For the past several years, the United Methodist Church has been divided on LGBTQ issues. In 2020, Asbury Memorial Church in Savannah, Georgia, was the first in the country to leave the denomination after the judicial council of the UMC voted in 2019 to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage and the ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals.”
However, at the end of 2023, 25 percent of churches had disaffiliated with the UMC – for the exact opposite reason. According to AP, the vast majority of the churches who left the denomination were conservative-leaning and responding to what they saw as the UMC’s failure to enforce the same bans that caused Asbury to leave. While the UMC does still ban same-sex marriage and openly LGBTQ clergy, there has been significant defiance to those bans, which motivated conservative churches to launch the separate Global Methodist Church – where most of the newly disaffiliated churches are expected to turn. The mass exodus in November was set into motion in response to a deadline set after the 2019 vote, which allowed congregations to leave by the end of 2023.
Most of the UMC disaffiliations are in the South, with Southeastern jurisdictions accounted for 50 percent of all disaffiliations and South Central jurisdictions making up 21 percent, according to a report from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Furthermore, most of the disaffiliating churches were majority white; 97.4 percent of the disaffiliations were majority white, while the UMC in 2019 before the mass exodus consisted of 89.6 percent majority white churches. Only 19 percent of the disaffiliating churches had a woman as lead pastor, despite making up 29 percent of the denomination prior to the split.
In the North Georgia United Methodist Conference, more than 260 of the around 700 churches have left – about 41 percent of the conference. South Georgia and North Georgia were among the top ten conferences losing the most churches, with the South Georgia conference experiencing 50 percent of its churches leaving – tied for the third highest rate in the country with Texas (50 percent) and following North Alabama (52 percent) and Northwest Texas (81 percent). Jordan Thrasher, the senior pastor at Embry Hills UMC, told 11 Alive that it was “the biggest” exodus he’s seen in the denomination.
The mass exodus may pose financial issues for the UMC. While the sizes of the remaining and leaving churches are about the same – a median of around 38 members for both – five percent of the disaffiliating churches had an average worship attendance of more than 250, which means a significant budget cut in 2024 and beyond, despite departing congregations paying for their properties and other financial obligations.
However, the future of the denomination is bright for queer Methodists. The more progressive churches who have remained in the UMC are expected to advocate for removing the ban on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy at the denomination’s general conference (the first denomination-wide gathering in eight years), which starts April 23 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Russell, the President of the Board of Directors at Renovus, an organization for LGBTQ Christians (which you can learn more about on page 12), told 11 Alive that he hopes the exodus of more conservative churches encourages more queer believers to attend church – and that displaced members turn to Renovus.
“We would just hope that churches choose love,” he said. “We feel like that’s what Jesus chose.”