[1]WILMORE, Ky. (BP) – Proponents of historic Christian orthodoxy are no longer welcome in the purportedly big tent of the United Methodist Church (UMC). That is the message sent by the removal of Asbury Theological Seminary from the UMC’s list of schools approved to train United Methodist clergy, observers of Methodism say.
A UMC news release [2] said the decision came after Asbury affirmed its belief in traditional marriage and objected to the UMC’s 2024 elimination of church teachings against homosexuality.
Asbury’s delisting was an attempt “to ensure that United Methodist candidates for ministry are formed in settings clearly aligned with United Methodist teachings, theology, leadership and values,” according to the release.
Timothy Tennent, who served as Asbury president from 2009-24 before joining the faculty of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, said United Methodist teachings are no longer aligned with Scripture.
“The United Methodist Church left the big tent talking point, and they became much more decidedly progressive in their thinking,” Tennent told Baptist Press.
Asbury, a century-old conservative Wesleyan seminary in Wilmore, Ky., announced the disaffiliation in a June 25 news release [3]. The UMC’s stances on sexuality “are not aligned with Asbury Theological Seminary’s institutional ethos and the historic witness of the Christian faith,” current Asbury President David Watson said.
[4]“Their final decision to delist us was unilateral,” he said. “While we had hoped for a different outcome, our focus remains steadfast on our unchanging calling.”
The delisting of Asbury was the latest step in a years-long leftward drift in the UMC. Nearly 8,000 conservative churches left the denomination from 2019-2023, according to the Institute on Religion and Democracy [5] (IRD), a group that monitors mainline Protestant denominations. That translates to approximately a quarter of United Methodist congregations.
The disaffiliation with Asbury “proves the United Methodist Church is not going to be as inclusive as it claimed it would be,” IRD President Mark Tooley told BP. “And it confirms that Asbury will be servicing other Wesleyan communities but not the United Methodist Church any longer—even though until relatively recently, it was graduating more United Methodists than any other school.”
Asbury is America’s eighth-largest seminary with a head count of around 1,600 students, according to The Association of Theological Schools [6]. The largest official United Methodist Seminary is Duke Divinity School with 599 students.
The UMC has 13 official seminaries, with about two dozen other schools approved for ordination candidates—including Asbury until recently. Asbury graduated more United Methodists than any of the official seminaries in recent years. Current students and those enrolling in the fall of 2026 still will be permitted to pursue UMC ordination.
Approximately 9 percent of the Asbury student body is United Methodist, according to an Asbury news release.
[7]Asbury’s absence as an option for United Methodist ordination candidates will leave a notable hole in the UMC’s theological education options for its remaining theological conservatives.
The Asbury faculty includes several professors with multidenominational influence across the evangelical world. Among them are New Testament scholars Craig Keener, author of 37 books with 1.4 million copies in circulation, and Ben Witherington, author of 60 books including commentaries on every New Testament book. The seminary founded Seedbed publishing to produce Methodist resources for spiritual renewal. It funds dozens of Wesleyan church plants and also trains ministers in Spanish.
“For the United Methodist Church to say that Asbury is no longer aligned with ‘Methodist teaching, theology, leadership and values,’” Tennent, Methodist chair of divinity at Beeson, wrote on his blog [8], “is tantamount to saying that the United Methodist Church is no longer aligned with the teaching, theology, leadership and values of John Wesley.”
Tennent suspects other conservative seminaries also will be deleted in the coming years from the list of schools approved for UMC ordination candidates. Each school comes up for review by United Methodist officials every four years.
Among other approved schools with traditional Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality are Fuller Seminary and Seattle Pacific Seminary. Northeastern Seminary also was delisted last month along with Asbury.
The recent dustup over Asbury has implications beyond Methodism. Every church of every denomination should be prepared, like Asbury did, to articulate a biblical position on human sexuality despite countervailing cultural headwinds, Tennent said.
“The issue of human sexuality is something that spreads across the whole Church,” he said. A “really good theology of the body is essential for every church to have. Very few churches have a well-articulated theology of the body” that resonates with “the average person in the pew.”
On his blog, Tennent offered advice to anyone whose denomination rejects the biblical view of human sexuality: “Find yourself a better denomination.”
[9]
