The breakup of the United Methodist Church has now officially come to East Tennessee. In the local expression of a historic church schism, one in three congregations in the regional Holston Conference were approved to leave the denomination at a special meeting Saturday.
A worldwide faith, the United Methodists claim more than 6 million U.S. members, making it the nation’s largest mainline Protestant denomination. As Holston Conference Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett reminded the church representatives gathered at a packed Central United Methodist Church in Knoxville, the split is just the latest in a long history of fractures within Christian denominations. Political and scriptural debates have long torn major religious groups asunder.
The reasons for this particular split have long been in dispute. Though far from a majority, a significant portion of United Methodist churches, largely in the South, have moved to leave the denomination amid debates over church sanction of same-sex marriage and gay clergy — issues many theological conservatives describe as flash points for deeper disputes about scriptural authority.
(READ MORE: In Chattanooga and beyond, United Methodist Church split echoes Presbyterian past)