The United Methodist split in which 7,600 congregations left the denomination the past four years – 5,600 in 2023 – has reached an end-of-year deadline for disaffiliation that makes it harder to leave and take church property along in 2024.

Nationwide, about a fourth of all churches left under 2019 guidelines that made it possible for churches to negotiate to leave and take their property with them until the end of 2023.

In Alabama, more than half of United Methodist congregations disaffiliated – about 555 churches. Most of those departures have taken place since 2022, when 198 congregations left in one day in North Alabama.

“Alabama is the epicenter of this,” said retired United Methodist Bishop William Willimon, who led the North Alabama Conference from 2004-2012. “I think it seems more traumatic in Alabama than it does elsewhere.”

Willimon, a leading United Methodist theologian, blames former President Donald Trump for the national mood that led to one of the largest schisms in American church history.

“People are in a separatist mood,” he said. “Who’s leading the separation of the United Methodist Church? I’ve said a non-Methodist, Donald Trump. Donald Trump is greatly responsible.”

Division over LGBTQ issues and transgender rights has led to lines in the sand between Democrats and Republicans that have become part of the zeitgeist of the nation, with Trump rallying Republicans angered by cultural changes.

“It was the right cultural moment for that kind of stupid argument to hold sway,” Willimon said.

The ordination of Bishop Karen Oliveto in 2016 as the first openly lesbian bishop, and clergy including bishops conducting same-sex weddings despite the ban in the United Methodist Book of Discipline became rallying points for conservatives against denominational leadership.

“There’s a lesbian bishop in Colorado, so therefore we can’t stay United Methodist, or some United Methodist in California has a different view of Jesus than we do,” Willimon said. “You wonder: Why now? The truth is: LGBTQ issues are paramount in people’s minds.”

Willimon called Book of Discipline paragraph 2553, passed in 2019 to allow congregations to leave and pay to take their property with them if they disagreed with the denomination’s handling of human sexuality issues, “one of the biggest mistakes and saddest moves ever” for United Methodists.

“What organization develops procedures for destroying their organization?” Willimon said. “They did that.”

The irony is that many conservatives who defended the denomination’s still-standing ban on same-sex marriage hoped that passing 2553 would prompt liberals to leave, Willimon said.

“That rule was devised by some to say to so-called progressives that were very unhappy about the continued stand against same-sex unions and LGBTQ clergy, ‘Hey, if you’ve got a problem with that, we don’t want to keep making you stay, you’re free to leave.’ They were hoping they would leave. Well, they didn’t. Then the conservatives said, ‘We aren’t going to win the next vote at General Conference. It’s not going our way. They’re going to continue to talk and agitate about it, so we’re going to use that paragraph as a means of leaving and taking our churches with us.’”

By the end of 2022, conservative churches were leaving in droves and that continued into 2023.

Willimon predicted that Alabama’s two United Methodist regional conferences, North Alabama and Alabama-West Florida, will have to merge due to shrinkage caused by disaffiliations.

“They can have a future as a combined conference, but they cannot have the same future they had,” said Willimon, now professor of Christian ministry at Duke University. “It’ll be a radically different future. That’s clear.”

In May, Bishop David Graves of the Alabama-West Florida Conference declared that “Division is of the devil” as 193 churches disaffiliated in one day. In June, the conference changed rules to make disaffiliation more difficult.

As a result, a group of 45 churches filed a lawsuit against the conference. They lost at the circuit court level when a judge ruled it was an internal church matter, but appealed to the state Supreme Court and are hoping for a hearing. The churches have filed a brief with the court and the conference now has to reply, and the court will then determine if and when to set a hearing, said Jonathan Bailie, an attorney for the churches who sued.

The churches accused Graves of trying to run out the clock on their disaffiliations before the Dec. 31 deadline to leave and take their property with them.

“The courts hate to get involved in church fights. and for good reason,” Willimon said.

“The bishops seem to be trying to put a positive face on things, which I guess is understandable,” Willimon said. “I think that’s a bit disingenuous because I don’t think there are many positive aspects of church division, separation, schism.”

Long-term membership decline

Willimon said that long-term demographic trends and continued membership loss in the millions since the 1970s meant that the denomination was already in deep trouble.

The United Methodist Church, founded from a merger of Methodist churches in 1968, has dropped from 10.6 million U.S. members in 1970 to about 5.7 million in 2021, reflecting a broader decline in attendance and membership across mainline Protestant denominations.

“The decline was already leading to toxic circumstances with people blaming each other and the church trying and not succeeding in most cases to reach out to a new generation,” Willimon said. “Now we’ve got this.”

