Understanding Our Foundations
Introduction
As a lay-led movement, the members of Young Methodists for Tradition have had to make our stand using the best possible justification and reasoning from scripture and the history of the faith to fully explain why our movement seeks to reform the United Methodist Church for God through youth leadership. The following texts explain some of our foundational documents and beliefs.
Letter to the Global Methodist Church
A Letter to the Global Methodist Church
Joseph Cassidy, a follower Christ, on behalf of the Young Methodists for Tradition.
To the Global Methodist Church, which is committed to the historical doctrines of the Methodist church and the historical church Catholic.
Grace, peace and love to you and your congregations from God our Father and Christ our Lord and savior.
I confess myself to be no meaningful representative of Christ to any teacher of Christ nor any person in authority over a church. I am neither a bishop, nor a pastor, nor even so much as an official member of the United Methodist Church. I am simply an attendee of a United Methodist church and a member of the Young Methodists for Tradition. Yet I, and the other members of our organization, have as much zeal for the Word of God as the most steadfast and knowledgeable of bishops. We have been and will continue working tirelessly for the restoration of our beloved United Methodist Church. We earnestly desire it to be purged of evil and false teaching, as you once did. We urge you to join us in our mission.
Indeed, you have done a great thing in seeking the protection of the doctrines of our Lord Jesus Christ. You have strengthened your institutional commitment to Biblical definitions of sexuality and marriage. You have purged secularism from your denomination. You have purified the teaching of the Gospel. You have corrected the UMC’s perversion of Scriptural social justice. You have championed our glorious Father’s moral precepts and the commandments He gave us: to love Him with all of our being, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I commend you, also, for building a church committed to the Gospel and message of Christ, beyond theological understanding. In calling your congregations to evangelism and personal conversion, you sincerely seek to fulfill the great commission.
Yet again, you ought to be praised for your loyalty to your congregations, who seek nothing but a Christ honoring institution to call home. You have provided exactly that - a safe pasture for your sheep. There is no greater purpose for a teacher of Christ and a leader of a church. The importance of that accomplishment can be neither overstated nor underestimated. In providing your sheep a safe haven of doctrinal purity, you have shielded them from the evils of false teaching and from the turmoil of the spiritual war in the United Methodist Church.
For all these things and more, I and the Young Methodists for Tradition extol and praise you. Yet, we find great grievance even in that which is be admired.
In establishing your doctrinal purity, you have abandoned the great historic institution of the UMC to rot and ruin. Despite your commitment to the Gospel and to Christ, you have failed to fight for them. Your commitment to shielding your congregations from spiritual strife has left them vulnerable to its inevitable attack. In the first place, you ought not to have left. In the second, we exhort you to return home, and once again partake in our beloved church.
How can we say that you should have stayed in such a church as the UMC, which has repeatedly injured those who seek Christ’s true teachings? We say this because to stay is a great expression of love. Are we not called to love our enemies? How can we abandon our church in its time of need? Those who have been taught a corruption of Christ’s teaching are in most need of love, for they have been led astray. This is not to
excuse the behavior of those who would make rubble the foundation of our church. Yet even these we ought not leave to their deaths. We should continue to fight tooth and nail to bring even the worst false teacher to Christ. We ought to beware false teaching – that is certain. Yet the way to fight it is not to allow it to fester and spread like the cancer it is. Rather, we ought to call those false teachers to repentance, and seek to expose their evil to those who are under their influence. In this expression of love, you have failed, and we urge you to reconsider your current course.
Further, the institutions themselves are worth preserving. It does a great disservice to the cause of Christ to leave them to their present disease. Can we truly say that the Global Methodist Church is as able to do good in the community as the United Methodist Church, which possesses such copious resources and influence? These establishments were built over centuries of exhaustive toil. You are not going to create anything comparable in the short time you have. Further, the cultural influence of the United Methodist Church is immense. To leave the culture to the influence of a corrupt church is yet another failure to love those in our nation who so desperately need the guidance of Methodist tradition. Our buildings, our finances, and our cultural influence are all necessities in the modern secular world if we are to produce any sort of change. How can we honor our great commission if we abandon the very means by which it can be honored? We exhort you to consider the practicality of your actions, not only the doctrinal purity that you have attained.
