Methodist Malaise

The United Methodist Church is a case of a great American success story that is going bad. Once a movement that leaped like brush fire along the 19th century frontier, the U.M.C. has suffered a net loss of 518,000 members in the past four years--the biggest of any church in U.S. history. Over a longer time span Sunday school attendance has slid by onefourth, the once-prized foreign missionary force by one-fifth. A recent survey by U.M.C. program planners found that grass-roots Methodists bitterly distrust church officials.

At the church's General Conference in Atlanta, which wound up last week, Ohio Bishop F. Gerald Ensley identified "the decline of Christian belief" as the cause of much of the Methodist malaise. Ensley's address, which was endorsed by all 95 bishops, said the church contains many "wistful skeptics," some of whom are clergymen. "Probably not for centuries has the witness of Christian people on ultimate questions been so hesitant and uncertain." The Articles of Religion of Methodist Founder John Wesley, for instance, stated that Jesus arose bodily from the grave. But a 1965 poll showed that only 49% of the Methodist clergy believe this any more.

Doctrinal Diversity. When the Methodists merged with the smaller, more conservative Evangelical United Brethren in 1968, the new United Methodist Church set up a commission to sort out what it believes. Commission Chairman Albert Outler told the Atlanta conference that the denomination displays "a bewildering spectrum of doctrinal diversity. Somewhere in the United Methodist Church there is somebody urging every kind of theology still alive. And not a few that are dead."

The Outler commission's solution qualifies the traditional creeds--Wesley's Articles and the E.U.B. Confession of Faith--with explanatory statements warning that they should be interpreted within their historical context. The statements maintain that Wesley and the E.U.B. patriarchs made "doctrinal pluralism" a major tenet and held to only a basic core of Christian truth--but the statements stop short of specifying what that core was.

Unruffled in approving this major doctrinal adjustment, the Atlanta delegates poured most of their energy into a major overhaul of Methodism's labyrinthine system of national agencies. The other emotional issue was a Statement of Social Principles designed to update the venerable Methodist Social Creed and its E.U.B. counterpart. Here the conference cut back a relatively liberal draft version to fairly traditional lines. Where the proposed text said merely that sex is "most clearly" favorable within marriage, the final version avoids any implied endorsement of nonmarital sex. Where the proposed text affirmed that homosexuals are "persons of sacred worth," the conference added an amendment specifying that the practice of homosexuality remains "incompatible with Christian doctrine." The conference also upheld the traditional ban on gambling, but made abstinence from alcohol a commendable personal choice, not a requirement.

Could the Atlanta delegates have done more to revitalize modern Methodism by liberalizing their social principles as much as their doctrine? A forthcoming book by a prominent United Methodist suggests not. In Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (Harper & Row), Dean Kelley, director for civil and religious liberty of the National Council of Churches, argues that religions exist essentially to explain the meaning of human existence in ultimate terms. Successful religious movements, he finds, maintain a high profile of unshakable beliefs, exclusiveness, strict discipline, zeal, and a distinct code of behavior. A classic case was the early Methodist movement, which achieved social power through fervent piety and preaching, and puritanical rules.

Trouble sets in, writes Kelley, whenever political or other issues supplant such stringent concerns. The recent mainstream Protestant formula--be tolerant, ecumenical, relevant--he describes as a formula for failure. Once a church lapses into such an approach, as the United Methodist Church has, Kelley maintains that a decline in numbers and influence is inevitable.

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