by Joseph F. DiPaolo

In early September, the United Methodist Council of Bishops (COB) announced their call for a “Leadership Gathering” in 2026, in place of a special session of General Conference.[1] Concerns have been raised that this assembly will effectively assume authority and power which only belongs to the General Conference. UM Insight commentator William Lawrence said it sounds like a “parking lot committee:”

 …a group of people, often self-appointed, who typically gather in the church parking lot after a charge conference, a church council, or a board of trustees has adjourned. They discuss what the majority at the meeting voted to do. Then they decide what the local church actually will do.[2]

But the bishops’ actions are perfectly in line with their behavior for the last five years, behavior that could be described as amounting to nothing less than tyranny. 

Now that may sound like paranoia on my part. But is tyranny too strong a word? 

Let’s consider how that word was used historically in the formation of the American system of government – a system which Methodist polity was intentionally designed to emulate. A critical piece of the structure of American government was the concept of separation of powers. This was specifically designed to prevent too much power being accumulated in the hands of either a president or the people. The founders were concerned to guard against both the tyranny of a king and the tyranny of the majority.  Thus, they formed the three branches of government – legislative, executive and judicial – each with their own spheres of authority.

This concept of separation of powers is reflected in United Methodist polity. There is General Conference – the legislative branch – which determines policy; the Council of Bishops and the agencies – the executive or administrative branch – which implements those policies; and the Judicial Council – the judicial branch – which adjudicates disputes and determines the constitutionality of actions taken by the other two branches.

In secular politics, if the president, as head of the administrative branch, were to defy a ruling of the Supreme Court, that would create a constitutional crisis – a power grab the founders would have described as tyranny.  And that is exactly what we have been seeing our bishops do over the last 5 years. 

We have seen it in the jurisdictional colleges of bishops simply ignoring Judicial Council decisions (such as JD #1341[3]).  We saw this behavior in the widespread refusal of bishops to implement and uphold the decisions of the special General Conference of 2019. We have seen it in the widely varying and arbitrary rules different bishops have led their conferences to adopt through the disaffiliation process. And we have seen it in bishops declaring rules with no disciplinary basis, such as prohibiting UM pastors from even speaking in a GMC church. 

That the bishops know they are overstepping is clear. In a 2022 interview by Rev. Molly Vedder, Bishop Thomas Bickerton (then president of the COB), described the need to get past the “dysfunctionality” of our General Conference system in order to create the vision of inclusivity that the progressive leadership wanted. He indicated that the bishops would simply have to do what the larger church did not have the “courage” to do, saying, “We’ve been given permission, maybe it’s self-appointed permission, to move ahead.” (The video of this interview formerly was available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEjZXiCfWbg, but has apparently been removed.)

I contend that it is, in fact, this “episcopal tyranny” which precipitated the still-unfolding split of United Methodism, resulting in the departure of thousands of churches and clergy. In the wake of the 2016 and 2019 General Conferences, and the unnecessary third postponement of the 2020 General Conference[4], many traditionalists concluded that it no longer mattered what General Conference decided – even as demographic trends pointed to larger and larger traditionalist majorities in the future. Our system of governance had broken down, resulting in our being ruled, not by a democratically elected General Conference in a system that balanced power, but by bishops. 

In Federalist Papers 47, James Madison wrote, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” 

Sounds like our situation to me.

Of course, the 2024 General Conference has now officially implemented all the changes the bishops wanted. No doubt they will contend that the extraordinary actions taken the last few years were simply temporary measures made necessary by the need to overcome denominational “dysfunctionality” and COVID – and now our system of governance will return to its proper constitutional balance.  

But will it? Once power is assumed, the powerful are usually loathe to give it up. The genie is out of the bottle, and the announcement of the 2026 “Leadership Gathering” to steer the UMC forward suggests that genie will not be stuffed back in anytime soon.

Rev. Joseph F. DiPaolo is a clergy member of the Eastern PA Conference of the United Methodist Church and a past member of the Commission on the General Conference.

[1] https://www.unitedmethodistbishops.org/newsdetail/umc-bishops-call-for-leadership-gathering-18625231?fbclid=IwY2xjawFHJQ5leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHZNaSWN0RmTYcGTI7iiaarnVUyjNCZXPl96aG2ipuIac8JmiqV8s0DxhRA_aem_Fh7VJ6-syUnji9jwWQQtaw

[2] https://um-insight.net/perspectives/bishops-leadership-gathering-actually-could-be-a-parking-lot/

[3] https://www.resourceumc.org/en/churchwide/judicial-council/judicial-council-decision-home/judicial-decisions/in-re-petition-for-declaratory-decision-from-the-south-central-jurisdiction.

[4] See my essay “A Day Older and Wiser…” at https://wesleyancovenant.org/2022/03/07/a-day-older-and-wiser-why-i-resigned-from-the-commission-on-general-conference/.