Amid national wave, 264 East Tennessee and Virginia churches leave UMC following vote

Liam Adams, Nashville Tennessean
·4 min read
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In a sizable addition to a national wave in the United Methodist Church, 264 churches in the East Tennessee-based UMC conference left the denomination Saturday.

Delegates for the Holston Conference ratified the disaffiliations for 264 churches at a special session at Central UMC in downtown Knoxville. Following an hour of worship, communion and prayer, the vote to ratify the disaffiliations was swift and overwhelming.

“These churches are now disaffiliated,” Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett said after the vote, starting to choke up.

Many of the churches, though not all, will join a newer, more conservative breakaway denomination, the Global Methodist Church. There were 842 churches in the Holston Conference before Saturday, and 578 remain affiliated.

The meeting, though short, was emotional for the bishop and her leadership team. Holston Conference chancellor Mike Eastridge, who addressed the delegates before the disaffiliation vote, said it was “one of the most consequential votes that this Holston Conference has taken.”

The UMC is in the middle of an intense series of divorces with some of its churches following disagreements over theology and church policy, including dealing with LGBTQ+ rights. Since 2019, when the UMC implemented a new policy allowing churches to disaffiliate, more than 2,300 churches have disaffiliated, according to an analysis by USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee.

The breakup will have an impact on the conference’s bottom line, though how much remains to be seen. The majority of the 264 churches that disaffiliated have fewer than 100 members, said conference spokesperson Tim Jones in a statement. The conference retains 80% of its members even with the departures.

The UMC is the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. Many of its general agencies are based in Nashville. Before the split, it had more than 6.2 million members in the U.S., according to 2020 data.

Delegates for the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church, or the regional governance body for churches in East Tennessee, and parts of Virginia and Georgia, voted at a meeting April 22 to ratify disaffiliations for 264 churches, allowing the churches to leave the denomination. Many will join a more conservative, breakaway denomination.
Delegates for the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church, or the regional governance body for churches in East Tennessee, and parts of Virginia and Georgia, voted at a meeting April 22 to ratify disaffiliations for 264 churches, allowing the churches to leave the denomination. Many will join a more conservative, breakaway denomination.

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Disaffiliation refers to a process that allows churches to leave the denomination and retain their property.

Among the 264 churches that disaffiliated, 155 are in Tennessee, 106 are in Virginia and three are in Georgia.

Some UMC annual conferences, or the regional governance bodies, are confined to a single state while others span several states, like the Holston Conference. Wallace-Padgett is both the bishop of the Holston Conference and the North Alabama Conference.

There is a separate conference for churches in Middle and West Tennessee called the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference.

After the vote Saturday to ratify the Holston disaffiliations, Wallace-Padgett addressed delegates who are staying in the UMC. “I remind us today, the sky has not fallen,” she said.

“We are people moving forward with courage and determination,” Wallace-Padgett added.

Every UMC annual conference in the U.S. is wrestling with the same issues amid the wave of disaffiliations, though they have managed it differently.

For example, the Holston Conference required a 90-day “discernment period” as part of the disaffiliation application process, which also includes payments and a congregation vote. There are conferences with stricter policies and more lenient policies, as some conservatives see the discernment period as an additional hurdle.

Still, advocates for the departing churches felt Wallace-Padgett and her team were fair on Saturday.

“We are grateful for the way the bishop and other Holston Conference leaders structured the day in a graceful, loving manner,” said Chuck Griffin, a Virginia pastor and representative of the Holston Wesleyan Covenant Association, a local chapter of a national organization, in a statement.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association is helping churches leave the UMC and helped establish the Global Methodist Church.

The Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church, or the regional governance body for churches in East Tennessee, and parts of Virginia and Georgia, held a special session April 22, 2023, in which delegates voted to ratify disaffiliations for 264 churches. Many of the churches leaving will join a newer, more conservative breakaway denomination that formed as part of splintering in the denomination.

“We are excited for the disaffiliating churches as we move toward new expressions of powerful Methodist traditions,” Griffin added.

Even more churches are expected to leave the UMC this year because the UMC’s disaffiliation policy sunsets at the end of 2023. Six annual conferences have hosted special sessions, including Holston, and conferences have scheduled 30 more special sessions for later this year.

A special session for the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference is scheduled for May 22.

Liam Adams, based at The Tennessean in Nashville, covers religion for USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: East Tennessee UMC conference loses 30% of churches to disaffiliation