United Methodist Conference of North Georgia Suspends Disaffiliations, Claiming That Defamatory Misinformation Has Caused Congregational Votes to Be Untrustworthy

Conference members ratified disaffiliation agreements and prayed over departing churches during the 2022 North Georgia Annual Conference that took place June 2-4. In an email sent out Dec. 28, 2022, North Georgia Conference leaders announced they were pausing for now approving anymore disaffiliations. File photo courtesy of the North Georgia Conference.

Citing widespread “defamatory” misinformation, the North Georgia Annual Conference leadership has suspended the process for its congregations to exit The United Methodist Church.

“As a result of the misleading, defamatory, and false statements and materials shared with local church members,” leaders of the United Methodist regional body announced in a Dec. 28 statement that they “do not have confidence in the validity” of upcoming church disaffiliation votes.

The leaders said, for that reason, the conference “will not accept disaffiliation requests at this time nor will the conference board of trustees negotiate disaffiliation agreements.”

Instead, leaders said, the conference would revisit the disaffiliation process after the next General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking assembly now scheduled for April 23-May 3, 2024, in Charlotte, North Carolina. The leaders said the wait would allow churches to gain real — rather than inaccurate or hypothetical — information about the denomination’s future.

The announcement was signed by Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson, the conference’s appointive cabinet and its board of trustees.

The North Georgia decision — which caught many in the conference by surprise — marks a dramatic turn in the denomination’s slow-motion separation after decades of intensifying debates over LGBTQ inclusion.

The conference, which covers most of the northern half of the state including the growing Atlanta area, is the largest such regional body in the U.S. with more than 320,000 members and multiple megachurches. Just as Georgia has become a battleground state in U.S. politics, the state’s most populous conference has long been a battleground in church politics as well.

Not surprisingly, some Georgians reacted to the conference leadership’s decision with relief while others reacted with outrage.

The move comes after months of what a number of church leaders decry as false, negative rhetoric about the future United Methodist Church from backers of a breakaway conservative denomination that launched in May. Members of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, the traditionalist advocacy group that organized the new Global Methodist Church, dispute claims of dishonesty.

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Source: UM News