The 2022 Separation From the United Methodist Church

The Global Methodist Church did not form in isolation but emerged from roughly a decade of internal United Methodist conflict over whether the denomination should ordain clergy in same sex relationships and permit clergy to officiate at same sex weddings, a debate that produced repeated special sessions of the United Methodist General Conference without resolving the underlying disagreement. A negotiated framework known as the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, developed by representatives across the theological spectrum, proposed a structured pathway for traditionalist congregations to leave with their properties rather than face an unresolved fight inside the existing denomination, and although the Protocol itself was never formally ratified by General Conference, a separate disaffiliation process under the denomination's own Book of Discipline allowed several thousand congregations, heavily concentrated in the American South and Midwest, to depart between 2019 and 2023. The Global Methodist Church launched formally in May 2022 to receive these departing congregations, retaining most of Wesleyan doctrine and structure from the church it left while making the traditional definition of marriage, together with related ordination standards, the doctrinal line distinguishing it from the United Methodist Church it separated from.