Recommended Listening: Real Faith - Real World Podcast

World Methodist Evangelism publishes an every-other-week podcast, entitled "Real Faith - Real World," hosted by UM Professors of Mission member Dr. Robert Haynes. The episodes, which are approximately a half hour long each, cover a variety of topics related to evangelism and practicing and sharing the Wesleyan faith in the contemporary world. Each episodes features a guest speaker whom Dr. Haynes interviews. Several recent episodes tackle issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Secularization and the Collapse of Empire

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.

Within the sociology of religion, the secularization thesis states that religion becomes a less significant part of societies and individual lives as history progresses. The evolution of religion in Europe in the past century has been the main evidence cited in support of this theory, though recent declines in religious belief and identity in the United States have injected new life into this debate.

A variety of causal mechanisms are suggested as the driving force(s) behind secularization. These include modernity broadly, the rise of science and de-mythologizing of people's worldviews, urbanization, religious and social pluralization, the rise of market capitalism, an increase in individualism, and others. I will not rehearse the details of this debate here.

But as I've been thinking about the relationship between religion and power recently, another possibility has occurred to me: What if the process of secularization in Europe and the United States was actually related to the collapse of empire?

In this version of the theory, a decrease in collective and individual religiosity within a society is connected to a decreased sense of national power and efficacy brought on, at least in these recent cases, by the collapse of formal or informal imperial systems. In Europe and North America, there has been a lengthy and tight relationship between Christianity and government. When European empires expanded, Christianity traveled with them, though it was admittedly a complicated relationship. Given that sustained history of connection, we should not be surprised, then, if a decline in imperial power should have implications for the religion which for so long had been connected to it.

This explanation would make sense of the timing of secularization in most of Europe (1950s and 1960s) and its later onset in the United States (2000s and 2010s), despite similar levels of modernization on other scales. It would also explain the greater resilience of religion in Eastern Europe (which had lower participation in the age of imperialism) than in Western Europe, though there are certainly individual outliers, such as the Czech Republic.

Moreover, this explanation might account for the different trajectories in the United States between mainline Protestants and Catholics, on the one hand, and evangelical Protestants, on the other, given that mainline Protestants and Catholics were impacted by post-colonial critiques much earlier than evangelical Protestants, who were forced to reckon with the United States' changed role in the world more significantly only after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It also could explain differences between white and non-white religiosity. The religiosity of white Americans, who have been the primary beneficiaries of American empire, has declined faster than that of people of color, who have been farther from the seats of American imperial power.

This explanation also fits with general impressions I have about the difficulty that American Methodism has with providing a theological accounting of failure of any type and the difficulties that British Methodism has faced in providing an accounting for Britain's changed role in the world since the 1960s. In both cases, a loss of confidence seems to be both cause and effect of membership decline.

This thesis (and secularization theory in general) may well be incorrect. I have not done extensive research to substantiate it. But if there is at least a kernal of truth in it, it has several implications for the fields of missiology and World Christianity.

First, the amount of research that missiologists have done on the relationship between Christianity and empire makes them well-prepared to investigate this connection. While most of this research has looked at the relationships as they have played out in imperial territories, there is more of this story to be written about the relationship between Christianity and imperial power in imperial metropoles, and mission historians could easily be the ones to write it.

Second, if secularization is caused by the relationship between Christianity and secular power and declines in that secular power, rather than modernization or other factors, that would give scholars of World Christianity curious or concerned about the future of Christianity outside of Europe and North America a new set of indicators to pay attention to.

Rather than wondering whether economic development will undercut religious belief, this thesis would lead scholars to pay more attention to the relationship between Christian groups and local political power and the power trajectories of nations. In many cases where Christianity is far from political power, there should be little concern about secularization. Furthermore, even when Christianity is proximate to political power, but that power is not waning, Christianity should (at least for the time being) be unaffected.

