Following the 2019 special session of General Conference, I wrote a post looking behind the scenes at what transpired. It included a night time meeting in a parking lot and parliamentary maneuvering to protect us from the greatest harms. This is the same kind of post, taking you behind the 2020 General Conference (held in 2024). If you are looking for espionage, it will be far less interesting.
The view from behind the curtain is not much different from in front. I've worked as part of the leadership of a group striving for full inclusion over the last several years. We met privately most evenings during General Conference, but I'm proud to say that had those meetings taken place in plain sight nothing would have changed.
The day before General Conference began, we took one last look at our vote counts. There is nothing sinister about this. We were not persuading people, we were counting what we believed people had decided so we would know what to expect. Much had been made, and rightfully so, about the number of African delegates who would not be able to attend because of visa and other issues. Some of the missing delegates would have voted with us. Some would not. But the numbers we looked at that Monday night were astonishing. We were confident that we had enough votes to remove the anti-LGBT+ language in the Book of Discipline. The two-thirds vote for regionalization was more questionable. But now it looked like support for regionalization was so strong that not only would it pass, but had every missing delegate been present and voted against it, regionalization would still pass.
The people who were there can tell you that I didn't believe the count. I couldn't say why it was wrong - everything looked like it had been done right - but barring divine intervention I couldn't see how support would be that strong. Maybe it was divine intervention. Two days later when we took the key vote on regionalization it passed by the margin the numbers had predicted. If every missing delegate had been present and voted against regionalization, it would have passed at 68%. A couple myths need to be dispelled here. First, it is not the case that all the missing delegates were from Africa. At this point in the conference roughly 100 delegates were not seated. About 80 of these were from Africa. Significant, yes. More than double the number typically not present. But about 20% of the missing delegates at this point were from other countries including the U.S. Second, Africa is not monolithic. Our math suggests that a majority of African delegates voted for regionalization.
Traditionalist leaders like those in Good News and the WCA have consistently told us that Africans agree with them theologically. When these groups have done things like hosting breakfast or sharing cell phones with delegates, they insist that they are only informing delegates, not changing votes. Yet in the absence of those voices, the votes did change. Why is that? The information we have is that the votes began to change months ago. It is true that the large majority of Africans hold to the same theology of sexuality as traditionalists in the U.S. We never tried to persuade people otherwise. But the way an argument is framed matters a great deal.
According to groups like Good News, regionalization is all about sex. Allegedly, progressives and centrists in the U.S. want to export a more liberal sexual ethic to United Methodists outside the country. That's not true. What we have always maintained, privately and publicly, is that we want the ability to be inclusive AND we want to stay united with others around the globe even if they disagree. I frame it this way: In 2019 we posed the question to traditionalists, "Can we disagree on LGBT+ inclusion and stay in the same church?" Traditionalists said no. In 2024 we asked the question again. In the absence of traditionalists trying to say it's all about sex, Africans and other central conferences said yes.
Following the Monday meeting and the following vote on regionalization, our "behind the curtains" work at General Conference was really limited to discerning what those who were intent on damaging the denomination were doing. Good News had two poorly attended breakfasts. There were rumors of delay tactics that seemed real at what point but ultimately were never substantiated. There was a failed attempt to attach disaffiliation to regionalization late in the conference. A few days before that, we were told of a proposed deal for the traditionalists to not oppose regionalization in exchange for allowing disaffiliation in the U.S., which nobody in the room would have ever agreed to, and that was it.
I left General Conference at peace. We will still need to work hard to ensure the ratification of regionalization. At the same time, I am confident it will happen. Momentum for regionalization continues to build. Good News and the WCA may still fulfill their promise to work against it. But if it were me, I would be investing in why someone would want to join the new Global Methodist Church instead of in tearing down the United Methodist Church. I hope that's what they do. Regionalization appears to be the future for our governance. It's the right path for us, even setting aside the question of inclusion. It's time for us all to move on, both behind and in front of the curtain.
