It's Thursday, January 25, 2024.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

One scholar calls the split in the United Methodist Church,

quote, the biggest schism in any American denomination

in the history of our country.

And we need to recognize that that means a schism or a division within the United Methodist

Church, we should simply note no longer nearly so united. it took place between 2019 and 2023. The end of the

calendar year just passed marked the end of the opportunity for these

congregations to leave, the United Methodist Church, and in particular to leave with their

property under some arrangement.

Now, you are looking at a split in American Methodism, and that's happened before, but it hasn't happened like this and it certainly hasn't happened over these issues and what we're looking at here is an emblematic story an illustrative story of the major changes that have been taking place not only in the

last several months but over the last several decades. In the background to

this headline news story lies decades of change indeed well over a century of theological change in the

main line more liberal Protestant denominations this has meant outright

theological warfare between theological liberals and theological conservatives theological the United entire nation as one Protestant denomination

that has been in virtually all states

pretty evenly spread throughout the entire nation

you're looking at United Methodism and there's a history behind that

that turns out to be important as well. First of all who are the Methodists? Well the

Methodists are a denomination in the devotional group or a holiness group within the Church of England.

And of course his founder, John Wesley, was himself a minister of the Church of England, as was

his famous hymn-writing brother, Charles Wesley.

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