Finally, such a connection would give missiologists another consideration in setting evangelistic strategy as it relates to proximity to secular power. The proper relationship between Christianity and societal elites has been a debate for hundreds of years within mission circles, with pros and cons enumerated on both sides. This thesis would, however, suggest that those "who take the sword will perish by the sword."

Recommended Readings: European UMC Churches Begin to Reopen

The wave of new coronavirus cases has passed its peak in almost all European countries. While concerns about the virus remain high, and while life is very different in many ways from what it was pre-pandemic, some European Methodist Churches are taking tentative steps towards reopening.

It is clear, however, that worship services will be different after reopening than they were before. For instance, UMC leaders in Austria and Hungary have given guidelines about social distancing, wearing masks, and cleaning surfaces.

In Germany and Switzerland, a few churches have reopened, while most others continue to be closed, relying on online and TV-broadcast worship instead. These alternatives are available at both the national and, in some cases, local level. Where they have resumed, services have been made shorter, and fewer people are admitted. Some reopened churches are holding multiple services to accommodate demand within these new restrictions. Congregational singing is not part of resumed services.

In this regard, the European experience reflects that in the United States, Africa, and the Philippines, all of which have also seen tentative or limited resumption of worship services, with significant changes from before. In all of these places, practices of social distancing and limiting of congregations indicate how the coronavirus pandemic has wrought a change in church life around the globe.

Global Christian Solidarity with the George Floyd Protests

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.

Protests over the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, have taken place in cities, suburbs, and small towns across the United States and have spread to cities around the world. Wikipedia lists hundreds of George Floyd protests in cities outside the US. Other sources also list protests in dozens of cities in over 40 countries.

Moreover, the outcry over Floyd's death and the larger issue of racist police violence has not been merely a secular one. Religious bodies and leaders around the world have condemned Floyd's death specifically and racism broadly in the past two weeks.

Racism is global, but the particular combination of systemic racism and police violence that has led to the George Floyd protests is in many ways a distinctively US dysfunction. Why, then, have Christians and others around the world joined this way of protests and proclamations?

The Guardian and the New York Times both have intelligent secular analyses of why these protests have gone global. Together, they identify three reasons why people from around the world have supported these protests. These three reasons can also be seen at work in recent worldwide Christian statements on racial violence:

1. People around the world feel genuine concern about racial injustices in the United States and want to express solidarity with African-Americans.

People around the world recognize the systemic injustices impacting African-Americans and other people of color in the United States and are speaking up against them accordingly, in the same sort of way that the international community has responded to other instances of injustice around the world, from apartheid in South Africa to the oppression of the Rohinga in Myanmar.

One sees this line of thinking at work in, for instance, the Executive Committee of the World Council of Church's Statement on Racial Justice in the USA, which reads in part, "The executive committee expresses its support and Christian solidarity with all US churches seeking and pursuing racial justice, proclaiming peace that is inclusive of all, and rejecting the instrumentalization of the outward forms of Christianity without its substance of compassion, service and self-giving love."

2. The George Floyd protests provide an opportunity for people to denounce racism in their own contexts.

While racism is deeply entwined with American society, the United States by no means has a monopoly on racism. Many of the protests around the world have called attention not just to police killings in the United States but also police killings and other instances of racial injustice in their own countries. In Europe and Africa, protests have linked current racism to past European colonial exploitation of Africa (and other areas of the world).

This sort of self-critique is noticeable in the statement on racism from Rev. Dr. Jonathan Hustler, Secretary of the Conference for the Methodist Church in Britain. Rev. Dr. Hustler wrote, "As Christian people, we are appalled that someone could die in such a fashion and appalled also at the continued injustice which many Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people experience in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, and in many institutions, including, shamefully, the Methodist Church in Britain."

In a similar manner, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, and Anglican Church in Canada put out a statement which said, "We as church leaders, acknowledge the pain, frustrations and anger of our Black communities, and recognize that systemic anti-Black racism is prevalent in our context in Canada as well; in the streets of our communities, in the justice and policing systems, and in our congregations and parishes."