Moreover, you have weakened the Gospel in your attempt to save it. Even as you purify and restore its letter, you fail to comprehend its spirit. In removing yourselves from the environment of doctrinal degradation created in the UMC, you also remove the greatest voice for the Gospel that it had. Those under false teachers need the Gospel more than anyone. In abandoning the UMC, you have abandoned its very purpose. By shutting down this mission field, which is the greatest of mission fields, you have failed in the great commission. We are not called merely to make disciples of those outside of the church. We ought also to be creating disciples of those who, under the guise of love and acceptance, have been led to Hell. We must show them the true love of Christ – we cannot forsake them. Otherwise, we who know the truth commit an even greater evil than those who originally led them astray.
Finally, those of us who are unable to disaffiliate or will not disaffiliate are left without support by your exodus. We desperately need your churches and doctrinal commitment, yet we are deprived of it. How can you insist on your love for the church if you abandon even the members who have retained the true faith? We beg for the help of which are made destitute by your absence.
Is our fight merely vain conflict? Certainly not! We have devised the method by which our churches may be retaken. It is well known that those churches which abandon the faith see rapid decline. It is equally known that those church which have retained relatively laudable doctrines find themselves increasing in number. It is precisely this self-evident principle of which we take advantage. We cannot change the doctrines of our church overnight – that is true. Yet, over time, as false churches fail and true churches flourish, we will the true doctrine acquire the influence which it has been refused. It is then that the true doctrines will be strengthened. All that is needed is for those who have disaffiliated to take heart, and return home to the UMC.
Nor is our emphasis on institutions simply some nostalgic desire for the aesthetic of a bygone age. Our movement is both philosophical and biblical. Let it not be said that we do not find our inspiration in Scripture. Did Elijah seek to create a new Israel when presented with festering sore of false worship? He did not. Instead, he spread the word of God to all those who had turned away, seeking to restore his beloved nation. Did the Apostles leave the temple when they began to spread the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? The thought ought not even enter our mind. We know from Acts 2:46 that they continued worshipping in the temple, ever seeking to bring the Jews to Christ from within their existing institution. Your spirit of retreat cannot be said to be Biblically precedented, and its fruit, which defeat, is proof of this fact.
We seek neither to excuse false teaching, nor to accept it. We do not expect you to easily forget the repeated injury inflicted on you by the UMC, yet we humbly exhort you to come back to us and provide a faithful foundation upon which to restore our beloved Church. May the love of Christ be with you and let our church return to its former glory.
Signed,
Joseph Cassidy, of the Young Methodists for Tradition
Statement to the United Methodist Church
We come today to present this message to the United Methodist Church, the one which we love, and the one which we seek to preserve. May the words we state mirror the words and actions of God.
In the days after the Apostles and after the establishment of the church, Christianity spread quickly across the Greco-Roman and semitic worlds. The spread of the faith brought Christ to all, and allowed the world to be saved.
But with this came those who used the Faith as a vessel to pursue personal agendas, denying Scripture in favor of their own beliefs. Such false teaching was manifested in Gnosticism and several non- trinitarian sects. It divided the Christian world, forcing the greatest church elders and theologians of the time to formally determine the true Christian doctrine. Action was taken to prevent Christianity from losing its foundation in God and the teachings of the Apostles.
In our day, a new Gnosticism has arrived. Years of secularization in society has eroded belief in fundamental matters of the faith. It has also shifted the focus of the church away from the true teachings of Christ and toward secular cultural and political issues.
As the Young Methodists for Tradition, we seek to revive our church by restoring its adherence to Scripture and the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. In doing so, we will strengthen the United Methodist Church’s commitment to Christ and the message for which He was crucified: salvation from the punishment due us for our transgressions against God.
We in the Young Methodists for Tradition call for a spiritual Reformation to unite our church in the true Faith. No United Methodist ought to be right or left, but Christian, and Christian alone.
We pray that we may succeed in helping our church not just to survive, and not just to live, but thrive for years to come.
Statement of Faith
We believe there is one living and true God, the maker of all things. In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons of one substance, power, and eternity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God the Son took human nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin. He truly suffered and was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile us with the Father, a sacrifice for all the guilt and sin of humankind. He rose from the dead, took again his body, and ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father until he returns to judge the living and the dead. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; convinces the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment; and comforts, empowers, and guides the faithful into all truth.
