United Methodism's awful no good very bad week

 

Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people. It begins by loving others for their sakes.... Agape is loving seeking to preserve and create community.

--MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

My church and my country

Could use a little mercy now

--MARY GAUTHIER

The United Methodist Church, to which I belong and have belonged for most of my life, and in which at least three of my close relatives have served as pastors, tightened its rules against homosexuality at a special General Conference last week in St. Louis. Now comes time for this venerable organization to decide whether it wants to or even can be part of our common life.

A majority (53 percent) of the delegates at the General Conference voted to adopt the "Traditional Plan" reaffirming the church's teaching that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching" as well as barring ordination of "self-avowed, practicing" gays and lesbians and same-sex marriages. These provisions, part of the United Methodist Book of Discipline since 1972, have of late been honored in the breach by a number of American Methodist bodies. Thus the Traditional Plan also calls for stricter enforcement and stricter penalties for church officials who disobey. Two other plans, produced over two years by a committee called the Commission on a Way Forward, would have allowed regional and local United Methodist bodies to decide their own courses on these issues, and had substantial support among American delegates, but were rejected in favor of the Traditional Plan.

The Traditional Plan must undergo review by the denomination's judicial board, which in fact forced several revisions during the course of the conference. That decision is expected some time next month.

Even if the Traditional Plan fails at the judicial board stage, and leaving aside the legitimacy issues such a decision would raise, the majority at the General Conference has laid down a marker in the ongoing culture wars. They have done what they could, legislatively, without regard for what comes next for the church, an accumulating pile of research on the nature of sexuality--no, it's not a "choice"--and most egregiously, the real live people in and out of United Methodism who have been certified, yet again, as second-class citizens at best.

American churches in the mainline tradition have been struggling with homosexuality for decades. Century-old understandings the churches have taken for granted suddenly got challenged by liberation movements, research in psychology, and an increasingly public presence of gays, lesbians, &c. which meant many Christians were finding to their surprise that friends, co-workers, and their own children were gay and thus in violation of church teaching. Many Christians in this position--alas, not all of them--began to advocate for change, and change began to happen. After internal discussions that surely were heated and painful, denominations opened ordination and marriage to gays and lesbians, usually with options for local churches to include or exclude as they saw fit: the United Church of Christ in 2005, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2009, the Episcopal Church in 2009-15, the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2011-14.

But these decisions led some congregants, attached to the church's traditional teaching, to break away from the denomination. The North American Lutheran Church, for example, was formed in 2010 after the ELCA adopted its GLBT-inclusive policies. In Cedar Rapids, St. Mark's Lutheran Church left the ELCA over the same issue, though it is not affiliated with the NALC.

Like all great literature the Bible can be read from multiple perspectives, and this is not the venue for debating its lessons with regard to homosexuality. Nor am I equipped to advise mainline denominations how to address decades of declining membership. What this blog has consistently done is affirm the basic value of inclusion in a diverse community (starting here and here, and more recently here). It is the only way to treat people that is guaranteed to be fair, and it has advantages for the includers as well: You get to draw on a broader base of talent, and you don't waste resources enforcing exclusion. Imagine the hungry people who won't get fed, the disasters UMCOR won't be able to get to, the people who won't hear the Word of God because the church is spending scarce resources effing prosecuting lesbian pastors for the effing crime of preaching-while-lesbian. Or pursuing investigations of bishops who aren't committed to rooting out their gay pastors. And what of the state of our souls? Do we really want to define our relationship to God in terms of the exclusion of gays and lesbians?

The United States of America, not to mention the world, have a whole lot of people who are going to be forced by life in the 21st century to figure out how to live together. The best case scenario is we figure out how to be the sort of inclusive "beloved community" envisioned by Martin Luther King. Religious people, in all their many guises, have a lot to offer such a community ("After Hours," Proppe 2016). As Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn (2015) explained after an interview with theologian John Dominic Crossan:

As we go through this transition – I’ve called it contraction for lack of a better description – we’re going to need each other. We’re going to have to work together in a close and personal way. We’re going to have to resist those who would pit us against each other and/or exploit us to maintain their own privileged position. I’m a Christian and, while I’ve dedicated myself to reading about, understanding and being accepting of other faiths (including non-belief), it is easiest for me to talk about how we help each other using the words of the Christian bible.

Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. Love one another as I have loved you.

These are impossibly difficult teachings to live, especially (and perversely) in times of plenty. However, as we continue to slide into more difficult times, it is going to take people with very strong principles of peace and justice to help us find that that soft landing we need. That’s not a dollars and sense issue, and it’s not even a topic I have any special insight or leadership on. I just sense that it’s important to where we are headed.

Of course, religious people can also choose away from our common life by withdrawing into their private spiritual enclaves (see Thomson-DeVaux 2017). But community, not purity, is the work of this time.

In my personal religious life, I've been part of United Methodist congregations that have welcomed Queer people into their midst. Even so they weren't fully welcomed, since they couldn't legally marry or serve as pastors. But there was always the hope that, as people of good will, we would eventually rectify this. The General Conference decision last week changes everything, showing that "eventually" is unlikely ever to come. The demographics of the global church--growing in the developed world, shrinking and aging in most of the U.S.--suggest that last week's vote is likely as close as advocates for full inclusion are ever going to come.

So what is left for the Christian urbanist, who sees working out our common life as God's task for us here and now? Or the congregation (or conference) who values all of their members and hopes to grow? It seems the time for waiting and hoping has passed, probably a long time ago, and that the General Conference's action has thrown down a challenge to action of our own. That action might be separation, as a last resort. (Intriguingly, the brief time I was not a Methodist ended because that church was obsessed with playing at culture wars. Now they've long since worked all that out, and maybe if we'd stayed we could have been part of that.) Maybe we can find some creative response that will be authentically welcoming and inclusive. But for the sake of the common life, the time for  action is here.

SEE ALSO:
Alex Bollinger, "Methodist Churches Nationwide Are Publicly Rebelling Against the Denomination's Anti-LGBTQ Stance," LGBTQ Nation, 7 March 2019
Commission on a Way Forward, "Report to the General Conference," February 2018
"Fault Lines in United Methodism," Sightings: Reflections on Religion and Public Life, 4 March 2019
James C. Howell, "Grieving, But Not Leaving, the United Methodist Church," Red Letter Christians, 3 March 2019
Jeremy Smith, "The Traditional Plan Turned #UMCGC into a Fyre Festival," Hacking Christianity, 26 February 2019