From another perspective, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians connected racism in the US with the global racism that includes oppression of people in the two-thirds world, including Africa. In their statement, they wrote, "This deep wound of racism is not only found in the USA; it is a worldwide structure of oppression. Since the days of colonialism when racism served as the instrument of white supremacy, it has remained inbuilt in global economics, politics and knowledge systems. Two-Thirds World countries continue to suffocate under the knee of racism that has relegated them to exploitation and poverty."

3. The protests reflect a complicated set of views about the United States' place in the world.

The rest of the world is aware of the rising levels of divisiveness, nationalism, isolationism, racism, and xenophobia in the United States, much of it connected in recent years to Donald Trump's presidency. Many around the world are opposed to such rhetoric and policies coming from the United States, and these protests present an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with how the United States has behaved as an international actor in recent years.

Yet the protests are not simply about hating the United States. Many of these same protestors deeply believe in the values that the United States has historically professed: equality, democracy, freedom, etc. Many protestors would like to see the United States better uphold these values. If the United States does a good job of upholding these values, that makes it easier for people in other countries to push for these values as well, because of the tremendous cultural power of the United States. It provides a balance to more autocratic regimes such as China and Russia, who are looking to expand their power. A strong United States, if it behaves justly and democratically, is still an asset to many around the world. Thus, these protests are also an attempt to hold the US accountable to its own ideals.

This complicated view of the US is clearly displayed in the All Africa Conference of Churches' statement "Condemning Injustice and Racism in the USA." That statement reads, in part:

"We have always appreciated how the USA attempted to be a champion of justice and human rights globally, always condemning and sanctioning countries and leaderships who violate the rights of their own people and against militarization of law and order. As we follow developments going on in the USA, we are asking, will the USA government recover its moral authority and credibility to dare call out any other country which uses military on the streets to dominate citizens demanding right to be heard, or which sanctions its law and order organs to brutalize its own people using flimsy and queer legislation, to humiliate its people? Where is the soul of America as a country of the free?"

The AACC's questions are open ones, but their statement makes it clear that the answers matter, not just in the United States, but to Christians and others around the world.

Recommended Readings: COVID-19 disrupts long-term missionaries

Short-term mission trips canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic are too numerous to document, and these cancellations are happening for obvious reasons: concerns about health and travel restrictions. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting long-term missionaries as well, in a variety of ways. Certainly, many long-term missionaries have seen their work impacted by the pandemic, but many are also facing challenges to even being able to serve as a missionary.

While we may think of long-term missionaries as people who stay in one place for a long time, long-term missionaries may still be quite mobile, and that mobility presents challenges amid the pandemic. UMNS has this story of Cuban missionaries to Angola whose travel for itineration was disrupted by the pandemic and who were almost prevented from returning to their place of service (story in Spanish). At other times, travel restrictions have caused the cancellation of planned itineration trips, as with this German family serving in Malawi (article in German).

Problems with travel and pandemic-related visa restrictions caused a missionary couple from the US serving in the Czech Republic to end their missionary service early. Some governments have recalled their citizens serving abroad as missionaries, including a Global Ministries missionary from Chile and these EMK Weltmission missionaries from Germany.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic is also preventing some from becoming long-term missionaries in the first place. In one example, Global Ministries has cancelled its 2020 class of international Global Mission Fellows, a two-year program for young-adult missionary service.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: The Missional Division in The United Methodist Church

Today's piece is by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Dean of Wesley Theological Seminary.

