Avoiding Structural Stupidity in Post-Schism Methodism
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What is the future of American Methodism?
There has been no shortage of reporting on the recent split in United Methodism and the resulting Global Methodist Church. Perhaps, just as when the Methodists in America were released by Wesley due to the Revolutionary War, this break will prove fruitful and even providential. While, on theological and biblical grounds, one might bemoan church splits, from a historical and pragmatic view one could also argue that a) they are common and b) God seems to work despite them. The Body of Christ, as I’ve written here previously, is not resilient, it is antifragile.
This brings us to American Methodism in 2024. Of course, the Wesleyan movement in the United States is broader than the mainline United Methodist Church and the newly formed evangelical Global Methodist Church. In this piece, I will focus on these particular bodies because they are the communities within American Methodism with which I have the most knowledge and experience. No doubt similar tensions exist in other Wesleyan and non-Wesleyan communions, including independent churches.
The Peril
In an important piece from 2022, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt made the case for labeling the previous decade as “uniquely stupid.” One reason, he suggests, is the fragmentation accelerated by social media, which incentivizes our worst impulses regardless of cause, ideology, or party. It is not that Americans became less intelligent per se, but rather that, “the problem is structural.” As new forms of connection made it increasingly easier to initiate mob attacks, dissent was more swiftly and aggressively punished in practically every movement and organization. For Haidt, this includes political organizations at local, state, and national levels. For the purposes of this article, think of the church in its various instantiations.
The result is what Haidt calls “structural stupidity.” As social media empowered extreme voices and discouraged opposition, more and more people were only associating (digitally and in real life) with like-minded persons. A significant problem with this, of course, is confirmation bias, the common temptation to only look for information which aligns with our preconceived notions. "The most reliable cure for confirmation bias,” he warns, “is interaction with people who don't share your beliefs." This is why the stupidity is structural. Cut off from those who disagree with our assumptions, no matter how outlandish, we find it far too easy to assume that no rational person could possibly disagree with us.
If Haidt is right, both the UMC and GMC now face the potential danger of structural stupidity. While both churches are currently in a honeymoon period of sorts, this could show forth in the not-too-distant future. Now separated from the most intransigent opponents, it is plausible that the loudest voices on the right (in the GMC) and the left (in the UMC) could go unchecked. Haidt has spoken about the habit of US political groups to stifle moderate voices over the last decade or so. One sees this in political figures like Liz Cheney or ecclesial figures like Russell Moore. Even in entertainment, self-described liberals like Bill Maher face ire from their own side for questioning what they see as excesses on the left. What will be the fate of moderates in the new UMC and GMC? Will a GMC moderate be branded as a liberal, or a UMC moderate now be viewed suspiciously as the new conservative? We may come to see the narcissism of small differences in full effect.
Both communions now face similar dangers, given the voices that are no longer—in the words of Hamilton—“in the room where it happens.” As observed in other conservative Protestant groups like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Anglican Church in North America, the GMC may face fights in the future over matters of race, poverty, and women’s ministry. (The last of these would be the least likely, but could bubble up from the pews, despite the GMC’s official commitment to women in ordained ministry.) The UMC faces the unhappy prospect of going the way of all the mainline denominations: happily performing chaplain duties to establishment sensibilities, while baptisms and attendance continue to drop and churches close. What Rob Henderson has recently named “luxury beliefs” could come to dominate the post-schism UMC.
In both the UMC and GMC, should the most extreme voices run the show, the mission of the church could be swallowed up as discipling is confused with ideological formation. In short, without the ballast of opposition, both bodies should be on guard against succumbing to the gravitational pull of their respective sides of the culture wars. The world has no need for forms of Methodism that are simply baptized political action committees masquerading as churches.
Mitigating Structural Stupidity
What practices might stop or at least slow such a process from occurring, as it has in other evangelical and mainline denominations? I suggest three: digital fasting (from technology and social media in particular), local ecumenical partnerships, and intellectual charity.
First, Cal Newport has made a convincing case for what he terms, “digital minimalism.” Of course, today’s minimalist fashion has been known to Christians for centuries in different guises, both in official monastic forms (with formal vows of poverty) and in less official but still influential teachings about simplicity. John Wesley certainly encouraged simplicity in matters of money and dress, for instance, as did his later holiness-movement descendants.
In applying this to the digital world, we heed the warnings of folks like Haidt, Newport, and others who have pointed out the ways in which our technology heightens animosity between individuals and groups. I am not a Luddite, but when it comes to ministry, social media in particular is a useful servant but a poor master. In denominations and other large groups, it is highly corrosive to trust and community. The church is at its worst on Facebook and Twitter, and at its best on Sunday, at the potluck, in the hospital, and at the soup kitchen. If we want strong communities, we should emphasize the incarnational over the digital.
