Recommended Readings: Methodist Marriage Debates in Norway

There's been a significant debate in Norway in the past month about Methodist marriage, but it has nothing to do with whether the UMC in that country should consecrate same-sex marriages. Instead, the discussion has been among Methodists, the government, and law experts over whether minor changes to the Methodist marriage liturgy since 1991 invalidated the approximately 800 marriages performed by Methodist clergy since then.

Here's the background: In Norway, church bodies are required to submit their wedding liturgies to the government in order to get government approval in order for church-performed marriages to be recognized by the government. The Methodist Church in Norway did that in 1970, and the government approved the liturgy and agreed to recognize marriages performed by the church. Then in 1991, 2009, 2017 and 2019, the church made minor changes to the liturgy to modernize it. The church, however, considered these changes sufficiently minor that they did not require re-approval from the government.

Then, at the beginning of September, one of the major newspapers in Norway, Dagen, published an article which included an interview with a law professor who asserted that these changes to the marriage liturgy of the Methodist Church in Norway could make the weddings performed invalid in the eyes of the state. This set off a debate across multiple publications about the professor's claims.

Methodist theologians and church leaders worked with the relevant government body (Bufdir) to explain the changes and reassure them that these changes did not constitute significant revisions that would require re-approval from the government. The government now seems satisfied with this response, and the marriages should not be invalidated.

This story is worth sharing for two reasons:

1. It's always good to know about and sympathize with in prayer the challenges that fellow Methodists around the world are experiencing.

2. It's a fairly dramatic example of just how differently people think about church, marriage, and law in different national contexts around the world. To many US Americans, the idea of the government approving church liturgies is likely incomprehensible. But it's an accepted reality for Norwegians.

To read more, see the following links (use a web translator to translate from Norwegian):

https://www.metodistkirken.no/ugyldige-vigsler-oppslag-i-dagen

https://www.metodistkirken.no/arbeider-hardt-for-a-rydde-opp-i-forvirringen-om-vigsler

https://www.metodistkirken.no/vigsler-vil-nok-bli-ettergodkjent-av-statsforvalteren-om-det-er-nodvendig

https://www.metodistkirken.no/oppdatering-om-vigsler-i-metodistkirken

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=722842773217309&set=a.337998871701703

Kirk Sims: Correlating disaffiliations from the UMC (2019-2023) and the 2020 Presidential Election

Today's post is by Rev. Dr. Kirk Sims. Rev. Dr. Sims is a United Methodist missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries, serving as a consultant and theological educator based in Prague. He is an ordained elder in the North Georgia Annual Conference.

Each annual conference has had its own process for allowing churches to disaffiliate from the UMC under the provisions set forth by ¶ 2553, which are set to expire at the end of 2023. Although this season is far from complete, we are able to see a major trend emerging when we overlay the locations of disaffiliating churches with a map of the 2020 presidential election results.

Annual conferences with large numbers of disaffiliations have tended to be in states that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. The major outliers are the conferences in Georgia, a state that gave Joe Biden a 0.26% margin of victory over Trump.  Georgia also has a disproportionately large number of United Methodists compared to some other parts of the US. For instance, according to the 2018 membership statistics, the two Georgia conferences had 61% more members than the entire Western Jurisdiction.

The correlation between disaffiliations and Trump voters will likely be reinforced as this process is resolved later this year. Some conferences anticipating higher numbers of departures include:

• The Florida Conference, where 106 congregations have filed a lawsuit to disaffiliate. The state of Florida cast its 29 electoral votes for Trump in 2020.
• The Western Pennsylvania Conference, where 260 out of 800 churches will likely disaffiliate. Although Pennsylvania voted for Biden, all but two of the counties in the area of the Western Pennsylvania Conference voted for Trump.
• North Georgia has issued a “pause” on its disaffiliation process. 71 congregations have left so far, and others had begun the process before the pause. Since this "pause," one high-profile congregation has filed a lawsuit in February, which was followed by the collective legal action of 186 additional churches in early April.
  
• In South Carolina, 50 congregations have voted for disaffiliation. However, they are waiting on annual conference approval.

Correlation is not causation. However, this correlation does raise a question for our church: to what extent does the political environment around us shape our theology?