Methodists come to Charlotte to blow up their institution (04-17-2024--Hour3)

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[00:00:27] for your support. The United Methodist Church, United Methodist Church or the UMC, they are

[00:00:36] coming to Charlotte. Yep, they're descending from all over the world. Well, except from

[00:00:43] Africa for some reason, they didn't get the invites so much in time so they couldn't

[00:00:48] book all of their travel plans and stuff. And I'm sure it was just, you know, snaff food,

[00:00:55] oversight. Did you know? So I've been doing some research on this, just full disclosure,

[00:01:02] I am not in the United Methodist Church. I have been to some of my best friends or

[00:01:08] Methodist, I have lots of Methodist friends. My wife was raised in the Methodist Church

[00:01:16] and I did not know though that at one point, one out of every, I think it was one out

[00:01:22] of every three Christians in America were Methodist or maybe it's one out of three Americans.

[00:01:27] But it was like a lot. I didn't realize it. It was a really, really big church. It is

[00:01:32] a really big church. Tons of bureaucracy. I learned that too. It's kind of nuts. Yeah,

[00:01:37] so I've been studying up on this thing because I don't know if you're aware of this. There

[00:01:42] are the UMC is splitting or as it's been referred to as disaffiliation. Now look,

[00:01:50] I am not an expert in all of this stuff. I have watched and read a bunch of stuff over

[00:01:55] the last couple weeks, but there's a lot of stuff that I don't get and I don't need to

[00:02:03] kind of go into the weeds on all of the different, you know, book of disciplines and

[00:02:09] all I don't need to get all into the weeds on all of that stuff. Okay. But the key

[00:02:13] here is that the same sort of defiance and transgressive behavior that has been evident

[00:02:27] in all sorts of institutions is now inside the United Methodist Church and it is coming

[00:02:38] to a head and it is coming to a head here in Charlotte within the next two weeks. They

[00:02:43] are arriving I believe it's the 23rd, right? So it's like a week from today basically,

[00:02:50] right or less than a week away and they're going to be here for I think something like

[00:02:55] two weeks from like April 23rd through May 3rd or so and they call this thing the general

[00:03:02] conference and they're coming from all over the world. Also, I did not know this,

[00:03:06] you know, like more than half of the of Methodists in the world are in Africa.

[00:03:15] Yeah, like a huge growth market for for Methodism. And so the American United Methodist Church part

[00:03:29] they have some different ideas about how they would like to worship and who shall lead the

[00:03:40] congregants in the worshiping, what should be celebrated, right their official position on

[00:03:47] various things. And as it turns out some of the African congregations are not on board,

[00:03:55] not on board with some of the stuff. And these are about social issues. And if you go to some of

[00:04:02] the Facebook groups, I went to one couple nights ago and I forget what the name of it was but

[00:04:12] it's a progressive faction inside the Methodist Church and they had like a hey welcome to the

[00:04:23] newest congregation or something, a new church or something. And you got all these people and

[00:04:29] they're standing in their chapel and they are all holding and standing behind the transgender flag.

[00:04:37] Is that what it's called? Because it used to just be the rainbow flag. You don't call it

[00:04:42] that anymore because it's got the triangle thing and that breaks up a rainbow, right?

[00:04:47] It's got the little, it's like a triangle thing, right? And it's got different color. I think

[00:04:52] it, I don't know, whatever. They got that flag, which is weird because I think the Methodists

[00:04:57] have their own flag. Have you seen it? It's got like the little flame in the cross and it's like

[00:05:02] white, whatever. So they have a flag but that's not the flag they were waving. They were waving

[00:05:06] the trans flag. And over the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years or so they have been acting in

[00:05:15] this progressive movement inside this institution, part of the long march through the institutions,

[00:05:20] right? It's not just media. It's not just movies and art and songs and schools,

[00:05:27] right? It's also the churches because churches are also educational institutions.

