We entered the Information Age with great optimism. Many people at the outset saw the capacity for massive amounts of information being made available to the public. We had two things wrong in our expectation of what was to come: our anthropology and our trust in institutions.
Anthropology, at least in the field of theology, refers to human nature. Those who believe humans are a blank slate are continually frustrated by how much this ‘human nature’ thing seems to exist. In the contemporary West, we imagine humans to be capable of such greatness without much risk of sin. The opposite is the case. Humans generally aren’t capable of doing much more than those who came before, and we have great capacity for sin.
We wanted to imagine that humans would be responsible with the information we got. Rather, the vast majority of people who got ahold of these supercomputers that fit into our pockets use them to track celebrities, play games, watch porn, and/or fuel tribalism. People generally are not reading books or articles that help them to grow more conscientious or intelligent. They certainly are not consulting resources that help them to become more informed voters or civic members. It would seem that humans are not cut out for information at our fingertips.
Yet the personal responsibility angle, as usual, misses out on a key component: namely, the reality of worldly powers and principalities. The ‘powers and principalities’ moniker is a biblical term referring to demonic dark powers influencing, sometimes ruling over, the world (ex. Eph. 6:12). Despite the propaganda that many of us were fed as children, our society has been deeply sick and rotten for a long time, long before the decline of the church. Indeed, the decline of the church is a direct result of groundwork that was laid 150 years ago across the West, which now threatens to infect the rest of the world.
What I mean to say, and allow me to speak plainly, is that our media apparatus, our centralized government, and our economic system were broadly attuned to manipulate populations for the sake of preserving and insulating power. This is what fueled federal government during the Great Depression pressuring rural folks to move into cities, where they could be concentrated and coerced more effectively. This is what has animated government regulations with respect to business, which has reliably benefited large corporations at the expense of locally owned businesses. And, with respect to this particular topic, it is the defining dynamic at play with respect to media production in our country. As the Information Age came, the disseminators and mediators of information, rightfully threatened, managed to concentrate and bottleneck virtual worlds so that citizens would be spoon fed echo chamber propaganda while thinking they are free. Google, which once rendered unbiased results matching keyword searches long ago switched to preferring establishment resources, often refusing to even render alternative options at all. Alternatives to mainstream arbiters of information are somewhat instantly cast in a suspicious and malign light. Individuals, informed by that blasted human nature, are herdlike in mentality, the vast majority then skewing away from alternative media and entering a tribal mindset to defend the threatened institution.
I just left such an institution. The United Methodist Church was very much an outgrowth of the progressivist mindset that became ascendant at the end of the 19th century. Its fundamental tenet is that humans are ignorant and in need of specialized experts and centralized control. Forget about John Adams saying our constitution was made for a populace that was both religious and moral. Rather, those who claimed the reigns of power, from the robber barons straight up to today’s bureaucrats, saw themselves as above the everyman, a modern sort of aristocracy with divine right to rule.
The United Methodist Church designed an ecclesiastic governance structure very much mirroring the New Deal restructured federal government of the United States. Its many agencies and commissions created the veneer of learning and fairness while actually operating to dumb down its adherents. Class meetings gave way to Sunday school classes that gave way to nominal believers who show up every few weeks for an emotionally rich and doctrinally impoverished worship service. Meanwhile works of piety were supplanted by modern social justice. Indeed, most leaders in the UMC today cannot even recognize a difference between Christian mission and social justice work, so complete was their victory over the zeitgeist of UM leadership.
The primary way in which I began to notice the toxic institutional mentality of the UMC was in financial reporting. Getting ahold of solid financial information was difficult. As I learned, in my own former conference, the Oklahoma Annual Conference, even members of the Council on Finance and Administration were not given a fund balance report, nor were they given information about reserves. To this day, nobody except the bishop and the conference treasurer, to my knowledge, know those numbers. And while they report them (ostensibly) to the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) of the UMC, the GCFA will not give out that information. The finances of the denomination are cloaked in a byzantine labyrinth of funds nested in committees across the world, obfuscating clear preferential treatment for American UM bodies over international ones, privileging leftist neomarxist causes over historically recognizable Christian efforts. The obfuscation creates plausible deniability and gives an air of paranoia and conspiracy theory to those who object. Historians have chronicled the different chapters in this story, whether it be early-20th century concern for Sunday school curriculum, or the concern in the 1980s about Marxism being promoted by UM missions, or the revelations of apportionment dollars being sent to the National Council of Churches, which used the funds for Marxist guerrilla warfare in Central America.
