Watch Your Language: Of Schism and Mitosis in the United Methodist Church
Can we agree that words matter, “those precious cups of meaning,” as St. Augustine described them? Can we agree that naming the demon, as Jesus did with the Gadarene demoniac, moves us toward understanding and control of the turbulence at play in facing a particular issue or challenge? Can we agree that “by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned,” as Jesus said in Matthew 12:37? Can we agree, with the late Christian ethicist Paul Scherer, that “one’s point of view is affected by one’s point of viewing;” and that the words one chooses to use can provide a personal preferred spin to an issue that others may not share?
Consider the monikers of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” Both have the consequence, albeit unintentional by many, to ensure polarization by strangling nuance and active listening in their beds. If one is not pro-life, one must be pro-death or a baby-killer. If one is not pro-choice, one must be anti-choice or anti-woman. The embrace of such terms by many public contestants and political movements has guaranteed anger, conflict, and mutual disdain. Such a spin in the use of language has aided neither women with serious complicated issues arising from pregnancy nor the 60 million who were conceived but not brought to birth in the US since 1972.
One of the most common words in current public use to describe the travail within The United Methodist Church is “schism.” It appears to be the default term in secular media and among a good many church leaders and publications. Its relational cousins are “divorce” or “civil war.” “Schism” comes from the Greek word meaning to tear or to rip. Historically and emotionally it conjures images of anger, conflict, name-calling, polarized camps of “them” and “us,” those whose rally cry is “Let’s kick mother,” whether “mom” is a company, a school of thought, or a denomination. It is a word in which one side is very right and the other side is very wrong. It takes no prisoners, shows no mercy, and weighs victory in terms of body counts in membership, property, money, and social leverage. And its list of suspects depends entirely on who is preparing the list. Think of those who were certain that Luther, Wesley, and William Booth were schismatics and not saints.
Schism, like divorce, typically involves attorneys and public criticism of the other (direct or by sarcastic inference). It focuses on what is wrong in the other while remaining remarkably sanguine about the absence of self-awareness or self-criticism in one's own positions or actions. Wholesale denial of problems is employed to minimize serious transformation. One side plots and fights to wound the other as much as possible, although in a "Christian" setting the defense mechanism of rationalization is employed overtime to assure objective spectators that no, what their eyes and ears are telling them is not true, that every shot fired and arrow spent on the target of the "other" is either for their good or because they had it coming.
What is happening within The United Methodist Church can turn into a schism in the worst sense of the word. Tens of millions of dollars donated for Christian ministry may yet find their way into the pockets of attorneys, similar to the estimated 50 million dollars spent on legal battles within the Episcopal Church…which is one-fourth the size of American United Methodism. Words pregnant with negative meaning can be employed casually by any and all parties to describe the events and movements that have overtaken the denomination. Meanwhile, issues far deeper and more complex than the hissing and snorting over sexuality continue to capsize the US church, with an almost supernatural lack of attention to those issues. I speak of such as trust deficits, demographics of age and building locations, theological dysphoria, dysfunctional and ineffective organization and systemic denial by many in leadership of the seriousness of all the above.
I call for another term. The United Methodist Church is beginning the process of a Methodist mitosis. Nobel laureate in biology, François Jacob, observed that the goal of every cell is to become two cells. It is a natural process that sustains and expands life. Absent mitosis, whether in physical bodies or the church as the Body of Christ, paralysis and atrophy are followed by death. Division, healthy division, is crucial to the ongoing life of the Wesleyan way. While I have written about this term previously, the postponement of General Conference 2020 and the launch of the Global Methodist Church invite a reboot and a reclaiming of the word and its relevance for today.
Mitosis reflects Christian history. It gave us the Protestant movement, with the corollary benefit of a better-behaved Catholic Church. The original Methodist mitosis was the division from the Church of England. From British Methodism came the Salvation Army, with no reasonable person arguing that their existence has been a tragic mistake. From the American Methodist movement came the Free Methodists, the Wesleyans, the great African American Wesleyan expressions and the Nazarenes among other holiness expressions. From the Holiness Movement came the various Pentecostal expressions which, with roughly 644 million adherents, is the largest expression of Protestant Christianity on earth.
Mitosis, like the mechanics of literal cell division or a new birth, entails some pain and stress in its beginning. Arising from that beginning is a renewed expression of Wesleyan Christianity that is able to effectively reach portions of humanity that the legacy church could not and cannot effectively reach. A gospel witness that connects with the lived experience and needs of those groups was and remains the result.
The spirit of mitosis cuts both ways. A new cell does not make a point of bad-mouthing or seeking to wound the original cell. In a healthy Methodist mitosis, the new expression does not dwell on all that is wrong with the legacy church or focus its identity on negatives (“I thank God that I am not as other…Methodists.”) Real and deep differences are named, but with the focus on the constructive alternatives being created. The continuing UMC is not Sodom, nor the Whore of Babylon. God is calling many to remain in that expression of Wesleyan Christianity. Traditionalist Wesleyans need to learn how to say that and mean it, without wincing.
God also is calling others toward a mitosis moment of a spiritual and institutional reboot. Satellite churches fail when the mother church leadership resents the "drain" on resources, or dislikes the types of persons being reached by the new expression, or shifts from a proud parent to a jealous rival vision of the new expression. Words of disdain and requirements that paralyze healthy separation combine to create what one may quietly think is a win-lose outcome, forgetting that where mitosis is occurring it is only win-win or lose-lose. The secular world watches, fully expecting combat, fighting over property, schism at its delicious worst. God is calling many to move into a new expression of Wesleyan Christianity. Progressive and institutionalist United Methodist leadership need to learn how to say that and mean that, without gagging.
Be in no doubt. The demographic and numerical cratering of the existing UMC will continue, division or no division, apart from a profound and deep series of changes that only a mitosis moment can prompt. The law of church physics remains clear: for every action there is an equal and opposite inaction. Mitosis deprives the institution of the shelter of inertia in addressing its multi-headed "wicked problem." Mitosis also confronts any new expression, such as the Global Methodist Church, of management by wishful thinking or assumptions that if one’s theology is orthodox, one’s praxis and structures will just happen in healthy ways. Wesley’s persistent warning against "dead orthodoxy" in which correct belief is used as an excuse for the absence of holiness or discipleship remains very relevant to bearers of his tradition…of left, center and right.
It is time to pay attention to our language, to gently challenge and to correct casual uses of "schism." The best way is to live consciously into a vision of a Methodist mitosis, focusing on meaningful change, offering vigorous critique as needed but absent the nastiness or curled lip of contempt one too easily finds from some defenders of the organization and from some critics. It is time for the people of the Wesleyan way to let others go gracefully or to go gracefully, rather than backing out of the saloon door with guns blazing on left and right. A grace-filled division that lives into the best of a mitosis moment would be a spectacular witness to the world of a Kingdom-inspired alternative to the polarized culture and norms that currently hold sway. Secular media is confident that an ugly brawl will be the future (after all, isn’t that what Christians do?) and will happily sell tickets to the main events. It is a Methodist mitosis vision that will position the church, in all its expressions, to lean forward into the future with confidence and courage, her energy flowing toward discipleship and the Kingdom rather than in "rounding up the usual suspects." That lived example of mutual grace could become one of the most significant acts of witness to the reality of the gospel by the church to culture in the first half of this century. Watching our language, and our attitudes in the months come, will point the way.
Bob Phillips is a Captain of the Navy Chaplain Corps (ret.) and a retired elder of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church.