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Monday Miscellany, 5/13/24

Monday Miscellany, 5/13/24

Last updated on: May 13, 2024 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 5/13/24 2024-05-09T16:10:17-04:00 Gene Veith

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Originally, the progressive Methodists were supposed to leave. Why the pro-Hamas protesters are targeting liberals. The silent majority of college students.

Originally, the Progressive Methodists Were Supposed to Leave.

Jack Jackson sets the record straight about the Methodist split, explaining the mystery of why the conservatives left instead of the progressives who didn’t want to follow the laws of the denomination.

In his First Things article United Methodism: How Conservatives Won the Debate, but Lost the Denomination, he says that what brought the issues to a head was the election in 2016 of Karen Oliveto, who was married to another woman, to the office of bishop. The church’s Judicial Council ruled that this violated church law, which does not allow non-celibate homosexuals in the ministry and does not recognize same-sex marriage. Church officials, though, refused to act on the decision.

To resolve the issue, in 2019 the church called a special General Conference, consisting of delegates from across the denomination in the U.S. and abroad. The conservatives from both the United States and Africa turned out to be a majority, refusing to change the church’s teachings. “Progressives were now irate,” said Jackson, “with one bishop calling on the African delegates to ‘grow up’ and embrace progressive wisdom.” The pro-gay Methodists were talking about leaving to start their own denomination.

Out of the goodness of their hearts, the conservatives now in charge voted to make it easy for the progressives to leave, allowing them to keep their property–which is normally owned by the denomination–and to separate amicably. The regularly scheduled General Conference in 2020 would then supervise this exodus.

But then COVID happened. The United Methodist leadership postponed the meeting and, instead of holding virtual meetings like most denominations did, kept postponing it three times! The hierarchy with its entrenched church bureaucrats refused to remove Oliveto from her episcopal office, refused to follow the conservative majority, and refused to follow the rules that were supposed to govern the denomination!

Now the conservatives were irate. Now they resolved to leave the denomination. Now they took advantage of the easy-to-leave terms they had intended for the progressives.

When the long-postponed General Conference finally convened at the end of April, 2024, the result, as we posted about, was Methodists gone wild.

What are the lessons here for church struggles between conservatives and progressives? Here are a few that come to mind, though feel free to draw others in the comments: (1) Mere legislating does little if the bureaucracy won’t enforce the laws. (2) To change an institution, you need to replace the leaders and the bureaucrats. (3) Beware of implementing changes that can be used against you. (4) Don’t concede to the opposition out of the goodness of your heart. (5) If you have a majority, use it, as opposed to throwing it away.

Why the Pro-Hamas Protesters Are Targeting Liberals

Have you noticed that the Pro-Hamas protesters are not doing all that much in red state cities and universities. Rather, they are specifically concentrating on distinctly liberal cities–New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.–and the most visibly-progressive universities (Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, Berkeley). And the protesters are planning to disrupt not the Republican but the Democratic national convention.

Why is that? One would think that they would direct their protests against the biggest supporters of Israel and those most critical of Islamic radicalism. Perhaps the protesters believe liberals would be more open to persuasion, more likely to come over to their side. Perhaps they know conservative jurisdictions would be more likely to crack down against them than liberal jurisdictions would be. Or perhaps it’s just simple demographics: progressive cities and campuses are, by definition, where more progressives live (though large numbers of the protesters–sometimes half or more–come from the outside and are unaffiliated with the universities where they are protesting).

The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger has another explanation. He has written a column entitled The Democrats’ Menshevik Moment with the deck, “A highly organized left is targeting the takeover and ruin of liberal institutions and cities.”

In the Russian Revolution, the Mensheviks represented the more moderate revolutionaries who wanted to achieve their aims by legal methods and the use of trade unions. Once the revolution had happened, the more radical Bolsheviks, who favored armed violence, turned against the Mensheviks, resulting in their “liquidation.” Henninger sees this sort of thing, in which the radical left attacks the moderate left in an attempt to destroy it, as happening today. He comments,

One might think serious Democrats would see that something has come into play here beyond mere progressive ideology. An organized left, currently under the cover of the Palestinian flag, is attempting to take over, and ultimately ruin, liberal universities and cities.

I would add that this syndrome is also evident in other revolutions, such as that of the French, in which ever-more radical factions took control by eradicating their not-radical-enough comrades. This comes to mind with the news that protesters at George Washington University in our nation’s capital held show trials for university administrators, who were tried by proxy. The verdicts called for the death sentence, with the crowd shouting “To the guillotine!”

Not that these cosplaying Jacobins and Bolshevik wannabes are leading an actual revolution. For that, they would need the oppressed masses of the working class to rise up, which they are doing, except in support of Donald Trump. But, with their heads filled with ideology and their emotions geared to self-righteous political purity, the radical protesters are happy to overthrow mere liberals.

The Silent Majority of College Students

The bigger reason we do not need to fear an actual revolution or give up on university students these days is that only a tiny minority care about the war between Israel and Gaza, and an even tinier minority have indulged in protests.

The quite liberal Axios has study the matter and reported its findings in the article Exclusive poll: Most college students shrug at nationwide protests.

According to its survey of 1,250 American college students, in response to a question about which issues are most important to them, only 13% cited the conflict in the Middle East. In fact, of the nine issues they could choose from, the conflict in the Middle East came in dead last. (First: Health care reform, 40%; second: Educational funding and access, 38%.)

Only 8% participated in protests on either side.

As for their opinions about the war, 34% blame Hamas; 19% blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; 12% blame the Israeli people; and 12% blame President Biden.

As for the protests, 81% believe the protesters should be held accountable if they destroy property, commit vandalism, or occupy buildings; 67% say that occupying buildings is unacceptable; 58% say it is unacceptable to disobey a university order to disperse; and 90% oppose blocking pro-Israel students from campus.

Not that they oppose the protests entirely. Some 45% say they support them either strongly or “a little bit,” with 30% being neutral, and 24% being either strongly or “a bit” opposed.

Israel's war with Hamas

Methodist split

pro-Hamas protests

radicals vs. liberals

Russian Revolution

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