Six Things About the United Methodist Decision Yesterday We'd Be Silly to Overlook

(If you are uber-short on time, please be sure you digest - if nothing else - #5) an #6))


Preamble (cuz I'm always ambling): Yesterday evening I posted the message below on Facebook. I cannot stop there, though, because I know there is going to be so much confusion and misinformation surrounding what happened. And, as a Methodist myself, I want to stay ahead of it. To that end, this blog post is an attempt to educate, to the best of my ability, the details.

Facebook post:

"If you know me a bit, you know that I love God and have chosen Christianity as my conduit to and my language for God.

If you know me more, you know that I believe sexuality and sexual immorality to be separate things, i.e that homosexuality is not a sin.

If you know me really really well, you know that I can back up how to reconcile scripture passages that seemingly convey the opposite.

I have strong hope that the decision made today by my United Methodist denomination globally will be revisited in the future, the same way its stance on slavery and female clergy evolved.

But today my United Methodist (and other) LGBTQ friends are tired, hurt, and weary of the wait.

So I pause to say: I see you, and I am deeply sorry."

With no further ado, I shall get to it with Six Things About the United Methodist Decision Yesterday We'd Be Silly to Overlook:

1) How United Methodist decisions get made

Lemme explain how United Methodist business is conducted. Like with any large body, the way it gets managed is by its organization into smaller entities. Around the globe, therefore, there are hundreds of United Methodist "conferences." Conferences are composed of individual congregations divided up geographically. Every year, representation (clergy and non-clergy) from each United Methodist congregation within a Conference meet together at an event called "Annual Conference Session." Every four years, something different happens, and it is called "General Conference." Naturally, General Conference is one level up, an international body of nearly 1,000 delegates (elected by the Annual Conference sessions). Here is where the church's official policies and stands are made regarding everything including contemporary issues. 


2) This is not a new United Methodist dilemma

Whoowee. Now that we have that boring stuff out of the way, let me be clear about the next thing: United Methodists - like so many other Christian denominations - have been wrestling over this issue of sexuality for decades. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the United Methodist "constitution" (or Book of Discipline) reads that "The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." And there has been discourse after discourse at both the Annual Conference Sessions and the every-four-year General Conferences about either a need to do away or edit that phraseology, not to mention discourse after discourse about what to do with the following: increasing numbers of LGBTQ worshippers were showing up in the pews of United Methodist congregations and  increasing numbers of LGBTQ folks were seeking ordination as United Methodist clergy - sometimes closeted ones, sometimes openly practicing ones. Oh, and P.S. same-sex marriage became legal in the United States, so United Methodist clergy began performing marriage ceremonies of LGBTQ pairs. In other words, the cultural inclusion of homosexuality was catching up to the church, little at a time, even though the hierarchy of the church has over the years not had enough votes to itself turn the corner.

3) There has always been a contingency of United Methodist leaders that has fought for the inclusion of LGBTQ folks.

Clearly, #2) means within the United Methodist church at large, there has been great discord. The contingency that does yearn for the inclusion of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters has grown in size over the past fifty years, but it has never reached majority. Somewhere along the way, the following became a thing: United Methodist congregations that wanted to communicate their openness and inclusion of LGBTQ individuals began using a common identifier: "Reconciling Congregations." UMC congregations who described themselves with this label ("Reconciled") started popping up left and right, certainly in the United States as well as in other parts of the world. This is what my home church has to say when you click on its website link about "Reconciling:"

                                                                            St. Andrew UMC has a place for you.

We embrace Jesus’ message that God loves everyone and affirm that all persons are of sacred worth. We are proud to celebrate diversity as we work to live our vision of radical hospitality. We welcome people of every age, race and gender identity; diverse nationalities, ethnicities, and sexual orientations; any family structure, economic reality, physical and mental ability, education and faith history. While there are differences among us, we can love alike though we may not think alike. You are invited to join this nurturing community on a faith journey toward greater love, understanding and mutual respect.
If this is your first visit, welcome. If you are returning, welcome home.

(To read the rest of what St. Andrew UMC has to say about its reconciling status, click here and scroll down.)

This language became commonplace for so many United Methodist places of worship. And so many more closeted gay United Methodist Ministers became openly practicing ones.

4) See the prob?

If you're following here, you now see that although the United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline's wording about homosexuality has never had enough votes from its governing body to be revised, there have been plenty of United Methodist leaders and worshippers for years - decades - fully living and teaching contrary to its wording.

What to do? What to do?

Here's what was decided: A "Special Session" was called of the General Conference; not one that would have happened on its every-four-years track, instead one whose sole purpose was "to receive and act on a report from the Commission on a Way Forward, authorized to examine paragraphs in The Book of Discipline concerning human sexuality and to explore options to strengthen church unity." (from UMC.org website). In other words, the result from this Special Session was to be the final say...no more "to-each-their-own."

This Special Session just happened February 23-26 2019 in St. Louis. And the final say as of late yesterday afternoon is this: Church policies on homosexuality are affirmed and enforcement of them will be strengthened. 

No more practicing LGBTQ clergy. No more clergy conducting the marriage ceremonies of LGBTQ couples. Is what it said.

5) The decision was made by United Methodist leaders around our globe, not national ones alone.

The percentages vary depending upon where you read it, but round about 30% of the nearly 1,000 United Methodist delegates who placed their votes on this issue yesterday were from the continent of Africa.