We believe humanity is fallen from original righteousness and continually inclined to evil. We cannot turn and prepare ourselves to faith and calling upon God without the grace of God by Christ going before us and working within us. We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by faith alone. Being justified by faith, we are born again, renewed in righteousness by the Holy Spirit, and made partakers of the divine nature. We are sanctified by God’s grace through the Word and the Spirit, by which those who have been born again are cleansed from sin in thought, word, and deed, and are enabled to strive for holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
We believe Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation. It is to be received through the Holy Spirit as the true rule and guide for faith and practice. Whatever is not revealed in or established by Holy Scripture is not to be made an article of faith nor is it to be taught as essential to salvation. The Christian Church—one, holy, catholic, apostolic—is the community of all true believers under the Lordship of Christ in which the pure Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance. The Church is a witness to, and keeper of, the Holy Scripture; yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s written Word, nor may it interpret one passage of Scripture in such a way that it contradicts or nullifies another.
We believe the Sacraments ordained by Christ—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—are means of grace by which God works invisibly in us to quicken, strengthen, and confirm our faith in him. Baptism is a sign of the new birth, entrance into the household of faith, repentance from sin, and inward cleansing by the Spirit. Infant children of a believing parent, being heirs of the Kingdom of God, are acceptable subjects for Christian Baptism, and should be nurtured toward personal profession of faith in Christ. The Lord’s Supper is a Sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death. To those who rightly receive it, the bread and cup are a participation in the body and blood of Christ, given after a heavenly and spiritual manner and received by faith.
95 Theses to the United Methodist Church
We of the Young Methodists for Tradition crafted these renewed 95 Theses for Reformation Day, 2023. Months were spent deliberating and deciding what our unique Methodist theses would convey. And once completed; was sent to thousands of United Methodist Churches, and posted on hundreds of United Methodist Church doors. We pray that what we have said and stated will be in the glory of God; and stay true to The Word.
A version of this document may be found on The Operation Reconquista Website; and a commentary of the document in full explanation of why we chose our words and why we made such statements will hopefully be released in the future.
1. Jesus is truly God.
2. Jesus physically died and was physically resurrected from the dead.
3. Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary, fully Man and fully God incarnate.
4. There will be a second coming of Christ who will return both as fully man and fully God.
5. There is everlasting life through Jesus Christ alone, by His sacrifice alone.
6. The various Methodist Creeds, especially the Nicene Creed, as well as the Doctrinal Standards, affirm all the above doctrines, and should be confessed aloud whenever gathered for worship with the fullness of faith in God.
7. The authority of Scripture is the Word God spoke to us from eternity.
8. Scripture is the Word of God, which remains forever; that the Old and New Testament is a perfect system of Divine truth; that every part is worthy of God, and all together are one entire body, neither ineffective nor insufficient; and cannot be claimed to be inconsistent.
9. Christian ministers must affirm and encourage, with God’s promise of happy eternity, eternal life with the Creator after death, so their flocks may be given true hope in Christ.
10. The United Methodist Church is built upon five attributes of God: love, forgiveness, purity, holiness and graciousness. He is the Lord; from which all miracles originate. We recognize the reality that all scriptural miracles are true.
11. The United Methodist Church must affirm the reality of original sin.
12. The United Methodist Church must affirm God's righteous judgment of all beings according to their works.
13. The United Methodist Church must affirm Hell, and that refusing a happy eternity implies the choosing of a miserable eternity, for there cannot be any medium between everlasting joy and everlasting pain.
14. The United Methodist Church must affirm God’s omnipotence.
15. The United Methodist Church must affirm God's omniscience.
16. The United Methodist Church must affirm God’s omnibenevolence.
17. The United Methodist Church must affirm that there is one true God that exists in three persons: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
18. The United Methodist Church must affirm that faith in Christ is the only way to The Father.
19. The United Methodist Church must affirm that Christianity is unquestionably true.
20. Given that the doctrinal standards of the Church uphold all the listed Theses 1-19, the Church bears false witness if it denies them.
21. Liberation theology must not supersede the true Gospel.
22. The Kingdom of God is built on earth by the spread of Christian peace and joy, and not by earthly pleasures. The United Methodist Church must affirm that God has given us the tools to build the house of God, which must be built off of Christian teachings, to fulfill the Kingdom of God.
