News and Views

By Erik Alsgaard

As the 2024 General Conference officially approved and adopted a new set of Social Principles, several key leaders in the effort were quietly celebrating.

The 12-year effort to revise the Social Principles as one entire document was done. Delegates had overwhelmingly supported all of the petitions that dealt with the revisions, with only one small amendment added at the last minute.

John Hill is a lay member of Foundry UMC in Washington, D.C. He serves as Interim General Secretary of the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), based in Washington. That agency was tasked by the 2012 General Conference to revise the Social Principles, which are not church law but considered the best theological statements and understanding of the church on current social issues. What was supposed to be an eight-year project turned into 12 when the pandemic postponed the 2020 General Conference.

And the Rev. Neal Christie, who was the lead staff person at GBCS, helped shepherd the whole writing and editorial process, gathering input from thousands of United Methodists around the world.

“It’s all about relationships,” Christie said. “The new social principles really are about living in relationship. We relied on brilliant laity and clergy, scholars and practitioners. These are people who may not sit around tables together, but the Social Principles gave us a common vocabulary and a common task. That was a grace and blessing.”

Speaking after the vote, Hill said that he was excited about the revised Social Principles passing, but he also knew there was more work to do.

“We’re just really excited that the General Conference received this work of the past 12 years or literally thousands of United Methodists contributing into a new expression of our social witness,” he said. “I think the vote on the final petition, the Social Community, with over 76 percent supporting, just affirms both the process and the resonance of this document across all the contexts where we have United Methodism.”

The 12-year process to get to passage, Hill said, came in several stages. The first four years, starting in 2012, involved listening to United Methodists around the world. The next four years involved putting pen to paper – or keystrokes to computers – to begin drafting a new version. The most recent four years saw more input from United Methodists across the connection, multiple writing teams and, ultimately, perfecting the draft that came up for a vote today.

The newly revised Social Principles are effective January 1, 2025, Hill said. But he is hopeful that United Methodists won’t wait until then to start studying and using the document.

“As this was crafted, it was meant to a tool for teaching, preaching, as well as witness,” Hill said. “I’m hopeful that after this General Conference, people will dive in more deeply and begin applying it in their context.”

Christie, who is a clergy member of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, said that they began the process by looking at the whole Social Principles.

“We began… by looking at the whole Social Principles for the values that were reflected in each section,” he said. “Once we saw those values we would keep coming back to them. We wanted to produce (a document) that was succinct, theologically grounded, biblically authentic, and worldwide applicable. But we didn’t want to come up with a final goal.”

That final goal was achieved today.

“So,” Christie said, “what we have today is in my opinion pragmatic, aspirational, and  it’s grounded in who we are as we practice our discipleship as United Methodist Christians.”

The Rev. Susan Henry-Crowe, the former General Secretary of GBCS, was smiling broadly after passage. Serving from 2014 to 2022, Henry-Crowe was instrumental in bringing the revisions to fruition.

“It’s really a wonderful day,” she said, “and it’s been a great week. So many positive and joyful things have happened.”

Perhaps chief among those events for Henry-Crowe is how the church is now speaking for inclusivity rather than exclusivity.

“The church has now made statements about its commitment to inclusivity in so many ways,” she said, “both with the Social Principles, or commitment to our brothers and sisters around the world, and to justice around the world.”

Henry-Crowe said that early on in her term as General Secretary, she put into motion a grassroots process to come up with a draft of a new Social Principles. Several writing teams from around the world were created that came up with three drafts. Then that was sent to United Methodists everywhere, and about 4,000 people responded to their work. Those comments, she said, were read, vetted, and, in some cases, implemented into the final draft that came to Charlotte.

Henry-Crowe is clear that the Social Principles are not a legal document.

However, she said, it’s a statement that “reflects the best theology and the faith commitments of The United Methodist Church,” she said. “I hope that it will serve as a teaching, learning, and conversational instrument where people can come together and engage in deeper ways, theologically and biblically, over the issues that are really important to us.”