Anyway, I have painted a picture in broad strokes of how and why we find ourselves here. If you find any of the steps I have taken to be objectionable, then I welcome your critique. I would invite you to steel man my arguments first.
I would be irresponsible if I didn’t take the time to note that the principles for which I am advocating here need to be mirrored in the local church. Churches with biblical integrity will practice accountability and transparency. Whether or not your church is tied to a denominational body, if you care about the longevity and faithfulness of your church, you will lovingly demand these things.
If one accepts my broad outline as matching our true history, then we stand at a decision point about how to move forward. Many voices advocate an abandonment of institutions/denominations altogether, as they have seemingly all been compromised. In our particular fragile and coddled era, it is revealed that so many lack the fortitude to weather the vicissitudes of history. Rather, there is an urge to simply depart from those bodies that corrupt our integrity, no longer giving opportunity for powers and principalities to pervert those bodies to which we might entrust ourselves. Of course, the result of that is eventually alienation and isolation, as every larger body of association will eventually require compromise and negotiation.
It seems to me and a few others that we have to acknowledge our history, the realities of anthropology and of the innate corruption of institutions, while simultaneously resolving to do better. The reason why is simply because we have to. Christ calls us to be in vulnerable fellowship with one another, not just in the local church, but in New Testament modeled networks of churches sharing money and authority. Yes, this layout has been compromised time and again. Even so, I would argue that this corruption has only been possible through the opaqueness of leadership and the concentration of power. The answer is more transparency and less trust of sinful men, more personal responsibility and less outsourcing to ‘experts.’
This historical moment, while it seems doomed, also carries the potential for a renewal of a denominational movement of integrity. I like to imagine a Global Methodist Church marked by transparency (financial and otherwise) and the priesthood of all believers (rather than mindless deference to episcopal [read: expert] authority). Whether or not the United States of America works out (and I hope it does until Jesus returns), the church has an edict from Christ himself to fulfill: to beat back the gates of hell. I don’t think we can do that as a disparate group of selfish, defensive local churches. I rather think we have to create an intentional, conscientious network of churches watching over one another and our leadership in love. I would argue that the Wesleyan heritage makes us uniquely able to do this.
The obvious and immediate threat is the small-mindedness of the average churchgoer, in his desire to spend his life on the accrual of money and things, the pursuit of pleasure and leisure, taking for granted his own salvation and relationship with Christ. Without a proper fear of the Lord and a desire for righteousness, the vigilance required for a communal movement with integrity is a pipe dream. But if the GMC leadership can summon the proper sobriety and seriousness to challenge our generation to consult and responsibly act on the information available to us, whether it be historical, anthropological, financial, or doctrinal, then I believe a healthy distrust of one another and a shared faith in Christ will result in a movement that is both pleasing to God and adequate to the task of actually being the church, rather than the nominally Christian social clubs that so often occupy local church buildings.
Yes, worldly powers have been able to compromise the integrity of the church. The church has often mirrored worldly power in coercing people in the pews. Our only option is to openly and harshly renounce such ways of lording ourselves over others, and radically embrace the openness and truth of our lives, welcoming scrutiny, admonishment, and encouragement in those places we would rather keep dark and hidden. As the GMC starts out, I would advocate that we go ahead and establish this new ethic, forming a strong and robust culture of transparency and mutual vulnerability in this nascent body.
I would ask that readers who made it this far and find yourself sympathetic with this cause resolve to pray for the Global Methodist Church, that it indeed ensconce such an ethic, but that you also reach out to your regional GMC leadership and let them know that this is something you desire. You should know who the leadership is. In the Information Age, it is on YOU to do the research and act accordingly.
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:13-16
“No one, when he has lit a lamp, covers it with a vessel or puts it under a bed, but sets it on a lampstand, that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. Therefore take heed how you hear. For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken from him.”
Luke 8:16-18
““He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have beendone in God.”
John 3:18-21
There is also AI which can take anyone's image and voice and make that person say or do anything. We live in a time where discernment has become extremely important. I fear we may be easily fooled if we don't have a healthy level of skepticism.
The only person in the UMC church that I support and who informed the congregation of what was going on in the UMC was a non-Methodist attuned to the world through the internet. Neither clergy nor laity, both well aware of the direction the denomination was choosing, shared what they knew with the congregation. And, when the congregation was made aware, it was too late to meet the timing objectives of the annual conference. Making it even more sad is the fact the church had the financial resources to leave the UMC. I suspect this to be the case among many UMC congregations, particularly where most members are senior citizens and not following the denomination through the internet.