23. The United Methodist Church must affirm monotheism of First and Second Temple Judaism, as well as the Church of Jesus Christ. Pantheism is a heretical and inaccurate way to perceive God.
24. Process Theology is a heretical and inaccurate way to perceive God.
25. Open theism is a heretical and inaccurate way to perceive God.
26. While we can unite with other religions in those Earthly matters which do not contradict God’s word, we cannot unite with them in spiritual matters.
27. Church services must never include beliefs or idols which are, in modern times, either fully or partially Pagan in nature, intention, and practice.
28. Our theology’s importance should not be judged by how it relates to political or to social matters, as theology is the study of God Himself, and not of how particular groups feel about God.
29. The purpose of studying theology is to grow in love and faith in God with all of our minds, while approaching the objective truth of His divinity.
30. All future UMC clergy must affirm the fundamentals of Wesleyan theology to be admitted as uniform clergy of the UMC and all churches in its communion.
31. Ministers whose theology is Unitarian Universalist, or any other universalist, should stop inaccurately using the labels “Wesleyan” or “Methodist” to describe themselves or their theology, and recuse themselves from jobs in the United Methodist Church.
32. Ministers must affirm biblical authority over church doctrine.
33. The United Methodist Church and its ministers must affirm all biblical passages regarding sin, including in the letters of Paul.
34. Pastors should be instructing their congregations on proper Christian doctrine in a way their congregations can understand, recall, profess, and enjoy the Church’s essential teachings.
35. The Church, as the Body of Christ, should value theological understanding above worldly political and social ideologies.
36. The Church should be united in theological beliefs and grant individual Christian liberty in political beliefs.
37. Pastors should preach about all aspects of God’s victory in love, including God’s wrath and holiness.
38. Sin is about personal rebellion against God and all falling short of His glory, not only about systemic injustice; sin should not be considered in terms of socially constructed identity groups but rather in terms of God’s Kingdom.
39. The Gospel produces social justice, but social justice is not the entirety of the Gospel.
40. Pastors should affirm that although works do not grant salvation, God makes moral demands of His church and His people.
41. Churches should hold their congregations above reproach, members, leaders, and pastors, and strive together to glorify God in everything they do, humbling and encouraging one another to always turn toward Him.
42. Pastors should not be hesitant to preach the truth of entire sanctification and against continued sin.
43. Congregations should be united in Methodist doctrine, not allowing such theological diversity as to permit denial of essential Christian doctrine as outlined in the Bible and interpreted by theologians such as Wesley.
44. Pastors should not be hesitant to preach theology as accurate truth from the pulpit.
45. It is crucial for every church member to be directed toward having personal faith in Jesus Christ.
46. All churches should present their theology clearly and in detail.
47. Children and youth should be taught Scripture and church theology in Sunday school so that they may know and understand the essentials of Christian life and faith.
48. Churches should teach Christian apologetics to children and adults so they know how to defend the Christian faith before others.
49. Children and adults should only be confirmed if they profess belief in the essentials of the Christian faith.
50. People with agnostic, atheistic, or otherwise non-Christian beliefs cannot be admitted into positions of leadership, teaching, or authority in the Church.
51. As Christ presented to his apostles and as Wesley partook weekly, the Lord’s Supper ought to be given at least once monthly, with encouragement to give Communion using bread, wine, or grape juice as often as the receptive church is able.
52. Communion should be regarded reverently as a means of grace, with the time taken to confess our sins and affirm our faith before approaching the table of the Lord.
53. Churches should be the hands and feet of Christ, fulfilling the physical and spiritual needs of their communities by laboring, evangelizing, and sharing the Gospel with all.
54. Jesus Christ and the Gospel should be the center of all charity and social justice work done by the Church.
55. The words of Scripture must not be corrupted by mixing them with false interpretations nor by taking either the Spirit or the substance of it away.
56. People are to be baptized in the name of the “The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit [Ghost],” in accordance with Scripture; alternatives such as “The Creator, The Redeemer, and The Sustainer” would render the baptism invalid.
57. While The Godhead has no gender as we understand it, God has revealed Himself to us in His word as The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit. He should be referred to as such with the appropriate masculine pronouns, and The Holy Spirit, being a spirit, can be referred to as “it”, as well as "Him" or "He."