[00:05:34] And so part of the long march includes the church. And so they have been the progressives

[00:05:40] in the Methodist religion in this denomination. They have been on the march and they have been

[00:05:48] engaging in increasingly disruptive and defiant behavior. Like they're violating their own rules

[00:05:55] all over the place, right? But they never get penalized for it. And they keep getting accommodated

[00:06:02] and accommodated, no penalties for violating. And this gets to stuff like should they do gay

[00:06:10] marriages? Should they have non-celebrate, gay preachers? The abortion issue is one. Like all

[00:06:19] of these social hot button issues that progressives are trying to advance through the church,

[00:06:25] right? This is all coming to a vote, to several votes over days. This is all coming up in the

[00:06:33] general conference. Now they're going to do a whole bunch of other stuff and a lot of the

[00:06:37] people that are on board with this new direction for the United Methodist Church, they are lamenting,

[00:06:47] I've seen some of the videos on that, that they lament that all the media is focusing on the

[00:06:51] hot button issues and we're just about love and all of that, right? However, the more traditional

[00:06:59] segment of the Methodist denomination, they believe their churches become corrupted.

[00:07:09] And while initially years ago, progressive churches were given sort of an off-ramp,

[00:07:15] they're like, look, if you don't want to abide by our rules, here's how you get out. Just go,

[00:07:19] right? So now the traditional churches, they want out because they're going to lose and this fight

[00:07:30] has been going on for a while. There was a piece I came across, a fellow by the name of Lonnie

[00:07:37] Brooks, writing at umnews.org, United Methodist News, umnews.org, and he has served as a lay

[00:07:46] delegate or reserve delegate to all except one general conference since 2000. He's a member of

[00:07:52] St. John United Methodist Church of Anchorage and has served on four general church agencies and

[00:07:57] committees. And the headline on this piece is, Centrist Progressive Coalition Could Soon Unravel.

[00:08:06] No. Completely predictable just based on the evidence. And by the way, you could look at

[00:08:13] other denominations, Presbyterians went through this, right? Lutherans went through this.

[00:08:19] The progressive churches don't ever really end up surviving and growing after these types of

[00:08:28] fights. The traditionalist side, the more conservative, you know, sides, they tend to do okay.

[00:08:35] In a lot of case, they do better. But this centrist progressive alliance always spells

[00:08:41] the death of the centrists. It can be no other way, by the way. This gets to what I've quoted Dennis

[00:08:49] Prager many times in his observation that conservatives vote their principles and

[00:08:58] progressives vote their principles. But Democrats or in this case, I would say centrists,

[00:09:03] they do not vote their principles, right? Because they are afraid of being lumped in

[00:09:10] with the conservatives because that's who they are actually more closely aligned with.

[00:09:13] That's how they live their lives, things that they believe is right and wrong,

[00:09:17] like these concepts that they are generally closer to the conservatives

[00:09:21] than the progressives. But they don't want to admit that because it makes them feel icky.

[00:09:24] Oh, they're like Neanderthal knuckle-draggers, you know? So they align themselves with the

[00:09:31] progressives and they vote against their own values. And then what happens when

[00:09:34] progressives take control, the conservatives are gone and then the centrists are also marginalized.

[00:09:43] There's no need for them any longer. They are the useful idiots, right?

[00:09:47] So what is expected to occur, but maybe not, what's expected to occur at the general

[00:09:53] conference is that the progressives are going to just steamroll over everybody

[00:09:59] and they're going to adopt what they want to adopt. And what will then happen is the

[00:10:03] centrists are going to be left on the outside and we're talking like big churches.

[00:10:08] They're going to, and they're going to realize, oh, there's no limiting principles here.

[00:10:14] It's going to just keep going left and left and left and left.

[00:10:18] And there's no longer a conservative or traditional wing to combat the progressive wing.

[00:10:25] You're about to lose your church. In fact, I would submit you already have.

[00:10:28] That's what it seems like to me. I'm just an outsider.

[00:10:31] The Charlotte Observer editorial board writing the other day that the

[00:10:35] Methodists are coming to Charlotte to weigh a milestone measure on the LGBTQ acceptance.

[00:10:39] So this is obviously from the progressive cheering stands.

[00:10:46] The editorial board is super, super excited about having gay marriage and gay clergy, trans

[00:10:56] clergy and marriages or whatever. Like all of it just opening up the door wide for the

[00:11:00] progressives to take over the United Methodist Church. They are so happy about this for acceptance.

