Judicial Council – 2024 is the new 2020

Progressives and Traditionalists likely have complicated feelings about the ruling.

What Year is it in United Methodism?

When the 2020 General Conference was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then postponed again, folks assumed that it might be cancelled entirely and the next conference would be a new one in 2024. However, when the latest postponement came out, it said the 2020 General Conference was postponed to 2024, not that 2024 was a new conference.

This is significant language because it means that the delegates elected to 2020 would continue to serve at the conference in 2024. While that is a long time for delegations to wait to serve, there’s plenty of behind the scenes leadership being offered, and this fall those delegations elected new bishops at jurisdictional conferences.

Obviously, this language was challenged in our church court (The Judicial Council), and they just released their decision.

The Judicial Council Responds

From the Decision 1451:

Cancelling or skipping the 2020 General Conference and requiring new elections to be held would be tantamount to overturning the results of the 2019 elections and disenfranchising the clergy and lay members of an annual conference who voted in good faith. It would also deprive delegates of their right to be seated and serve at the session of General Conference for which they were duly elected. There is no basis in Church law for such course of action.

Therefore:

The next meeting scheduled for 2024 is designated as the postponed 2020 General Conference. Annual conferences that conducted elections in 2019 have met the requirements of ¶ 502.3 and, therefore, are not required to hold new elections. The delegates duly elected to the 2020 General Conference for the 2020-2024 Quadrennium stand as submitted and certified by the annual conference secretaries for the purpose of being seated in the postponed 2020 General Conference as well as jurisdictional and central conferences.

Status Update: It’s Complicated

Progressives and Traditionalists likely have complicated feelings about the ruling.

Celebrations about retaining the 2020 delegations:

• Progressives can certainly celebrate that the progressive and centrist wave (in response to the disastrous 2019 General Conference that passed the draconian Traditional Plan) will be seated in 2024 and can vote their values into a changed denomination. They already elected the most diverse and progressive class of bishops in recent history!
• Traditionalists that are intent on disrupting United Methodist progress towards inclusion can celebrate that their remaining clergy and lay delegates (who may not have retained their seats in new elections after the GMC splintering off) can also vote their values and provide the 10-20 votes needed to keep progressive change at a minority of the vote.

Concerns about retaining the 2020 delegations:

• Traditionalist leaders certainly hoped to deny the 2019 progressive/centrist wave a vote on our polity, as keeping United Methodism from full inclusion will continue its decline. This ruling retains that wave and makes it possible, though still unlikely, for full inclusion in 2024.
• Progressives see the empty seats on their delegations from disaffiliated laity and clergy and could hope to fill them with progressive and centrist voices, especially as some of their own progressive voices have had to vacate their seats due to transitions over the past 3 years. However, a new election would have likely come with new allocations, and those complexities mean that the empty seats would have disappeared anyway.

What’s the Next Move?

Annual conferences are not required to have new delegations—however, there’s some question as to whether annual conferences are ALLOWED to hold them if they vote for them. I’m sure that will be a legal question in the next few months, but we likely won’t know until Spring 2023 annual conferences.

This also applies to annual conferences with significant vacancies due to disaffiliating clergy and laity or the march of time causing transitions out of service. Several annual conference delegations (like mine!) didn’t have full representation at jurisdictional conferences, and it looks like a couple won’t have a full General Conference delegation.

My read is that annual conferences CAN vote to fill vacant seats as those have been allocated to them by the General Conference and it is their right to fill them. They can hold elections just for those seats and be fine. De-seating duly elected delegates en masse sounds like it would be expunged by this Judicial Council. But we’ll see what the church lawyers and annual conference leaders decide.

Until then, best for conferences to start organizing. We have an extra year of organizing with the delegations we have. Let’s not waste it.

Ready Player One

The Judicial Council made the right call and gave United Methodism the best footing for advocacy for progressive causes in 2024. The progressive and centrist wave, which already elected the most diverse and progressive class of bishops in memory, will now continue to the General Conference held in May 2024.

There’s a lot to do on the way, and it’s complicated, but it is overall good news. However, progressive and centrist voices in annual conferences need to be vigilant against efforts to circumvent or de-seat delegates at annual conference sessions in 2023, as well as continue organizing with General Conference in mind. Don’t think for a minute that the Traditionalists aren’t doing the same thing: a weak, antigay United Methodist Church is the best marketing for Global Methodism imaginable.

Full Disclosure: I’m a jurisdictional delegate for my annual conference. This decision would have unseated me from participating as a reserve delegate to the General Conference held in 2024, so I’m both thankful for the decision and wanted to name my analysis has some bias because of it.

Your Turn

Thoughts?

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