Next, local ecumenical connections will have renewed importance in post-schism Methodism. Will UMC congregations now only associate with other mainline churches? Will GMC bodies only want to work with other evangelical communities that share their views? What was not possible within one international body is possible on a more local level. First UMC on the town square can work with the homeless ministry at First Reformed down the street. Similarly, a GMC church plant could partner with an Episcopal Church that has an excellent after-school reading program for at-risk elementary students. Such partnerships would foster relationships through a common mission that both would be fruitful for the community and prevent an ecclesial isolationism which contributes to structural stupidity.
Finally, the future health of both bodies will demand a greater degree of charity in the midst of controversies than has been on display in the UMC in recent years. In particular, I would commend the practice of steel-manning. To steel-man is the opposite of straw-manning; it means intentionally putting your opponents’ argument in the best possible light, in a way that your opponent would agree represents their argument accurately. Where a straw man is a logical fallacy, a steel-man argument is not only stronger, but also more virtuous, and thus more worthy of followers of Christ.
For an example of this from historical theology, simply look to the work of the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. In a typical article in his Summa Theologiae, for instance, Thomas begins answering a given question by first naming the arguments against his conclusion. Aquinas then goes on to reason through his answer, and then refute the objections first named. In other words, in every article in the 3000 pages of the Summa, he begins by detailing one or more counter-arguments and then systematically refutes them all. Though this was inspired by the formal academic disputes popular in medieval universities, there is much here from which contemporary Christians could learn. Steel-manning is one way to minimize the slide into an epistemic blindness that comes with tribalism. As John Stuart Mill put it so well, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” To avoid structural stupidity, practice intellectual charity.
Conclusion: A Church That Looks Like the Disciples
In a recent article in Christianity Today, Old Testament scholar Carmen Imes argued that the church should not be an echo chamber. She points out the diversity among Jesus’ first followers:
Among his disciples was a tax collector working for the Roman government, several fishermen who resented Roman taxation, and a radical trained to fight Rome. Likewise, his female followers were members of vastly different economic classes—from the poorest crowds to the ruling elite. Based on these affiliations and associations alone, Jesus’ followers represented the entire sociopolitical spectrum of the time.
While some UMC and GMC churches exist that are 90-99% liberal or conservative (as fraught as those broad categories are), most of them will have a mixture of folks in them: conservative, liberal, and everything in between. The conservative parents sitting behind you will have at least one liberal child; the young couple that just started coming is made up of one progressive and one agnostic libertarian.
Given the polarization that Haidt names, and which I’ve observed in recent United Methodist life, I am not sure how to scale up this sort of diversity, to be honest. I do believe that it can exist in a local congregation in which there are face-to-face relationships. It is harder to be enemies with someone you share a bunk with on a mission trip or hold the chalice for during Holy Communion.
I have served two appointments as a full-time pastor. The first of those churches is now in the GMC. The church I serve now is a Lighthouse Congregation, meaning they are committed (as am I) to remaining in the UMC. Both congregations contain a mix of conservative, moderate, and liberal folks. I love the people in both churches, who resemble to some extent the diversity among Jesus’ first followers.
After the schism, both the UMC and GMC enjoy strong possibilities for renewal if they follow the Holy Spirit, now that the collective resources of the whole can be put more to ministry and less to conflict. For that, I am grateful. But, as someone who grew up around the Southern Baptist Convention after it was purged of moderates (or liberals, depending on who you ask), I worry about the dangers of denominational echo chambers. Structural stupidity is, at least in the long term, a real danger.
In George Orwell’s classic 1984, the lead character Winston is given a book to read that describes Big Brother’s methodology for controlling the masses. One of the ruling party’s policies is to keep the residents of Oceania from interacting with people from other places:
If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate.
Orwell’s dystopia is built on structural stupidity that keeps people “sealed” in bubbles of homogeneity. To succumb to this temptation of our own volition would be folly. (Look at the work of the non-profit, non-partisan group Braver Angels for an example of what it looks like to combat this in the realm of civil society.)
The answer to this in the church will be largely local: will we as pastors, disciples, congregational leaders, and Sunday School teachers practice discipline with our use of technology? Will we seek partnerships with other kinds of churches across doctrinal, geographic, ethnic, and ideological lines? Can we do the hard work of viewing our opponents, in any debate, with the maximum possible charity? All of this will require attention to the means of grace, which is to say it will only be made possible by God’s work in us. Jesus was capable of holding together extremely diverse people in his circle in the first century. In our polarized twenty-first century, in which nuance and charity are inconveniences and division is profitable, it may still be only Jesus that can do so now.
Drew McIntyre is an Elder in the Western North Carolina Conference and the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Greensboro, NC. He serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.