[00:11:07] Institutions across the country have become tepid or downright hostile towards the LGBTQ

[00:11:11] plus community in the past couple of years. It's a stark regression after years of positive

[00:11:17] momentum. But the United Methodist Church will attempt to do the opposite at its upcoming

[00:11:22] gen- So this is an add a boy to the Methodist. It's like, you know,

[00:11:26] we stand with you, don't back down kind of a thing.

[00:11:30] At its upcoming general conference to be held later this month here in Charlotte,

[00:11:33] the church will discuss whether to officially liberalize its stance on sexuality,

[00:11:38] the culmination of a long-standing theological battle over LGBTQ plus rights.

[00:11:42] I don't know if it's actually a theological battle that's going on.

[00:11:46] This is a political battle because like the theological

[00:11:50] battle like has always come down on one side. It's been a lack of enforcement on the theology

[00:11:56] for a very long time and in fact, in like most of the other congregations around the world,

[00:12:01] they're not on board with what the American United Methodists want to do, right?

[00:12:07] The book of Discipline from the Methodist currently states that quote,

[00:12:11] the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.

[00:12:14] It also prohibits ministers from performing same-sex marriages

[00:12:18] and the ordaining of openly LGBTQ plus people. That language, which wasn't adopted until 1972,

[00:12:24] could be removed at the general conference. It's a move that's been in the making for years

[00:12:30] and it's one that has yielded a messy divorce among Methodists as more conservative congregations

[00:12:34] displeased with the impending changes have left the denomination in droves.

[00:12:39] It's not just the changes that is prompted then to leave. It's the way the church has been behaving,

[00:12:49] the way the legal counsel or judicial counsel, the way the bishops have been,

[00:12:55] it's the way they've been behaving. It's the way they have been ignoring certain transgressions

[00:13:01] and certain rule breakers and they've been dropping hammers on other congregations.

[00:13:08] They've been trying to seize land and keep control over stuff because there's a whole land

[00:13:13] component and money component to this whole thing, right? Progressives by winning are going to now

[00:13:19] take control over the properties and the churches that we're trying to get out because they did

[00:13:24] not like the way the church is changing its teachings, right? And if you've been part

[00:13:30] of an organization that said we believe in A, B, and C and now they're going to say,

[00:13:34] you know what? We don't believe in A, B, and C and now you're like, well, wait a minute

[00:13:37] then I'm not going to be part of this church anymore and they're like, okay, fine, now pay us

[00:13:40] for the building. And the congregation's like, we have been paying for the building,

[00:13:45] we've been tithing you for a century and a half, right? We've been paying for the building and

[00:13:51] the upkeep, we've been paying for the preacher, we've been paying to the big church, right?

[00:13:56] The mother church, we've been paying up the food chain. But now if you don't come

[00:14:02] up with all the money right now, then you're out. And that's a tough spot for people to be in.

[00:14:11] Their parents, grandparents, right? They built this church, literally built this church,

[00:14:15] donated all this money to buy the pews, to buy the altar, to keep it running,

[00:14:20] get A, C put in, right? All of this stuff and now they're going to start from scratch.

[00:14:26] This is why progressivism like this, like these, the march of the institutions, it's

[00:14:32] like an infection, it just destroys. Let us get Paul on the program. Hello, Paul.

[00:14:39] Hey, how you doing? Hey, I'm good. What's up?

[00:14:42] What you were just talking about before, I acquired a book, it's the 18 rejected books of

[00:14:49] the Bible that were founded with Dead Sea Scrolls. And then it has the, it's called

[00:14:54] The Apocalypse of Thomas or the Revelation from Jesus to Thomas about,

[00:15:01] hear about the things that must happen in the last times. Now, it talks about my

[00:15:06] priest will fight him in some cells and it's sacrificed to me with minds of deceit.

[00:15:11] The priest will see the people forsaking the house of the Lord and turn to the world.

[00:15:17] Achievement in the cities will be condemned in their positions when we brought to the

[00:15:21] treasury of the kings. Sounds like everything that's going on today.

[00:15:26] Well, it is the thing that like the Catholic Church and the Apocrypha, they talk about this too.

[00:15:31] It's like they look at it as metaphorical and that's the thing is like you can read a lot of

[00:15:36] passages, you can read as literal and denominations do and some passages you can read as

[00:15:42] metaphorical and other denominations do that as well.

[00:15:46] The Methodists though are in this fight. I appreciate the call, Paul.

