Let’s say there’s a certain neighborhood where the kids get together and play a ball game. Since they rarely have the normal number of players like in professional sports, they have adopted certain rules by which they all abide.
Years go on and, though some players move away with their families or get too old for such activities and new players arrive through similar means, the game continues as before. Someone who had moved away a decade (or two) before could return and see the same game they knew and loved still being played.
And then some new kids move into the area and want to play as well. No problem. At least for a while.
Then, suppose one day, they say they don’t like the current rules and want the game modified to fit their sensibilities. After some discussion, the others submit to the changes in order to “keep things on a friendly basis”. Amicability was better than friction among the participants, they figured.
Soon, though, the new kids want more changes and this time even present an ultimatum: give us these changes or we’ll take the ball and go home.
The ball was, of course, not theirs to have.
Some are willing to continue to play by the new rules though the majority is affronted by what the game is becoming.
Though the majority object, the new minority says that if they want to play their old game, they will forfeit the equipment and go someplace else to play. The equipment and the location are now the possessions of the game… by the new rules, of course.
This may sound rather asinine and a far stretch by anyone’s imagination but this game is currently being played in real time on the global scale. Progressives push into every imaginable venue and press for “minor changes”. Then, when those demands are met, they press for more, deeper changes.
We see this occur in politics, finance, education, among others. And it has now come to the United Methodist Church.
A small but vocal group within the church wants to make the church become more inclusive, more open, more progressive. They began with simply ignoring the Book of Discipline – the rules that guide the church worldwide – and are doing things their own way.
At a Conference in 2016, the majority of the churches voted to remain adherent to the Disciplines and said the progressives could break away and form their own Methodist Church.
The progressives weren’t having it, of course. They called in a “mediator” and declared that the vast majority of the churches within the Methodist organization could leave – after paying the organization for the properties, of course.
So, to keep things amicable, the United Methodist Church will leave to become the Global Methodist Church while the progressive malingerers will retain the legitimacy of the name and the treasury and the properties. This is to be voted on in the next Conference. It was supposed to have occurred in 2020 but Covid put it on hold until 2024. So it is not a done deal just yet but most of the hand-wringers want to capitulate, to forfeit the game, turn over the equipment. and go home.
Giving these people an inch never works well because – as many well-read people have realized by now – the radicals always use the Alinsky playbook for their progressive schemes. Their playbook works so well against those willing to keep bending to “get along” with people.
The century-long adherence to the Book of Discipline might as well as never have been. When you allow oath-breakers any sort of standing, you have already lost. If the Church had stuck by their principles – that is, if any of them really had any such – those who broke the oath would have been excommunicate at the outset.
Any disease left to flourish will always kill the host.
A fact of nature as certain as birth, death, and resurrection.