MethodistThinker.com

With all U.S. annual conferences now having completed voting on 32 constitutional amendments passed by last year’s United Methodist General Conference, the UM renewal organization Good News is projecting that at least 24 amendments will be defeated, including all six of the most controversial measures.

Those six include five amendments that would have restructured the UMC into a series of regional conferences (Amendments IV, X, XIII, XXIII, and XVI), and one that would have liberalized membership requirements (Amendment I).

In a July 8 web posting, Good News notes that 48 of the 62 U.S. conferences have published the results of their voting. Those 48 conferences represent “at least 86% of the total votes cast in the U.S. and approximately 80% of the votes worldwide,” Good News says.

[UPDATE: Good News posted an update on July 17, noting that now 50 U.S. conferences, "representing at least 88% of the total votes cast in the US and approximately 82% of the votes worldwide, have publicly shared with all United Methodists their vote tallies on the proposed amendments."]

In other words, there are not enough votes remaining among non-published U.S. votes and potential votes from conferences outside the U.S. to change the outcome for those amendments that have already received a substantial percentage of “no” votes.

“[T]he last time annual conferences worldwide voted on a constitutional matter [in 2005], there were approximately 2,000 total votes cast in the central [i.e., non-U.S.] conferences,” Good News notes. “Given the heightened interest in the current proposed amendments and the dramatic growth in many annual conferences beyond the U.S., it seems possible that as many as 3,000 to 4,000 votes may come from the central conferences this year.”

Holston Conference voting

But even if all those votes went in favor of amendments that now appear to have been defeated, the outcome would not change.

To be enacted, a proposed amendment to the United Methodist Constitution must be approved by two-thirds (66.67%) of the voting delegates to the denomination’s 135 annual conferences.

As things stand now, the five restructuring amendments have garnered affirmative votes from only slightly more than one-third of delegates. (The strongest showing for any restructuring amendment is a 37% “yes” vote.)

Amendment I has fared better, receiving a 48% “yes” vote, but still well short of the two-thirds majority required. (A tally from the pro-Amendment-I Reconciling Ministries Network shows the amendment garnering a 50% “yes” vote.)

In a July 2 letter to Good News supporters, Rob Renfroe, the renewal ministry’s new president, calls the defeat of the six controversial amendments “an important and stunning victory.”

One measure that appears to be on its way to passage is Amendment XIX, a proposed constitutional amendment that Good News supports. Amendment XIX would extend to certain local pastors and provisional members the right to vote for clergy delegates to the General and Jurisdictional conferences. Thus far, that measure has garnered a 77% affirmative vote.

The final results of the vote on the proposed constitutional amendments will not be announced or certified until the Council of Bishops meets in November.

[UPDATE: The United Methodist News Service reported July 30 that the certification will not occur until the Council of Bishop meeting in May 2010.]

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Below is a list of all 135 UMC annual conferences. If a conference name has a link assigned, click the link to see the results from that conference’s vote on the proposed constitutional amendments. (If you know of web-published results that are not linked below, please e-mail the URL to MethodistThinker.com.)

A one-page spreadsheet with tallies of the published results for Amendments I, IV, X, XIII, XIX, XXIII, XVI is here (PDF).