On a recent jog near my home, I happened upon the former Marvin Memorial UMC, now a mission annex of Silver Spring UMC since the two congregations merged several years ago. Although little-known, the former Marvin Memorial UMC is the site of an important development in the looming division of the UMC. While the differences on human sexuality date back to the 1972 General Conference, the conflict over missions began in 1977. This difference eventually led to the founding of the Mission Society for United Methodists—a second non-official UM missionary-sending agency—which further exacerbated denominational tensions.[1]

This division began in 1977 when Linda and David Jessup sent their children to Sunday School at Marvin Memorial UMC, and the children brought home appeals for wheat shipments to the Vietnamese government.[2] David Jessup began to research the destination of church offerings and traced money through the UMC to the Church World Service Fund of the National Council of Churches, which supported causes that he deemed to be left-leaning. His research led him to write his findings in what came to be known as the “Jessup Papers,” which were distributed at the 1980 General Conference.

In the report, Jessup stated that local church offerings went to “groups supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization; the governments of Cuba and Vietnam; the pro-Soviet totalitarian movements of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and several violence-prone fringe groups in the United States.”[3] He alleged that the GBGM, the Women’s Division, and the National Council of Churches financed left-wing movements, such as the PLO, the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe, and even socialist governments around the world. These accusations were interpreted through the lens of the Cold War and the Moral Majority religious right and fueled distrust of UM Boards and Agencies—especially the General Board of Global Ministries.

The “Jessup Papers” played an instrumental role in the distrust of GBGM, the UM boards and agencies, and ecumenical agencies by more conservative church members. The Good News movement did not like the boards and agencies spending denominational money on progressive causes—especially in countries considered socialist. Conservatives felt uncomfortable with mission funds promoting social justice agendas and not using traditional understandings of mission and evangelism. Moreover, the Good News movement believed that boards and agencies were too bureaucratic and didn’t reflect the views of the average person in the pews.

The pastor of First United Methodist Church[4] in Peoria, IL, Ira Galloway, picked up the cause and targeted the Women’s Division of the GBGM, citing the reading material about Cuba for UMW’s School of Christian Mission in 1980 that stated: “The revolutionary government established a socialist society that focused national priorities on the needs of the people instead of those of multi-national corporations.”[5] Moreover, GBGM made a $18,000 grant to the Cuba Resource Center, a Catholic and Protestant non-governmental agency founded “…to promote communication between North Americans and Cubans.”[6]

Another frustration for Galloway was the rejection of more evangelical missionary applicants by GBGM. Galloway wrote, “…the staff leadership of the Board has essentially frozen out or refused to consider for placement many missionaries who are primarily concerned with evangelistic or evangelical priorities.”[7] In particular, he cited a missionary couple who wanted to go to Peru in the 1970s whose application was not approved by GBGM. And so Galloway’s church sponsored the couple; this effort was a forerunner of the Mission Society.

Growing frustrations led to a group of 34 people—mostly UM pastors—meeting in St. Louis in 1983 to select Rev. H.T. Maclin as the first president of the alternative, unofficial mission agency. Based in Atlanta, the Mission Society for United Methodists, now simply known as TMS Global, was incorporated on January 6, 1984.[8] The emphasis would be more on evangelism and church planting than social justice ministries. Not drawing on the UMC general budget, missionaries for TMS Global raise their own funding from local churches and seek their own placements.

How I discovered this division
While I only recently discovered the former Marvin Memorial UMC on my neighborhood runs, I have known about this split for some time. I was a GBGM missionary in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Mexico from 1988-2003 and had several covenant (supporting) churches. I itinerated every three years to witness to the congregations. I often was asked “Are you from GBGM or the Mission Society?” I found this split to be confusing for local churches who just wanted to support missions but didn’t know the history or reasons why we had two United Methodist mission agencies—one official and one unofficial.

If United Methodists found this confusing, just imagine our mission partners abroad who began to receive missionaries from both agencies—each with very different priorities and theologies! This division created schizophrenic mission efforts around the world and led to having UM missionaries in several countries, such as Nicaragua, Venezuela and Argentina, from two different UM mission sending organizations.[9]

For example, in Argentina the bishop of the Methodist Church discovered that a missionary from the Mission Society had purchased land under the name of the Methodist Church—an action that he didn’t authorize. In the case of Venezuela, a country without an historical Methodist expression, GBGM worked with La Comunidad Cristiana Metodista de Venezuela (CCMV) and the Mission Society started Concilio de Iglesias Evangélicas Metodistas en Venezuela (CIEMVE). Both churches began about the same time in different regions of Venezuela—each without the knowledge of the other. If this is confusing alphabet soup for you, just imagine how it looked to the Venezuelans!

