General Conference and Global Christianity – Part One

In 2019 I was elected to be a delegate to the United Methodist Church’s 2020 General Conference, representing the laity of the North Georgia Conference. However, due to the coronavirus, the General Conference was rescheduled to August 2021. And then, because of the ongoing pandemic, it was pushed to August 2022, and eventually until April 2024. But I want to talk about the progressive Christian response to the Special Session of the General Conference that occurred in 2019 in Saint Louis, Missouri.

I am going to try and be as kind, and as nice, and as honest, as I possibly can. However, I am also going to be truthful, and this is going to hurt! The vote at the Special Session of the General Conference was basically a vote of East versus West. However, the Western response to the Eastern Christians was anything less than Christian. Somehow Western delegates, and Western progressives in particular, believe that they are right and that they know more than the Eastern delegates about sex. Furthermore, the Western progressives accuse the Eastern delegates of being influenced by the Wesleyan Covenant Association, and thereby having a “colonized mentality” when it comes to human sexuality!

As someone with a degree in African and African American studies, I have some problems with the progressive interpretation of Eastern people, particularly African people. How many progressives have studied African psychology? Because if you have not studied African or black psychology, then you actually would not know the difference between what is indigenous to the culture, and what is a “colonized mentality.” You may have read books like Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon, wherein he talks about the “colonized mentality,” however had you read African psychology you would have realized that Fanon does not cover the complex thinking of all African descended people.

Yet somehow the people with the “colonized mentality” were able to overthrow the British and the French empires, as well as the Belgians, Italians, Portuguese, and other European countries. They were able to gain their independence and continue in their traditional ways. Additionally, who has heard of a progressive African or Asian society, as progressivism is a Eurocentric social construct. There are, however, many traditional African and Asian societies!

The question before the 2024 General Conference is, does the United Methodist Church want to continue to be a multinational denomination or does it want to become a global denomination? If the United Methodist Church decides that it wants to become a global denomination, then the Westerners have to do one or two things:
1) start evangelizing and winning people to Jesus Christ, so that more people will join your churches, and they can begin planting churches instead of closing them; or,

2) Westerners will have to come under the leadership of Eastern Christians! That is the simple math of the 2024 General Conference.

The Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation, and the Christmas Covenant were both before the General Conference, and these legislations were being lobbied for vigorously, as there was a cross section of people who are promoting them. However, as we have seen in the past, nothing is guaranteed at the General Conference! With that said, the message to progressive Christians is this, if you have not read the theologians that John Wesley read (the Greek, Egyptian and the Syrian fathers) then your theology is only Eurocentric! And if you see the Eastern Christians only through a Eurocentric lens, and you only want the Eastern delegates to vote the way that you think that they should vote, then you are robbing them of their agency, and you are imposing theological colonialism on them. In other words, if they do not believe the way that progressive Christians believe, then they cannot be a loving Christian is a “God complex.”

And that “God complex” was on full display at the 2024 General Conference. It is an ignorant American who does not understand who Africans and Asians are, and what they believe. So now, we are having a “Come to Jesus meeting” in Africa over human sexuality, and biblical interpretation from the Western perspective. I would encourage progressive Christians to read the Greek, Egyptian and the Syrian theologians that John Wesley read, so that you develop a global theology that is not responsive to Western Christianity. If you are only reading German and American theologians, then it is you who has a “colonized mentality.”

By Odell Horne, Jr. odellhorne@gmail.com.

(Views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of the Theological Voice of Africa).