MethodistThinker.com

Following feedback from the president of the Council of Bishops, the United Methodist News Service has deleted a story released earlier this week and replaced it with a revised version, but not before the earlier version became the basis of a Religion News Service account published by USA Today and other newspapers.

The earlier account, which reported that annual conferences in the U.S. had “defeated” 23 proposed amendments to the UM Constitution aimed at restructuring the United Methodist Church into a collection of “regional” conferences, apparently failed give sufficient weight to the fact that members of some non-U.S. annual conferences have yet to cast their votes.

Original version at left; revised version at right

The lead paragraph of the earlier version reported that “United Methodists across the United States have defeated 23 proposed amendments that would have paved the way to make the church in the U.S. a regional body.”

The lead paragraph of the revised version reports instead that “United Methodists in the U.S. have largely voted against 23 proposed amendments that would change the structure of the church, but voting is ongoing in Africa, Europe and the Philippines.”

In an e-mail advisory issued on July 30, the news service said that Bishop Gregory Palmer, president of the UM Council of Bishops, had “note[d] the council office where the reports are being sent has not done any tally at this point and will not be doing any until the receipt of all conference reports.” (That same wording is included in the revised story.)

The revised UMNS account also reports that the worldwide vote will not be certified and announced by the Council of Bishops until next spring. During the 2009 session of the North Georgia Annual Conference, Bishop Mike Watson had said that certification and the announcement of results likely would occur at the Council of Bishops gathering this fall.

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Even though some non-U.S. conference have not completed the voting process, the United Methodist renewal group, Good News, has projected — based on voting totals already announced — that the restructuring amendments will fail.

Good News also has projected the defeat of Amendment I, which would have altered language in the UM Constitution related to membership.

In a July 17 web posting, Good News noted that 50 U.S. conferences, “representing at least 88% of the total votes cast in the [United States] and approximately 82% of the votes worldwide, have publicly shared with all United Methodists their vote tallies on the proposed amendments.”

The already published votes, Good News concluded, indicate that not enough votes remain among potential votes from conferences outside the U.S., even when added to non-published U.S. votes, to change the “No” outcome for either the restructuring amendments or Amendment I.

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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 not linked below, please e-mail the URL to MethodistThinker.com.)

A one-page spreadsheet with tallies of all the published results for Amendment I and the five main restructuring amendments — IV, X, XIII, XXIII, and XXVI — is here (PDF).