Methodists: Join, Consolidate, or Drift?

• Share

Of the six denominations discussing the "Blake proposal" to create a new Protestant U.S. superchurch, the one most cautious of involvement is the Meth odist.-The nation's 10,235,000 Methodists, who would be the largest component of the union, are triply divided among an ecumenical avant-garde who see an urgent need for union, a church bureaucracy generally committed to consolidation rather than extension, and a vast majority of pastors and laymen either indifferent to union or dubious about its consequences.

The most strident voices in Method ism's internal debate have lately been those of the ecumenists. During a June conference of church leaders at Lake Junaluska, N.C., Theologian Albert C. Outler, an observer at the Vatican Council, argued that it was time for Methodism to "fish or cut bait." If the church was really not interested in following through with the Blake proposal, he asked, "would it be wiser to withdraw now rather than later?" In the current issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Methodist Church Historian Franklin Littell complains that his church's leaders have approached merger "with the mind-set of 'all deliberate speed.'" He further charges that the present self-satisfied state of Methodism as the one truly national church precludes any serious involvement in the ecumenical task.

"We're Not Ready." Although harshly put, the charges of Outler and Littell ring true to many other Methodists. "We're not ready for organic merger," admits Bishop Donald Tippett of San Francisco, a supporter of the Blake union. Many Methodist leaders believe that priority in church goals should go to resolving internal problems. Bishop Paul Martin of Houston, for example, argues that Methodism has its hands full attempting to integrate the Negro Central Jurisdiction into previously all-white church structures and carrying out a scheduled 1968 merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, a Methodist-like body of German origin. At the Lake Junaluska Conference, Indianapolis Bishop Richard Raines suggested that the church's first need was reorganizing and strengthening its relations with other Methodist bodies around the world.

While the bishops may be concerned with the church's institutional needs, argues the Rev. Leroy Hodapp of the First Methodist Church in Bloomington, Ind., "the great mass of Methodists are totally indifferent to church union. If you were to poll the average congregation about the six-church consultation, half the members wouldn't know what you were talking about." According to the Rev. Albert Shirkey of Washington's Mount Vernon Methodist Church, "the pulpit is far more interested than the pew"; yet other church observers feel that some ministers have been reluctant to talk up union because merger threatens their job security.