NYTimes & Tennessean Take Notice of United Methodist Split

The denominational woes of The United Methodist Church has been remarked upon by worldly sources a few times over the years. Now that disaffiliation season under Paragraph 2553 has concluded, a couple larger outlets have decided to tell our story to the rest of their reading audiences.

In this segment, I walk through the reporting of both outlets to some degree, while also consulting a couple of other resources for ascertaining where things currently stand. While my commentary (and the buzzy audio) might be lacking in this one, the resources presented here, especially the interactive map and the GCFA list of largest churches, are worthy resources, so here are all the links to the resources consulted in this segment:

Liam Adams Tweet Thread: https://twitter.com/liamsadams/status/1735718114367504847

Tennessean Interactive Map “Total churches that have disaffiliated from United Methodist Church since 2019” - https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/11865260/

UMNews Disaffiliation Numbers Spreadsheet - https://www.umnews.org/en/news/disaffiliations-approved-by-annual-conferences

Jimmy Boone’s UM Disaffiliations Tally - https://www.facebook.com/groups/197734687313310/permalink/1841598499593579

Talbot Davis Tweet on NYTimes Article - https://twitter.com/TalbotDavis

New York Times Article “With a Deadline Looming, The United Methodist Church Breaks Up - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/us/the-united-methodist-church-schism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G00.GTs9.wlHnAcOOD46l&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

GCFA’s “2020 Top 100 Churches by Attendance” - https://www.gcfa.org/_files/ugd/5524b1_20f39c75fee649c69ec49751578b2b08.pdf

Get full access to PlainSpoken at plainspokenpod.substack.com/subscribe