest for justice, we consciously avoid theological litmus tests and external creeds. We are a people led by God’s Spirit in a way that welcomes a dynamic evolution of our beliefs, our practices, and our systems…. Our vision is founded on the prophetic leadership and active participation of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual + (LGBTQIA+) people, and people with disabilities. These collectives live at the intersection of direct social action and theological reflection.
(LMX Statement of Values, Vision and Mission)
Nearly four years ago, the super progressives within the United Methodist Church were upset that their hellbound denomination wasn’t liberal enough. Consequently, many of the pagans within the UMC that were given the freedom to let their leaven fizz and ferment for decades announced the creation of their own denomination, called The Liberation Methodist Connexion (LMX), which went live in late 2020/ early 2021.
Since then, the last year has not been kind to them. Within a year they suffered massive defections, going from 40 churches to just 20. In a post on their website recapping the state of the union, they recounted their few victories:
“Since (we’ve launched), the LMX has put together several online events that have given many people a glimpse of a what a liberative spiritual experience could look like, combining the message that what we are all beloved children of God with tough conversations on how our churches enable racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism, and other forms of oppression”
We have had two roundtables; one a conversation on race and how we can work towards eliminating racism, the other a conversation around queering Easter and how the resurrection story speaks to resisting oppression.
They also shared the bad news:
“Immediately after the launch, the LMX attempted to handle unexpected, complex challenges in ways that distracted from our primary purpose for weeks, exhausting us and leading to some internal distrust.”
“Since February, some working group meetings struggled with attendance as common ground in conversations on foundational documents was not reached. No new collaborators were introduced, seemingly due to a lack of agreement about how to best integrate new people. Other sticky points for us have been concerns about whether our BIPOC collaborators are being treated well, whether we are prioritizing dismantling white culture in the LMX over creating space for queer people, whether the LMX should be a traditional Christian denomination or other,
As we stepped back and took a wider view of where we were having the most trouble, one unforeseen issue is that we were mostly unprepared for what it looks like practically to build something new; particularly as a volunteer group without the resources of our old denominations. Common ground was easier to find when we were focused on critiquing old institutions. It has been much harder to find as we all bring ideas about what can be. We realized that we made many assumptions about the goals of our fellow collaborators.
Put another way, a bunch of woke pagans with Christian ideations couldn’t agree on how badly they hated the bible and the correct way to butcher it, resulting in no money, no people, and no hope in heaven of keeping it together.
Two years later, it is no more. When we went to check in on the rapscallions, we found a message posted to their Facebook page in March of 2023, where they shared that the dream was dead and they were shuttering the whole affair, dissolving the denomination.
Given how bad the UMC has gotten over even the last three years, these folks can come crawling back, quickly slink in, and find themselves right at home like they’d never left.
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Good riddance to bad rubbish.