I really need your attention to clear up something: In certain parts of Africa, homosexuality is considered to be a crime. In certain parts of Africa, your life is literally at risk if you are found to be practicing a same-sex relationship.

I cannot emphasize enough how this affects things.

To paint the picture a tad more clearly and a tad more through-the-eyes-of-Tricia:
I lived in Africa for two months when I was training for the Peace Corps and one of the the initiatives we American volunteers were charged with was AIDs education. The team of volunteers of which I was part experienced a collective jaw-drop when we learned that there was a widely-held and grossly inaccurate belief by men in some parts of Africa that a cure for AIDS was to have intercourse with a virgin woman.

To be sure: I am not belittling the people of Africa who have misconceptions such as these, nor questioning their intelligence (furthermore, certainly, let me be first to say that millions of people living in Africa hold none of the beliefs I've cited). I am attempting, instead, to convey the power of cultural influence over a place or a people. I am attempting to convey that handed-down belief systems, no matter their adherence to fact, flourish in the gaping space made by a void of information or exposure. I am attempting to convey that people cannot know something they don't know until they know it.

But there's more to this that I cannot shake: How did Christianity get to Africa? The answer is Christian missionaries. I am not an anthropologist nor a sociologist, so I will not venture to assert whether the rejection of same-sex relationships in many African cultures is specifically because of Christian teachings on the subject, but I will say that I find it deeply ironic that United Methodists there - who got to be United Methodists because mostly-Western Christian missionaries descended upon their African traditions/religions, replacing them with those of the Christian variety - are the ones today holding more tightly to the legalisms of the Bible than those in the Western world.

What I'm saying is this: Please, please, please let us realize, when we digest yesterday's news, that it does not reveal an altered theological pattern in America... nor that United Methodist progressivism has taken a slide backwards here in the U.S.. Hopefully, instead, you will see by #1 - #4 above that the United Methodist titanic has been steadily, if not slowly, pivoting towards more inclusive waters (the vote, even with the African third-ish, was 438 to 384 - only a 53% majority), especially here in America.

This does not take away ever-so-slightly from the blow. The vote to strengthen enforcement of the church's policy on homosexuality's incompatibility with Christianity is going to mean big things for our congregations here (I won't detail the possible paths for Reconciling Congregations in this forum. Google to find out. Spoiler: Inclusive congregations are not backing down. **Insert a celebratory "yay" from me**). Furthermore, I worry that this decision will have the unintended consequence of drumming up fuel for under-the-surface ignorance, that hate groups will receive it as an open door to validate an increase in bullying, harassing, and ill treatment towards LGBTQ individuals and groups. Most important of all - and really the source of the spot of sorrow I am in now - individuals in the LGBTQ community, whether they are United Methodist or Christians at all, are experiencing great grief, pain, and distress as the result of yesterday's decision. This is not OK with me.

My hope, though, is that framing the statistics and the culture of international communities making up those statistics will paint a more accurate picture of How This Happened.


6) Most United Methodists who believe in upholding the church policy that "practicing homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching"are not heartless nor hateful people. 

This might sound to some of you like a slap in the face... like I am defending or protecting those with a conservative view on this topic. There's no real hook here, but perhaps it seems like I'm letting those who voted to uphold conservative church language about homosexuality off of one.

Here's what I will say: I was reared with some downplayed-yet-conservative interpretations of the Bible. I was squirmy with them from the very, very beginning (and did not get comfortable with my Christian faith until I learned there were equally serious and valid Biblical interpretations of the more generous variety). But - back when I subscribed to Christianity under the mainstream/conservative interpretations and despite my squirm with them - I didn't know how to come up against that which didn't set well with me because it's what God said. 

Damn if that's not a tough authority to be screwing with.

I realize now that what the church often teaches "what God says" is truly a perception, and that a more progressive approach towards the Bible, without taking a hint of power or truth away from it, can allow God's voice to have a wildly different ring to it.

But, like I said, if you believe the inerrant-word-of-God business about the Bible's literal words (and furthermore trust all the language translations to be spot on), then disobeying a few of them is literally disobeying God. In other words, if your theology tells you that homosexuality is a sin, if your God tells you that homosexuality is a sin - who are you to judge what God commands?

I cannot tell you how often I heard this growing up in the church: "Love the sinner, hate the sin." Embarrassingly, I for a time felt comfort in its allure. It was how, during my squirmy phases, I was able to sustain within the conventional church of my youth. I'd venture to guess it is how the United Methodists now who voted NO to inclusivity are getting through. I'm sure there are some whose hearts are stone, but I want to believe that most are trying so dang hard to do what they think God has told them to do. (And until their fundamental view of God and the Bible changes - which believe me is painful, sort of like a nasty belief-system-divorce - the God they believe in will continue telling them to do the same things).

I have mucho Christian friends and family members who believe that practicing homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Almost all of them are deeply loving, gentle, kind people. And almost all of them are suffering through this concrete belief (and what it means played out) with tears in their eyes.

Let us not stop demanding inclusivity.

Let us have compassion for those from whom we demand it.


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UPDATE: I think the Senior Pastor of my beloved UMC congregation captured everything I've said here with more poise and precision than I'll ever have (I'm now obsessed with the phraseology "biblical disobedience" - HOLLA!). Now that you've labored through my clumsy words, see what he had to say in a message sent to parishioners yesterday here.