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In a special piece to United Methodist Insight, the Rev. Linda Richard laments recent judicial council rulings related to disaffiliation. The Rev. Richard blames the Judicial Council for not allowing congregations to leave the United Methodist church post the 2020/2024 General Conference. She claims it’s hypocritical. By making this claim, the Rev. Richard makes an attribution error. The judicial council did not decide at General Conference to end disaffiliation. Delegates to General Conference did that. They did also not vote to allow disaffiliation in 2019. Again, delegates to General Conference did that.
This is her second piece on the United Methodist Insight website, where she wants the judicial council to be something else. Instead of the judicial council fairly upholding church polity with due process as an ecclesiastical court, she wants it to overrule what she considers mistakes made by the General Conference. This desire goes against our polity in profound ways.
To lament the actions of the judicial council in relationship to disaffiliation is to have the wrong focus. The Rev. Richard focuses on the wrong actors when she accuses the judicial council of hypocrisy. General Conference allowed churches to leave the United Methodist church under disaffiliation. Annual conferences and annual conference trustees were the arbiters of who met the requirements to leave. Not the judicial council’s fault. It was not the council’s job to determine the eligibility of churches to disaffiliate. This was up to annual conferences.
Whether churches lied was not up for the judicial council to determine. I am not sure it was hypocritical for annual conferences to allow congregations to disaffiliate. The trustees of the annual conference discerned what they thought was best. Annual conferences voted to allow congregations to leave. Neither one of them created the disaffiliation process-that was the 2019 special called session of the General Conference. Both lived into their respective responsibilities in the way they felt led.
With disaffiliation, there is a lot of blame to go around. So much to lament. Blaming the judicial council though is an attribution error. The Rev. Richard may not agree with the outcomes. She may not like the bind some churches are in now, but it’s not the judicial council’s fault. It’s not their problem to solve.
Focusing on people to blame, though, does little to help. People in congregations need to take responsibility for their own decisions, for their own futures. I wish things were different. But pointing fingers and being upset changes nothing. All we can do is take responsibility for our own actions, find the next faithful step, and put our hope in our triune God.
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