(NewsNation) — The future of the United Methodist Church is in question as a quarter of its congregations disaffiliated with the church.
The United Methodists, one of the largest Christian denominations in the U.S, has been rapidly losing numbers over the past five years when the church opened a window for congregations to leave if they wanted.
As of this year, over 7,000 congregations have disaffiliated since 2019, with more than 5,000 breaking with the institution this year alone.
Some of the congregations that leave go independent or non-denominational, but many are joining the Conservative Global Methodist Church.
This comes after years of disagreements over LGBTQ+ issues. The church has long debated its bans on gay clergy members and same-sex marriage. Some churches have defied the rules of the United Methodist Church, leading many conservatives to break with the denomination.
While some conservatives say clashes over LGBTQ+ issues are what sent them away from the church, one bishop pushes back on the claims that the church is falling apart, saying the argument is about power and money, not sexuality.
“You can look at it one of two ways. You can say that we’ve lost a quarter or you can say we’ve retained 75%. I choose to go with the latter. This is still an extremely strong denomination,” said Bishop Thomas Bickerton. “Have we been affected by the losses? Sure we have. It affects our budget, it affects our ability to deploy pastors, there’s a lot of things that we’re having to adjust to, but can we survive? You better believe we can.”
Still, the split by thousands of congregations marks a historic shift in the United Methodist Church, a denomination that was once the third largest in the U.S. In 2021, the church had roughly 5.7 million members. A decade earlier, they were close to 8 million.
“The bigger question is going to come down to how many of the stable and moderately sized and larger and very large churches leave. And in that regard, I don’t know yet though, I have a sense that it’s fewer than the number,” said Robert Allan Hill, dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University.
“So if you have a church that has 20 members, and that’s one, you have a church that has 2,000 members, and that’s one it makes a little bit of a difference how you count,” Hill added.
The split began in 2019 when United Methodist Church leaders gave congregations the ability to leave the denomination over reasons of conscience, with a deadline of Dec. 31.