Perpetuated Schism
In March, following the United Methodist General Conference in St Louis, Reverend Beth Ann Cook wrote a Facebook post offering her response to the General Conference decision and her experience as a delegate in an article which was quickly republished on Juicy Ecumenism*. Cook serves as the president of the Indiana Confessing Movement, another traditionalist institution in the UMC which borrows the inspiration for its name from the Confessing Church, a German Protestant Church which stood in opposition to the Nazi party. In short, it’s a principality that could be easily identified as problematic in that it sees itself as standing in opposition to the clear (and they would seem to say equal) evil in today’s world, the liberal and gay agenda present in the Church.
In her article Cook writes,
“[The Progressives] kept citing this statistic that two-thirds of U.S. United Methodists supported the One Church Plan. I never believed this is an accurate statement, and I think their poll numbers were skewed.”
The problem with her assessment is that since the start of Annual Conference season this 2/3 number (or close to it) has kept popping up. A few conferences at this point have had the opportunity to vote on resolutions that either undermine or outright reject the Traditionalist Plan (henceforth, TP).
Here in Michigan, we ran a non-binding information-seeking straw-poll which sought to gauge the overall feeling of the state’s United Methodists, the poll put the numbers at 69–31% in favor (right around 2/3s) of potentially rejecting the TP in the future. When the Great Plains Annual Conference proposed a resolution to actively reject the Traditionalist Plan the numbers came in at 60–40% in favor of rejecting the plan (once more, close to that 2/3 statistic), and the trend continues; North Texas voted with an 80–20% to be a One Church conference, and Florida voted by a 2/3 majority to condemn the TP. *Since the time of this original posting Iowa has disavowed the traditionalist plan at 68-32%, and Holston voted to affirm their LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters at 65-35%, once again that 2/3 statistic seems consistent.
While it should be noted that these numbers may not be entirely accurate in relation to the overall feeling among United Methodists here in the States, as the numbers at Annual Conference don’t always perfectly reflect the attitudes in our churches, as any pastor could tell you, it does seem to be the best shot we have at pure data gathering. Additionally, there are some conferences that didn’t choose to resist or reject, so again this statistical threshold isn’t perfectly accurate but it does seem relatively consistent.
The resolutions have not gone unchallenged of course, the WCA, the IRD, the Confessing Movement all have written numerous articles and have worked to ensure the resolutions that did pass are challenged or given over to judicial review. In at least two conferences, Baltimore-Washington and Michigan, the bishops, in violation of the GC decision, commissioned or ordained several openly practicing** LGBTQ+ persons — moves that will undoubtedly bring about charges*** against the bishops.
What seems most telling, and most odd, in our plenary sessions at Annual Conference, at least here in Michigan, is that there was a distinct effort to prevent the straw-poll from being taken. Perhaps more than anything this appears as a symbol of bad faith as it seems in any situation involving Conference of Denominational decisions there should always be an effort taken to have the numbers in mind. It seems that the act of preventing a study or poll, however impacted by laity/clergy numbers it might be, is an effort to maintain a sense of ignorance from a position that knows it is in the minority— or to be consistent with the language of this blog — a principality which desires dominance.
Reverend Tom Anderson, the president of Michigan’s Wesleyan Covenant Association put out a letter in the days following our Annual Conference and it is… not kind towards those the WCA deems apostate. Reading like a call-to-arms (with an actual call-to-arms, one called to respond to the “schism perpetuated in Traverse City”, near the end) the letter positions the WCA as the “faithful remnant” within the UMC, a reference to a biblical theme of a faithful few living in the midst of a fallen kingdom. The letter reads as aggressive, as it accuses Progressives of “indulging nearly every sexual desire in the alphabet. Many progressives [and] rush[ing] to turn our baptismal vows against our own church labeling the teaching of Jesus himself to be “evil and unjust” to be forsworn and resisted,” the letter goes on to cite Jesus’ words on marriage in Matthew 19 as proof-positive that Christ was against gay marriage despite the context of that passage indicating that Jesus was answering a question about divorce and not referring to anything relating to the LGBTQ+ identity.
Reading the letter the message is almost clear, everyone who disagrees with us — the bishop, the Michigan Board of Ordained Ministry, presumably even anyone who voted in favor of the straw poll — is a breaker of ordination vows, is unfaithful, is wrong, with no wiggle room for interpretation or differing voices or perspectives on this.
So What?
One of the common refrains I hear from my more traditional friends is that we are tired, we are tired of the fighting, tired of the ugliness, tired of the bickering — from both sides.
I agree.
The center can’t hold, we’ve seen this since General Conference, and even before General Conference I was chewing on the idea of letting the principality of the UMC die, that perhaps we had failed too greatly in our baptismal vows, had too greatly lost vision of our commission as Christians, had elevated the principality of the United Methodist Church to too great a height, had become too convinced that a great being like the UMC can’t die.
Now, there is a part of me that has largely shifted its position over simply allowing the denomination to die, in part because of that theology of resistance. Our denomination is the victim of a 50+ year disinformation and propaganda campaign at the hands of powerful principalities which seek to strip the Church of any moral voice, especially here in the United States. It is evident from the actions of the IRD (not the least of which is hiring as its president a former CIA advisor with a vendetta against perceived Marxism) that part of the real goal is to rob the UMC — and particularly the General Board of Church and Society, one of the few non-governmental principalities on Capitol Hill dedicated to being a prophetic witness — of its voice.
I am tired of arguing, but I’m also tired of having to argue for the basic inclusion of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m tired of the rule, for the rule’s sake, of the Discipline being used as the measuring rod for one’s commitment to Christ or the denomination, especially when the rule being enforced is one we experience as being counter to the ministry we feel God calling us to. If the rule is something that hinders our ministry, our call to God, our call to live human-ly towards one another, it is a law needing to be resisted, needing to be disrupted, needing even to be broken, as Jesus said regarding even the Sabbath,
“The Sabbath came about for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the Sabbath.”
Lord, give us ears to hear, eyes to see, voices to speak, to not respond to evil with evil, and especially to remember that our enemies are not flesh and blood, our enemies are those spiritual forces of wickedness in the high places. May we remember that you have overcome them. That our allegiance is not to them. Our vows are not to them, may we remember your wisdom is commanding us to not make vows at all and ponder at what that means — to let our yes be yes and our no be no. Teach us in your ways. Amen.
*Juicy Ecumenism is one of those sites which present itself as being based in what it refers to as Orthodox beliefs and Wesleyan teaching when in reality it’s a not-so-subtle propaganda site for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an organization which arose, as it claims, in response to what it perceived as Marxist trends in mainline traditions.
**The sticking point for many Traditionalists is the use of the word “practicing”, this allows for a distinction made between those of the identity and those, as they would say, engaging in the acts. However, General Conference petition 90036 removed the word “practicing”. Those who submitted the petition claim it was accidental and yet with this being the single most contentious phrase in the Book of Disicipline, it is difficult to accept this in good faith.
***The UMC method of accountability involves a system with a noted list of “chargeable offenses”, these being actions that go against our Book of Discipline, the system involves church trials in which our judicial council makes a ruling as to whether or not a clergyperson might be stripped of their credentials.