The problems with membership loss existed before disaffiliation, he said. The disaffiliations have probably subtracted more than another million members nationwide.

“Our problem as a church is not disaffiliation,” Willimon said. “Our problem is our high median age as Methodists is like 65 years old, 66 maybe. You can’t be that old and have a future.”

But he said that the Global Methodist Church, founded last year by many of the more theologically conservative congregations leaving the United Methodist Church, faces the same long-term dilemma.

“Sadly, part of this is symptomatic of a church that couldn’t figure out how to address the problem that we’ve lost touch with three generations of young Christians,” Willimon said. “So, what we do is we decide to split up and form another aging mainline (predominantly) white denomination. That to me seems sad and ironic.”

Some staying in the United Methodist Church point to the fact that many of the congregations that left are small, aging congregations in rural areas across the state.

“There’s some truth in that,” Willimon said. “But also, in North Alabama, they’ve lost some of their most vital, active, large congregations. It’s going to hurt. That not only takes money and numbers away; it takes ministry away.”

The disaffiliation of large churches such as Clearbranch in Trussville and Vestavia Hills Methodist are alarming because the conference poured so much into those churches to help them thrive, Willimon said. The conference planted Clearbranch, financed it and nurtured it for years, he said. The Vestavia church thrived under the leadership of pastors trained and assigned to it by the denomination, he said.

“The bishops naively didn’t expect so much dissatisfaction with the church,” Willimon said. “They also showed they had very few skills dealing with conflict and argument and dissension, so the bishops kept talking about charitable exit, gracious discussions, and then the bishops took it upon themselves to help churches leave or, just about as bad, said ‘Y’all prayerfully consider what you want to do, then let us know, then we’ll cut a deal with you to leave.’”

Willimon said bishops should have fought harder to keep their flocks intact.

“Well, that’s just absurd that the bishops would not have fought, defended, argued, pled, bargained, do whatever’s necessary to keep these churches committed to our trust and the United Methodist Church,” Willimon said. “There’s no organization that would ever permit that kind of thing to happen. That’s sad.”

What comes next

Willimon has written more than 50 books on Methodism, most recently “Don’t Look Back: Methodist Hope for What Comes Next,” published last year by Abingdon Press based on interviews with about 200 Methodist pastors.

“I told them there’s no criticism of the United Methodist Church that I haven’t made before you, in print, without all the homophobic stuff,” Willimon said. “I’ve read through the proposed Book of Discipline for the Global Methodist Church and I agree with so much of it. It’s wonderful. It’s a third the size of the current United Methodist Discipline. Good move. I could have made it shorter. I think it’s sad so many of the reforms needed in the organization of the church, the United Methodist Church couldn’t bring itself to reform itself better, and it led to this split.”

Willimon said his book, “Don’t Look Back,” attracted criticism from both sides.

“I expected to get hammered by conservatives because I mock them and pointed out the hypocrisy,” he said. “My shock when the book came out was to get hammered by the more aggressive of the so-called progressives who said, ‘How dare you try to keep them in the church. Let them go. We don’t want them.’ You can’t make that decision as a Christian. You can’t say, ‘We’ll be better off without you. Leave.’ It’s horrible.”

That’s giving up on Christian unity, Willimon said.

“What it means is I’m made uncomfortable by having arguments with people who disagree with me,” he said. “I don’t want to have an argument with you on this subject, so it’s just easier for me if you’ll leave.”

Now, in many small towns across Alabama, one struggling United Methodist church has become two competing struggling Methodist churches. Churches that left are rapidly changing their signs to eliminate the “United” in their names.

“You take a weak aging congregation that decides to split, and we divide ourselves into two weak aging congregations,” Willimon said.

Promoting continued opposition to same-sex marriage won’t work for a younger audience, he said.

“If you go out there and say to a younger generation, we’re going to reach you on the basis of our opposition to LGBTQ issues, just try that,” he said. “You’ll find even conservative Christians, that’s not their issue. They don’t get it.”

See also: United Methodist split: changing signs reflect upheaval

United Methodist split: 45 churches who sued bishop to disaffiliate file appeal to state Supreme Court

United Methodist split: 8 more churches disaffiliate, including 1 of Mobile’s largest

United Methodists urge repeal of ban on same-sex marriage, openly gay clergy

United Methodists ask for loyalty from leaders, tighten rules on disaffiliation and downsize

Another 132 North Alabama United Methodist churches disaffiliate: Trussville, Helena, Gardendale

‘Division is of the devil,’ United Methodist bishop says as 193 churches disaffiliate