Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries.
The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not
reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. This
piece originally appeared as a commentary on the United Methodist News Service site and is republished here with permission.
The United Methodist Church aspires to be a worldwide church. Yet
both because of the current separation happening within the denomination
and its changing international composition, it finds itself in a time
of rethinking what it means to be a church, and a global church at that.
“Church” is one of the most foundational terms used by Christians,
but the meaning of that word may not be as universally agreed upon as
one might expect. First, church can be used for three different levels
of Christian gathering: local congregations, denominations and the
church universal. The United Methodist Church is a church in the second,
denominational sense.
While the nuances of theological understandings vary, there is at
least an intuitive common meaning of congregation and the church
universal: a gathered Christian community and the body of all
Christians, respectively.
Not so with the other category. While most Christians could point to a
denomination, they might be harder pressed to give a definition, and
those definitions might vary widely. There are historical reasons for
this uncertainty. Congregations have been a feature of Christianity
since its beginning; denominations have not.
One might think of a denomination broadly as a middle level of church
that unites local congregations and is a part but not the whole of the
church universal, but this still leaves a lot of room for divergent
understandings of how a denomination should go about uniting
congregations and how it should interact with other denominations and
broader society.
Moreover, the exact meaning of denomination is heavily influenced by
context and the political and cultural factors at play in each context.
Political contexts and their effect on the religious landscape mean that
The United Methodist Church’s identity as a denomination means
different things in different branches of the church.
Not only are there are different understandings within the
denomination of what it means to be a “church,” but these different
understandings go along with different strategies for how to be a
successful church. Here, the notion of religious marketplaces — how
religious groups behave in their social and political contexts to grow
and thrive — is helpful. Even if talking about religion as a marketplace
is inadequate theologically, it highlights issues of fit between an
organization (such as The United Methodist Church) and its environment.
Because of differing political and religious landscapes in the United
States, Africa, Europe and the Philippines, United Methodists in those
different regions have adopted different postures toward political
leaders and the general populace, part of divergent strategies to help
the church succeed in the sense of attracting members and avoiding
outside interference.
The United States
The concept of denomination came into its own in the United States,
fostered by the American principle of separation of church and state. In
the United States, there is minimal government regulation of religion
(most of what does happen is through tax laws), and religious identity
is seen as a personal choice by Americans. That does not mean that
Americans view faith as solely a private matter — there may be public
and political implications of one’s faith — but ultimately, one’s choice
of faith is minimally constrained by political or other public forces.
The United States is thus close to a religious free market.
In the United States, The United Methodist Church (and its Methodist
predecessor denominations) has functioned as a leading competitor in the
denominational marketplace. American Methodism’s goal has always been
to grow and appeal to the masses. Unlike other traditions (Mennonites,
for example), Methodism was never content to be a niche player in the
religious marketplace. At times, this has led to conflict or compromise
(as in dropping early American Methodism’s opposition to slavery), but
the goal has been consistent: to be a major denomination with an
extensive membership.
Historically, American Methodism has been successful in achieving
this goal. Methodism (across denominations) was the most popular variety
of Protestantism in the United States at the end of the 19th century,
and The United Methodist Church remains the second-largest Protestant
denomination. It is the most nationally distributed of any major
denomination, crossing all regions of the country.
The United Methodist Church in the United States has, of course,
experienced a prolonged loss of members over the course of its lifetime.
Yet part of what has made that experience so painful for U.S. members
is because it represents the loss of a former dominant position in the
American religious landscape.
There have been myriad proposals for how to reverse the membership
decline in the United States, but they all have several features in
common: They are focused on appealing directly to individual potential
members, usually through the preaching and programming of the church.
None of them address the denomination’s relationship with the
government. While some of these reflect on the “brand” of United
Methodism, very few of them talk about the role that the church plays in
the public square. These strategies to retain and gain members are
about appealing to individuals’ choices across broad swaths of the
American public.
Europe
The United Methodist Church functions very differently in Europe.
Most of Europe has a long tradition of state churches supported by the
government. In some instances, state support has recently ended, but the
legacy remains. In that context, The United Methodist Church has
functioned as a “free church,” that is, one that people freely choose to
join (rather than doing so because it is the government-set default).
Indeed, in several countries, Methodism helped pioneer the idea of
religious freedom.
But free churches are necessarily small. The state church, as a
government monopoly of sorts, will always have the dominant position in
society. In such a setting, Methodism has never aspired to win over the
masses, as it has in the United States.