[00:15:50] The Methodists are in this fight and it's coming to Charlotte. And this has been building for years,

[00:15:56] like four years. One of the problems that they're going to have is that the African

[00:16:03] congregations apparently make up more than half of the membership and they did not get

[00:16:09] the invitations to attend because you got to attend in person. Then you're not allowed to

[00:16:15] zoom in and proxy vote and all that stuff. They have to be in person, but they did not get all of

[00:16:20] the information that was required in order to get approval for their visas. You don't just get to say,

[00:16:27] oh, I want to come to America for no reason. They're coming from Africa. They've got to

[00:16:33] apply for these special visas so they can come here and participate. They also have

[00:16:37] like food restrictions and stuff like that. Apparently at one of the previous conferences,

[00:16:43] a bunch of people from one of the African nations got sick because of the food or something.

[00:16:47] So like there's, there are all these things, these logistics that had to have occurred and

[00:16:52] they had four years to do it and they didn't. Now you've got a lot of African churches

[00:16:58] that are not going to be at this conference, which means what? That the American progressive

[00:17:07] wing is going to be able to dictate the outcome of the votes because they will have

[00:17:13] the majority of the seats whereas they shouldn't really. So there's a letter, an open letter that

[00:17:21] was sent from the leaders of the United Methodist Africa Forum, which is a caucus

[00:17:29] of Africa United Methodists expressing concerns. They said, given the high visa denial rates

[00:17:35] of US visas at different embassies in Africa, having invitation letters early would have allowed

[00:17:40] time for alternate delegates to secure visas if the first elected delegates do not get the visa.

[00:17:46] Now could you imagine, just imagine if this was a conservative majority white church that did

[00:17:56] this to, look I'm not, I do not want to play the race card here but I will tell you that

[00:18:02] there are people from the African delegations, they are saying this is racist. They are accusing

[00:18:09] the United Methodist Church of being racist against them. Not me, they're saying it. Given the prevailing

[00:18:17] conditions they say we'd like to express that as Africans we consider this as an uncertain process

[00:18:23] with limited trust that risks compromising acceptance of the outcome of the general

[00:18:28] conference. We believe it'll be unfair to expect the African church to endorse the outcomes of whatever

[00:18:35] you guys are doing there, right? Because our core understanding that there shall never be anything

[00:18:40] for us without us. There are fundamental and existential issues for the United Methodist

[00:18:45] Church in Africa which are going to be decided by this upcoming conference and the attempt

[00:18:51] to exclude and exert psychologically, psychological fatigue on the African delegates is totally

[00:19:01] unacceptable and we will not be bound by the outcome decided in such conditions. What does that mean?

[00:19:09] You guys do this? We are out, right? We're not abiding by this. I didn't look, again,

[00:19:16] not a Methodist. I have no idea how all of that stuff works with the disaffiliations

[00:19:19] and all of this, especially internationally. However, if this is half of your membership

[00:19:29] that's fixed into walk because of the way at the very least it is perceived that the

[00:19:38] mother church has been trying to stiff arm the African delegation and congregations

[00:19:44] and they're going to walk. This is a disaster for the United Methodist Church

[00:19:52] and I don't even know how you prevent this from happening in the long term because the

[00:19:58] progressives have sort of embedded themselves so deeply into the leadership of the church it

[00:20:04] seems like and there are a lot of people that are just going to go along to get along with

[00:20:09] the edicts of the church and this centrist progressive coalition is not going to last.

[00:20:17] Okay, if you're listening to this podcast you are obviously paying attention to the world around us.

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[00:21:10] Here's the connection by the way between the NPR story and so many other things with this

[00:21:15] Methodist story. Liberals are struggling to fit in with progressives on many issues

[00:21:19] and progressives do not allow for any non-conformance that's a problem right this is the problem

[00:21:27] Lonnie Brooks writing at umnews.org he says separation this separation that's coming

[00:21:34] for the Methodist Church is the largest downsizing of the main branch of the Methodist movement

[00:21:38] worldwide since the 19th century another crisis is the likelihood that the coalition between

[00:21:44] United Methodist centrists and progressives which has to one degree or another precipitated

[00:21:49] this wave of disaffiliations will unravel and disintegrate so the coalition's going to break

