Photo by Diane Degnan, United Methodist Communications.
Way Forward Ash Wednesday
Members of the Commission on a Way Forward worshipped with staff of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries at their Ash Wednesday service, March 1, at Grace United Methodist Church in Atlanta.
UPDATE: On July 26, the day after this editorial analysis was published and two days after publication of Heather Hahn's United Methodist News Service article referenced below, the Commission on A Way Forward announced it had issued a status report "A Way Forward Thus Far," addressed to the Council of Bishops and "the entire United Methodist Church." The report was issued as a PDF document and as a slide program of the printed document in video format. United Methodist Insight will analyze the Commission's report in a future article.
Bishop Ken Carter of Florida, one of three bishops moderating the Commission on the Way Forward, is perturbed at the United Methodist media over a headline on a recent report of the commission’s work:
“Way Forward Keeps Mum on Plans for Church”
Bishop Carter expressed his perturbation in a Facebook post on July 24:
“The Commission on a Way Forward is not ‘mum.’ Our work is in the very early stages. Our first audience is the Council of Bishops, to whom we are accountable. We are spending extensive time listening -- I have met w/ students and faculty at Duke, Emory, Claremont, w/ leaders of advocacy groups, w/ clergy in Holston and Arkansas conferences, w/ the general secretaries of the church, and w/ 1400 clergy and laity in town hall meetings in Florida. We are seeking to listen well before we speak. Thanks for your patience and prayers.”
Bishop Carter’s post, as of July 25, garnered 21 responses supporting his perspective. The responses’ general attitude commended the Commission’s public silence as appropriate to its task.
However, from the perspective of other United Methodist leaders, the Commission’s closed meetings and public silence do more harm than good. The closed-door attitude harms the denomination by tearing at the very trust it’s trying to build among United Methodists around the world – a trust that transcends perspectives on a single issue.
We see two factors causing this unintended harm, a legal reason and a spiritual reason.
First, the legal ramifications. From the beginning, the bishops have owned the effort that led to the Way Forward Commission. The commission’s genesis came from private meetings organized by Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr., then outgoing president of the Council of Bishops, and subsequently assumed by Bishop Bruce P. Ough, current Council president. Bishops Warner and Ough managed to get representatives of pro and con factions on homosexuality to talk with one another prior to the 2016 General Conference. This was an awe-inspiring accomplishment well worth celebrating. The fact that its entente cordiale broke down during the vicious politics of the 2016 General Conference doesn’t diminish the talks’ significance.
However, once the General Conference approved the proposal to create the Commission on A Way Forward, using the Council of Bishops as its agents, the process ceased to be the sole province of United Methodist bishops. By action of the General Conference, the commission became an agent of the worldwide legislative body of the church, just as the general agencies are charged with carrying out United Methodist programs in the four years between General Conference sessions. In this, we respectfully disagree with Bishop Carter’s interpretation; the “first audience” of the Way Forward group is the church at large as represented by the General Conference, not the Council of Bishops.
As a body created by action of the General Conference, the Commission on A Way Forward legally becomes subject to the requirements of the Book of Discipline, including that of the United Methodist Church’s “open meetings” rule, Paragraph 722:
¶ 722. Restrictions on Closed Meetings—In the spirit of openness and accountability, all meetings of councils, boards, agencies, commissions, and committees of the Church at all levels of the church, including subunit meetings and teleconferences, shall be open. Regardless of local laws or customs, all participants shall be notified at the beginning of any meeting, including telephone or video conference calls, if the meeting is being recorded electronically and of the intended use of such recording. Portions of a meeting may be closed for consideration of specific subjects if such a closed session is authorized by an affirmative public vote of at least three-fourths of the voting members present. The vote shall be taken in public session and recorded in the minutes. Documents distributed in open meetings shall be considered public.
Great restraint should be used in closing meetings; closed sessions should be used as seldom as possible. Subjects that may be considered in closed session are limited to real estate matters; negotiations, when general knowledge could be harmful to the negotiation process; personnel matters; issues related to the accreditation or approval of institutions; discussions relating to pending or potential litigation or collective bargaining; communications with attorneys or accountants; deployment of security personnel or devices, or negotiations involving confidential third-party information. … While it is expected that the General Conference, the Judicial Council, and the Council of Bishops will live by the spirit of this paragraph, each of these constitutional bodies is governed by its own rules of procedure.
In claiming ownership of the Commission on A Way Forward, the Council of Bishops has extended its own “cloak of invisibility” over its proceedings. The bishops, who are supposed to uphold the Discipline, have turned the Way Forward Commission into a body that breaks the spirit if not the letter of church law.
Secondly, the Way Forward Commission’s closed-door process, with the bishops’ backing, fails in its spiritual responsibility to model publicly for all United Methodists how to stay in communion with one another despite diametrically opposed viewpoints. This spiritual aspect may seem a lesser duty when compared to the shadow of legal avoidance, but in reality it marks the greater of the Commission’s responsibilities to the Church at large.
True unity for United Methodists won’t be achieved merely by changing its structure to give more local autonomy to conferences and congregations regarding their acceptance of same-gender human sexuality. The unity that will keep the worldwide denomination from flying apart can only come by spiritual means -– the hard, high road of taking up one’s own cross to follow Jesus Christ, the head of the Church.
There can be no discounting of how hard this kind of spiritual leadership will be for the Way Forward Commission. Factions throughout The United Methodist Church have battled one another for decades over same-gender sexual practice, despite protestations and even names and slogans that claim to eschew mental and emotional violence. Conducting its business in the spirit of Paragraph 722 will expose the commissioners to intense spiritual, emotional and political pressures from organizations and individuals, even more than what they receive now.
Surviving such pressures will require the kind of mental, emotional, spiritual and even physical toughness demanded of early Christians. Yet isn’t that partly why the Commission was authorized – to stand as a bulwark against forces that seek to divide the denomination through conquering and expelling opposing viewpoints? Where would the church be if the Jerusalem Council had not accepted the Apostle Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles as legitimate?
The United Methodist Church at this juncture desperately needs models of Christian maturity who will put themselves on the line for a higher ideal. The mere fact of serving on the Commission on A Way Forward, laudable as it is, forms only the first step in this modeling. The church deserves to see how the Commission works together – how it listens, how it discusses, and above all else how it holds respect for one another in the bond of baptism. Furthermore, the Commission has the right – nay, the responsibility – to hold accountable, even to the point of ejecting from its meetings, any individual or organization that would seek to disrupt such attitudes and process. Yes, the "how" of the Way Forward Commission matters as much, if not more, as its final results.
Ultimately, the question of open meetings for the Commission on A Way Forward hinges on trust. So far, the Commission and its moderators have shown by their secrecy that they don’t trust the church at large to give them a fair chance to conduct their business publicly. Until the Commission on A Way Forward opens its meetings to observers, we’ll have no way to know whether our own behavior justifies their distrust. Unless the denomination can see that there truly is another way for us to live together despite our differences, the Commission on A Way Forward may accomplish the opposite of its stated goal through these unintended consequences.
A longtime United Methodist communicator and veteran of eight General Conferences, Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.