Court-Ordered Breakup of UMC Spawns Creative Proposals

April 1, 2011

The stunning news that the UMC has been declared as having a monopoly for religious purposes and the subsequent court-ordered breakup of the denomination has church officials reeling, but in the meantime it’s spawning some creative proposals for new sub-denominations created from the hulk of the old church.

One group based in Berkeley, California, has proposed a new sub-denomination to be called the Oldtimeyreligion Methodist Church (OMC). The proposed group will take the Cokesbury Worship Hymnal (1938) as the denomination’s sole book of polity, liturgy, and hymnody. “We’re just following John Wesley and Jesus,” said Marjorie Pinkston, a spokesperson for the group, “You know how John Wesley wrote all those songs to sing to those bar-room tunes and all, so that’s really the essence of what it means to be Methodist.”

Another group calling itself the Orthodox Methodist Church (OMC) is taking a slightly different approach, and is currently preparing an Orthodox Methodist Hymnal that combines some Charles Wesley hymn texts with the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. “John Wesley was basically Eastern Orthodox,” said spokesperson Theophilus Flick in the sub-denomination’s Dothan, Alabama, offices, “so we’re really just making that explicit in the structure and liturgy of our sacred church. We think it’s the trajectory Methodists have been following for the last two hundred years.”

That’s probably not going to go down well with the leaders of the Open Methodist Church (OMC), based in Lexington, Kentucky. “We need to remember that it was John Wesley who said ‘Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors,’” said Jerry Pinsdale, who holds the position of “First Speaker Among Equals” in the sub-group’s unique structure and prefers to be called a “spokesperoffspring.” The group, he explained, had tried to agree on a small hymnal and some elements of common liturgy, but eventually decided that agreement in doctrine or liturgy was itself a bar to the openness that the group will seek.

Yet another group is still struggling to find a name and provisionally calls itself the Ornery Methodist Church (OMC), based in Dallas, Texas. The group will seek principally to minister to ADHD people and will feature very brief (8-10 minute) worship services or “worshbites” as they say. “Everyone will be ushers,” said spokesperson Ted A. Campbell, “or choir members or maybe clergy, but nobody wants to just sit there in those, what do you call those long wooden seaty things?”

If you’re still reading, God bless you sweet peeps, and have a nice April Fools Day.