United Methodists in the desert; White evangelicals in US politics

I've been watching with horror as a special conference of United Methodists (that's a big Protestant Christian denomination) failed this week either to affirm the full humanity of their LGBTQI adherents or cleanly throw the "anti-biblical sinners" out. The polity (governance arrangements) of the Church makes either option impossible: a plurality of Methodists come from countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Philippines where homosexuality is not tolerated. Along with some U.S. Methodists, these delegates voted for greater exclusion of gays. Meanwhile, conference decisions are subject to review by a Judicial Council which promptly found the measure supported by the anti-gay "traditionalists" unconstitutional. Nonetheless, supporters of locking in illiberal discipline apparently did succeed in making it expensive for any congregations which wants to leave to escape intact. Working all this out is likely to be ugly and amplify the pain.

There are a lot of good people feeling kicked in the gut. For a sense of the anguish of many ordinary Methodists, I suggest this article from The Tennessean out there in middle American. For a truly dire expression of current pain from a retired straight UM pastor, here's Christy Thomas:

You guys won. And you are indelibly stained by your victory.

For me . . . well, the portions of the US church that has freed itself from that kind of hatred and bigotry will get to reinvent ourselves. ... That will be hard. But I know that I am now, for the very first time, ashamed to be an ordained clergy in The United Methodist Church.

... Time for not just radical hospitality but also radical honesty: the church is not a safe place to be. That doesn’t mean it is not good. It is indeed good. But it is not safe, not if she will follow Jesus.

So, let’s pick up our crosses and do exactly that. Let’s be the church reborn. What we won’t be known as: “The United Methodist Church that hates gays.”

...And dire as that story is, that's not all I want to write about here. This is, after all, a political blog. Daniel Schultz, aka @pastordan, an ordained UCC minister who describes himself as a Crank theologian, has been writing about US Christianity for as long as I remember kicking around on the intertubes. He makes some thought-provoking observations in a recent Twitter thread which I'll append here. He is amplifying some observations from G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist.

From Morris:

In past decades, (white) Evangelical Christians have embraced the political right, both in& out of church. This has alienated congregants of all stripes, but the problems run deeper than you might think. ...

From Pastor Dan:

1. Disaffiliation doesn't happen equally across Christianity. Mainline Protestants are shrinking because older members aren't being replaced by their grandchildren. Catholics leave because they're disgusted by clerical abuse.
(Somewhat incredibly, mainline Protestants actually have the *lowest* rate of disaffiliation these days.)

2. Disaffiliation is also uneven because it's largely based around two things: tolerance and respect for science. When young people say "Christianity is too political," what they mean is that it's exclusionary. They're also pretty sick of creationism.
Churches that are tolerant/welcoming/supportive don't provoke the same kind of reaction. Basically, just about all of the people who would leave a too-liberal church have left already.

3. Increasingly, the choice people make when they leave a too-conservative church isn't to find a more liberal home. It's to leave the church altogether.
So part of the reason Christians seem to be getting more conservative as they go along is that they're hemorrhaging more liberal members. If you compare the numbers with the religiously unaffiliated, they're through the roof liberal.
(Standard disclaimers here: "Nones" don't necessarily hate faith - they're just not big fans of *religion.* And none of this means religion/faith is inherently conservative. It's a matter of who's practicing it at any given moment.)
Just a couple more things.

4. Conservatism/intolerance alone doesn't explain [white] evangelical attachment to the GOP. I have long believed it's that they share a high respect for authority. That's not the same as authoritarianism - I don't want to tag anyone as a fascist.
It's more along the lines of what George Lakoff calls "strong father" morality. Whatever the case, I think @robertpjones pointed out that as evangelicals grew as a proportion of the GOP, their concerns grew in importance to the party, as you would expect.

5. Last thing: the sharp growth of the Nones has been one reason I've been dubious of religious left outreach. The real action for liberals isn't in the church these days, it's with the people who've left the church.
As a political observer *and* as a Christian minister, I think it's imperative to recognize that those people can and do have coherent moral perspectives that are worth validating and engaging.
Schemes that imply that liberal religion > secular liberalism > conservative faith are really hot garbage. Nobody's morality is "better." Where that morality leads you is another story.

This "crank theologian" has been around a lot of blocks ...