In Nicaragua there have been GBGM missionaries for a long time, and suddenly the Mission Society sent missionaries that did not work or have anything to do with the Methodist Church of Nicaragua. It is one thing to have a division within the United Methodist Church in the US, but it is poor witness to export internal differences to people who are new Christians. In an ironic twist, the General Board of Global Ministries moved their headquarters to Atlanta in 2016—about 20 miles from the Mission Society—and the two agencies have since conducted some joint missionary trainings.

Discussions about a division in the UMC are currently on the backburner as plans for General Conference have been postponed until 2021. This delay is also an opportunity to reflect on how we got to be where we are today. Just as I discovered the former Marvin Memorial UMC and the “Jessup Papers,” we can also look at how our history has contributed to different approaches to missions, missiology and ecclesiology. While the debate within the UMC mostly focuses on human sexuality, different understandings of mission and missiology are other sources of tension.

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[1] The Mission Society for United Methodists changed its name to simply “The Mission Society” in 2006 and then “TMS Global” in 2017. It is based in Norcross, GA.

[2] Rael Jean Isaac, "Do You Know Where Your Church Offerings Go?," Reader’s Digest, January 1983, 120-125, http://www.materialreligion.org/documents/july99doc.html

[3] Jessup Papers, 1980.

[4] It is of interest to note that First UMC in Peoria had some prominent members who were executives at Caterpillar, Inc., which receives about $250 million in development contracts through the USAID. See Helen Milner and Justin Tingley, “The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Aid,” Economy & Politics, vol.22, no.2, (July 2010). In the spirit of transparency, First UMC in Peoria later become a supporting church for me as a missionary, and I met one such executive at Caterpillar, Inc.

[5] James and Margaret Goff, In Every Person that Hopes (New York: Friendship Press, 1980), 55-56.

[6] “The Use of Money in Mission—An Opportunity for Understanding,” United Methodist Communications brochure (October 17, 1980), 3.

[7] Ira Galloway, Drifted Astray: Returning the Church to Witness and Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 109.

[8] TMS Global, https://www.tms-global.org/test-page-for-reed (accessed February 8, 2020).

[9] As recently as 2018, CIEMAL has moderated conversations between the two Methodist Churches in Venezuela to merge, but this is still inconclusive. See “Metodistas en Venezuela buscan camino a la unidad,” Servicio Metodista Unido de Noticias, November 20, 2018.

Recommended Readings: Global models of non-violent resistance

An unprecedented wave of protests over police killings of unarmed black men and women, most recently George Floyd, have swept across the United States. Although there has been some looting, destruction, and violence associated with the protests and the police and National Guard responses, the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful - an example of non-violent resistance. Nonviolent resistance is most commonly associated with Gandhi and with Martin Luther King, Jr., but it has a long pedigree around the world. Here are some resources that provide models and analysis of various nonviolent resistance movements around the world:

The Global Nonviolent Action Database from Swarthmore College, which provides short overviews of movements that can be searched by geography, technique, theme, and date. The overviews provide a narrative along with a list of the nonviolent techniques used, the groups leading the protest, the groups opposing the protest, and the outcome of the protests.

The Albert Einstein Institute was founded by Dr. Gene Sharp to promote nonviolent resistance around the world. It makes several useful resources available on its website:

 *  A short overview of nonviolent action

 *  A list of 198 methods of nonviolent resistance

 *  Publications, in English and other languages, about nonviolent theory and nonviolent movements around the world, especially in Eastern Europe and Latin America

Waging Nonviolence is a news organization that reports on nonviolent movements around the world. Their news and analysis pieces can be searched by topic and by region.