58. We should be more concerned about our worship language being offensive to God than it being offensive to our culture.
59. The church must help in bettering the lives of all of God's children to create the Kingdom of God on earth.
60. The Church should not align with secular political factions.
61. Scripture and God’s Natural Law should be appealed to as the authority for the church’s stance on sexuality and gender rather than contemporary culture and politics.
62. The church must strongly condemn adultery, fornication, and other forms of extramarital sex.
63. The church must strongly condemn the creation, distribution, and consumption of any kind of pornography.
64. The church must strongly condemn polygamy, polyamory, and other non-monogamous relationships.
65. There must never be risqué or adult-themed displays in the Church, which would generally include “drag performances” or any other sexual performances.
66. The Church must honor the sanctity and inherent worth of all human life, born and unborn, with or without disability, regardless of their economic stance, ethnicity, race, gender, or sexuality.
67. The Church must strongly condemn racism of all kinds towards and from all races.
68. The Church must advocate for the government to act consistently with God's design, while distancing itself from support of specific political entities or policies.
69. Pastors are to model biblical morals for their congregation, as they are to be held beyond reproach.
70. The Church should condemn gambling, drunkenness, and drug use.
71. The United Methodist Church must see their decline and schism as a call to repentance.
72. That theologically conservative churches tend to grow and theologically liberal churches tend
to die out should be a signal to change the priorities of theologically liberal churches.
73. The Church should consider the possibility that its decline may be a judgment from God, as God let His people fail when they were unfaithful to Him many times in Scripture.
74. The Church must be open to the voice of other Christians and the words of Scripture, guiding the Church to repentance and holiness.
75. The United Methodist Church should take inspiration from the zeal and enthusiasm of John Wesley’s Holy Club and their call to personal piety and holiness to spread the Gospel and the Spirit to areas that the Church of England had abandoned.
76. In order to revive itself, the UMC should elevate the role of personal conversion, evangelism, and repentance within the existing Church structure.
77. The United Methodist Church will die out if it continues to drift away from the traditional and historic roots of the faith.
78. Flags that reflect neither Christian significance nor national representation must not be displayed in or around churches, lest focus be shifted from God to politics.
79. The United Methodist Church claims to seek racial diversity yet ignores the theological beliefs of racial groups outside of the West.13
80. For the UMC to successfully elevate non-white voices, as it claims to desire, it must heed the cries coming from the Church bodies in Africa and Asia for repentance of theological deviations.
81. The United Methodist Church tolerates countless theological errors that the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church states are heretical; instead, it must actively enforce the Articles of Religion to properly be called Methodist.
82. The United Methodist Church tolerates theological errors that the Church fathers explicitly declare to be heretical, and must reject them to be properly called a Church.
83. The United Methodist Church speaks constantly of inclusivity, but often fails to create an inclusive environment for those that hold historic views.
84. The United Methodist Church must call for justice in ways consistent with Christian teachings but frequently calls for justice in ways only acceptable to the political left.
85. The United Methodist Church’s rhetoric on social issues and current events is frequently indistinguishable from that of progressive and secular political figures and institutions, which is in violation of scripture, which tells Christians to be in the world but not of it.
86. The United Methodist Church criticizes the conflation of faith and politics in Evangelical churches yet dedicates too much of its own rhetoric to political issues.
87. The United Methodist Church will render itself indistinguishable from the world by offering primarily political and cultural messaging, thus disincentivizing new membership.
88. The theologically progressive faction of the UMC is seldom self-critical, except when not acting sufficiently progressive.
89. The United Methodist Church keeps pushing for more and more secular alterations to the faith, despite the risk that they will further divide the body of Christ.
90. Convicting people of sin and demonstrating their need for Christ should come before affirming their lifestyles.
91. Ministers who claim the title of Christian but reject the essentials of the faith risk facing God’s judgment.
92. Ministers who lead their congregations astray risk facing God’s judgment.
93. Seminary professors who make it their goal to deconstruct the beliefs of their students risk facing God’s judgment.
94. Ministers who not only tolerate but affirm what they know to be sin for the sake of not offending people will face God’s judgment if they do not repent.
95. Church leaders who lie to the public and claim to represent Christ while denying Him personally are using the Lord’s name in vain and risk facing God’s judgment.