Methodist Elections Viewed as Chance to Diversify Leadership

Next week the nation’s largest Methodist body will elect a new batch of bishops, and some observers say the success or failure of ethnic minorities and women in those elections are an important clue to the denomination’s future.

According to the Rev. Paul Dietterich, director of the Center for Parish Development in Chicago, the elections will provide a glimpse of how willing the United Methodist Church is to seek new ways to confront the growing secularism that has fueled the rapid membership decline in all mainline denominations over the last three decades.

The denomination’s mostly white, male Council of Bishops, Dietterich said in an interview Thursday, is a classic example of “the old, patriarchal, white-dominated male” institutional patterns that prevent the church from mounting a serious challenge to secularism.

Dietterich is the author of a recent article published in Circuit Rider, a magazine for United Methodist clergy, which called on leaders to recognize that traditional approaches are “insufficient to guide the church into the future.” Too often churches define success in secular terms: money and members, instead of mission, he said.

Dietterich said the Council of Bishops looks like “a bunch of Wall Street brokers” at a time when the church should be able to point to the council and say, “Look at us, we have found a way to be inclusive of everyone.”

Against that backdrop, clergy and lay delegates to conferences of the church’s five major regions, called jurisdictions, will gather next week to elect 16--and possibly 17--new bishops. Much attention will undoubtedly focus on a large area in the Southern United States where few women and minorities have been chosen for those leadership posts: the South Central and Southeastern jurisdictions, which stretch from New Mexico to Virginia.

Bent on promoting change in the episcopal mix, a group called Coalition for an Inclusive Episcopacy was formed in the 8.9-million-member denomination’s South Central region in February. Its goal is to ensure that the first bishops elected at the conference are African-American, Latino and female. Next week, that region will elect six, possibly seven bishops, the largest number ever elected at one time from the area, making the stakes particularly high.

As of Wednesday, two black men, a Latino man and three women were among the 15 candidates.

In the South Central and Southeastern areas combined, only three black men have broken into the ranks of bishops since 1976 alongside 28 white men elected.

By contrast, in the other three regions--Northeastern, Western, North Central--13 white men share power with an equal number of women and minorities, including six black men, four white women, one black woman, one Asian male and one Latino male.

As of Wednesday, two black men, but no women, were among the 10 candidates to fill four positions in the Southeastern Jurisdiction.

As an institution, the 8.9-million-member United Methodist Church has a well-documented commitment to opening its decision-making process to people of all races and both sexes, but the church continues to struggle to improve on its record.

Elections in the other three jurisdictional areas are shaping up as follows:

* Northeast Jurisdiction: a Korean man and a Latina are among 13 candidates for two spots.

* Western Jurisdiction: two black men, a black woman, a Latino, a Latina, an American Indian man and one white woman are among nine candidates to fill just one spot. If the American Indian is elected, he would become the first Methodist bishop from his ethnic group.

* North Central Jurisdiction: two black men and two women are among 12 candidates for three slots.

Other candidates could surface until the elections are held.

In general, black males have had much greater success in becoming bishops than women or members of other minority groups. Among the 50 bishops now serving, 10 are black men. However, four of those 10 are retiring this year.

Just five women have served as bishops, three of whom are currently serving. One Latino man is a bishop, as is one male Japanese-American.

Once elected, bishops serve until retirement. Normally, bishops are limited to eight years in any one location.

Locations and dates of the jurisdictional conferences are:

Western, July 13-16, Las Vegas; North Central, July 14-17, Adrian, Mich.; Northeastern, July 14-17, Reading, Pa.; South Central, July 14-17, Ft. Worth; Southeastern, July 14-17, Lake Junaluska, N.C.