An African American Clergyman Critiques Asbury President's Letter

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

Bishop Ernest Lyght has shared with me the letter of the president of Asbury Theological Seminary responding to Asbury students, etc. who have publicly disagreed with the Traditional Plan and its Asbury supporters. Bishop Lyght has called my attention to this portion of the letter:

“We believe that those who are demanding that the Church change its position regarding the Christian view of the body and human sexuality have not offered a compelling biblical, historical, and theological case for such a dramatic change in the historic ethic of the Church." –Timothy C. Tennent, President, Asbury Theological Seminary

I suggest that reflection, discussion, and responding to these words, shaped by prayer, could shape a United, not divided UMC, for the 21st Century. My thoughts:

1. The tone expressed in the letter, creates the possibility of dialogue about “change” that may have been missing in the polarized, political atmosphere that has been present among us since 1972.

2. Discussion about “...the historic ethic of the Church” is worth having. Assuming there is agreement on what that means has made an “ass” of the UMC.

3. “Once upon a time”  “historic ethic” justified the slavery and segregation of Blacks, and denial of the ordination of women. Revisionist history in church or society, is frowned upon. Pretending that understandings of this ethic are uniform, is faulty.

Martin Luther and John Wesley resisted forced uniformity in the Church. Has the UMC become “pre-Protestant Reformation”?

3. It would be helpful to review the “biblical, historical, and theological” rationale that once justified, then changed, prior Methodist perspectives on slavery, segregation, and ordination. This would inform our current debate, and the foolish talk about division.

4. Criticisms of the appointment of a Unitarian as Chaplain at Emory, reminded me of the criticisms of the appointment of Howard Thurman as Chaplain at Boston University. Not only was he Black, he was a Baptist and a mystic. Harold Case, the Methodist pastor who was president of Boston University at the time, believed that Methodism was not so dogmatically doctrinal that it could not embrace a Howard Thurman. History proved him right, and the Thurman critics wrong.

5. The One Church Plan, although it allowed for unholy bias re: LGBTQI persons, would have created an opportunity for discussion and action, re: the Tennent concerns. The creation of the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction acknowledged that some Methodists had not separated their racial bias from the Bible. They performed a “shotgun marriage” of the two in 1939. The same is true of some United Methodists re:LGBTQI persons and same-sex couples in 2019. My preacher father and other Blacks disagreed with the 1939 compromise. But he and they knew that God would guide a racially segregated Methodist Church in 1939 to become a racially integrated United Methodist Church in 1968.

President Tennent uses the word “compelling” in his request for “dramatic change.” I wrap myself in the garment of the faith-based spirituality of my Black Methodist foremothers/forefathers when I say it is God who compels the Church to be the Church. The God they knew, and the God I know, “makes a way out of no way!” It is God who must guide “The Way Forward” for the UMC. 

There are God-given possibilities in the dissent at Asbury Theological Seminary. President Tennent has opened the door for God to come in. “Can anything good, come out of Asbury Seminary?” Let us pray together, and walk together as we listen, speak, act, and then “see.”

The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell of Asbury Park, NJ, is a retired clergy member of the Mountain Sky (formerly Rocky Mountain) Annual Conference.