Instead, The United Methodist Church has sought to avoid the stigma
of a being a “sect,” a label that would bring popular aversion and
possibly government interference. The goal is survival and ideally
modest growth, but not becoming a dominant player in the religious
landscape, which is not possible.
To avoid the label of “sect,” United Methodism tends to emphasize its
ecumenical relations and its contributions to the common good. Both
these habits demonstrate that the church is willing to get along with
and benefit others, rather than being closed-off like a sect.
But this approach of being a good citizen is a very different model
of engaging the religious marketplace than American churches’ appeal to
the interests of individuals as free consumers. It is a different set of
strategies with a different end goal.
Africa
People might look at the lack of a state church in most African
countries and conclude that they are free denominational marketplaces,
as in the United States. Yet such a view misses two important points
about how religion functions in most African contexts.
First and foremost, while religious identity in the United States is a
personal matter, in most African contexts, it is a public matter. That
is, one’s religious identity is not merely chosen independently as an
individual but is instead connected to other elements of public and
communal identity — family, tribe, political party, occupation, etc. In
some instances, these communal aspects of identity determine
denominational identity more so than personal choice.
Second, while freedom of religion does exist in almost all African
countries, there still tends to be a heavily regulated religious
marketplace. There are no state churches, but the government actively
intervenes in religious affairs for a variety of reasons, sometimes
personal to the leader but mostly related to the government’s
understandings of good of the society, including preservation of social
order. Because religious identity is public, the government has an
interest in regulating it.
Thus, there are various instances of African governments interfering
with religious organizations, including through permitting and legal
cases. Churches also often seek to use state intervention, through
government officials or the police, to resolve religious conflicts
within their own body — something that an American church would almost
never do, except in the instance of lawsuits, which are not seen as a
form of government intervention.
The goal for The United Methodist Church in many contexts in Africa
is still, as it is in the United States, to appeal to the masses.
Methodism tends to be growth oriented, carrying the idea that all should
be welcomed into the church and that a growing church is a healthy
church.
But this growth is pursued in slightly different ways. Because
religion is seen as public rather than personal, Methodism emphasizes
not only the personal benefits of worship, community and spiritual care,
as it does in the United States, but also how the church engages with
and contributes to the overall good of the society, mostly through
education and health care. In many places throughout Africa, Methodism
is the church of civil society, engaged in building better communities.
That is one of its prime selling points. This public image of Methodism
both helps attract followers (as groups and individuals) and staves off
government interference, though Methodism often ends up interacting
extensively with the government around the public services that the
church provides.
Philippines
Unfortunately, in the interest of space, I will touch only briefly on
the Philippines. It is probably somewhere in between the United States
and Africa. There is a relatively free market for religion in the
Philippines, a legacy of U.S. colonialism. Yet the government is more
likely to curtail religious speech on political issues, and the Filipino
religious marketplace is structured differently than the U.S. religious
marketplace. One might think of it as an oligarchy: The Catholic Church
and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines exercise dominant
positions within Filipino society. Within that context, Methodism is a
specialty religious provider characterized by education and healthcare,
just as education and health care is central to the church’s public face
in Africa.
Conclusion
The upshot of this variation among political contexts in which The
United Methodist Church operates is that there are different
understandings of what it means to be a “church” and different
strategies pursued to be a successful church. To the extent that the
church is characterized by regionalization, these divergent
understandings and strategies can coexist. To the extent that the church
is characterized by centralization, there is the potential for conflict
among these strategies.
One instance of such implications for how issues play out in the
denomination is around sexuality: In the United States, denominations
must respond to changing demands in the religious marketplace in a
society that increasingly accepts gay marriage, but where there is also a
good portion of individuals with traditionalist understandings of
marriage, thus leading to conflict about how best to appeal to the
masses. In Europe, to avoid the label of “sect,” there is pressure to
follow majority opinion (whether conservative as in Eastern Europe or
progressive in Western Europe). In Africa, it is important to be seen as
contributing to social stability, and when the government has
identified the heterosexual family as central to social stability, there
is pressure for the churches to toe that line. In the Philippines,
questions of sexuality are less relevant to Methodists’ identity as a
specialty religious provider focused on education and health care.
Each of these strategies makes sense within the political and
cultural logic of its context. The challenge comes when the church tries
to come to agreement across contexts.