[00:21:55] okay the coalition between these two interest groups is based on a common commitment

[00:22:00] to full inclusion of LGBTQIA plus persons in the life and ministries of the UMC

[00:22:08] the presenting problem going forward and by the way this guy Lonnie Brooks identifies as a

[00:22:13] centrist here so on board with this stuff but he says the the problem going forward is that

[00:22:18] this commitment is the only thing that the two groups have in common that's it

[00:22:24] if you look what's coming up remember that up to the end of the uh

[00:22:30] 2019 special session of the general conference the balance of power in the church was maintained

[00:22:35] between the traditionalists or conservatives on one side and the progressives on the other

[00:22:41] who fought themselves for dominance in church decision-making and by the way this is when

[00:22:47] the progressives were going in and disrupting events right these meetings and stuff they were

[00:22:53] disobeying the church violating rules right sort of like the blocking traffic at the airport

[00:23:00] kind of tactics that we have been seeing around the country right except at a at an institutional

[00:23:05] level this is what progressives do they destroy they jam it up they mess stuff up they

[00:23:13] they see the institution and they take it over there I mean in nature it's parasitic right this is

[00:23:20] they they they see the institutional you believe these things well we're involved now and we're

[00:23:24] going to take it over and we're going to march through your institution and change it fundamentally

[00:23:28] change it from what it was rather than say you know what we're going to go start our own

[00:23:33] church and it's going to be just like Methodist but it's going to allow all of these things

[00:23:38] that we want to see they right no they don't want to do that they take over your church

[00:23:44] so you have these two different wings that are fighting each other but now with traditionalists

[00:23:52] leaving right with a centrist they would they would occasionally but mostly you know

[00:23:59] futile forays he calls it in in the attempt to maintain peace and unity okay

[00:24:05] centrist didn't really have much power the centrists would support the view of the church

[00:24:11] as an example of big tent polity with room for those who espouse different viewpoints on various

[00:24:17] device of issues most prominently human sexuality right so they can we all get along

[00:24:21] we're a big tent we got room for everybody right in 2019 at their similar conference

[00:24:28] which looked so much like a defeat of the progressives was in reality the end of

[00:24:32] the road for centrists at that point we had no choice but to become allies with the progressives

[00:24:39] and deny the apparent victory of the traditionalists the conservatives which in effect left the

[00:24:46] traditionalists now with no real option other than separation so that's apparently what happened

[00:24:51] five years ago you had conservatives and progressives going at it and the centrists

[00:24:56] threw their lot in with the progressives and when that happened the conservatives were like

[00:25:02] we're out we see okay well you guys have all these numbers and you're gonna you're gonna start

[00:25:05] changing all of this and so we're gonna leave um so a provision hang on a second at that point

[00:25:12] i had no choice become allies with the progressives uh right so a provision championed by the

[00:25:17] conservatives as a pathway for the exit of the progressives has now become an exit path

[00:25:22] for the traditionalists for the conservatives right they set up a way for the progressives to

[00:25:26] leave their church if you don't like the teachings you don't like the book of discipline you

[00:25:31] don't like this stuff just here's the here's the exit ramp and progressives refuse to take it

[00:25:37] so now the conservatives want to take it of course now the mother church is like blocking them

[00:25:42] from doing so but anyway but here's what he goes on to say the really bad news for the centrists

[00:25:48] is that with the departure of the traditionalists who maintained the balance with the progressives

[00:25:55] the progressives now are poised to make a triumphal display of power at the upcoming general conference

[00:26:02] in which they will move forward with their entire agenda the entire agenda of the progressive movement

[00:26:08] and so what does that mean for the centrists well i hope you're on board with everything

[00:26:12] the progressives want to do because that's what's coming good and hard that's what you're

[00:26:18] going to get this is why i mentioned the denis prager comment right conservatives vote their

[00:26:25] principles progressives vote their principles but the centrists do not because they don't ever want

[00:26:32] to acknowledge that they're too close to the conservative side you can never count on them

[00:26:36] you cannot count on them to stand up against the progressive ideology and if you think that

[00:26:43] the progressives are not going to engage in some form of triumphalism and just ram everything

[00:26:47] through um please have you met a progressive like they've done it in all these other churches you

[00:26:54] have all this historical evidence all right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for

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