All in Gambling
DepositPhotos Courtesy of Hacking Christianity
Does anyone else out there get the feeling that the playing field for the 2019 General Conference is being rigged? Unlike the gaming tables of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, however, we fear that this time the house isn’t going to win.
That’s a provocative statement, and no doubt some folks will be offended by the question. However, after two years of “oversight” (read: steering) by the Council of Bishops, combined with seemingly well-intentioned collusion on the part of the General Commission on the General Conference, it appears that the "powers that be" are using every means at their disposal to preserve the institutional United Methodist Church at all costs.
These streams converged during the week of July 9, 2018 in three events: the revision of the call for the 2019 Special General Conference; the bishops seeking a ruling from the Judicial Council on the constitutionality of Way Forwards three models; and the news that the General Commission on the General Conference renegotiated the contract for language services to provide “consistency” in translation. In two cases, the bishops and the commission cited Judicial Council decision 1360, which ruled that any petition relating to the unity on The United Methodist Church could be submitted for consideration for the special General Conference. The rationale given for these developments was to provide “clarity” on what was being brought to the special session and "guidance" for the delegates' deliberations. Upon deeper reflection, however, the reality seems more suspect, if not downright sinister: by controlling the definitions and dissemination of information about the Way Forward report, the powers that be control the agenda for 2019. Their actions seek to limit what can be considered by the 2019 session of the UMC’s top legislative body to the contents of the Way Forward commission’s report.
The Way Forward report is now suspect as well. According to news reports, the commission finished its work in April. However, it was called back into session to revise its report according to what the Council of Bishops discussed during its early May meeting. Then came the Judicial Council ruling rebuking the bishops for attempting to legislate, a power denied to them by the church’s Constitution and also absent from the “unity” request of the 2016 General Conference. Hence, the revised call refashioning the purpose of the 2019 General Conference. Still, we have no way of knowing until at least July 30 what precisely the Way Forward commission is putting forward, except for previous reports on its “three models” of church unity, focused solely upon polarized beliefs around the acceptability of (male) homosexuality (to the exclusion of other identities along the total scale of human sexuality including lesbianism, also a homosexual identity).
We’ve tried to give denominational leaders the benefit of the doubt. Many rejoiced in 2016 when it was revealed that Bishop Warner Brown and then Bishop Bruce Ough had been in private talks with leaders of the extreme political wings of United Methodism. We were hopeful that the amity of those discussions would shape the 2016 General Conference into at least a civil, if not cordial, legislative assembly. The enmity of that assembly squashed those hopes.
Closed door sign
Then came the clandestine meetings of the Commission on A Way Forward. We at United Methodist Insight acknowledge that we had “a dog in this hunt,” as we say in Texas, because as a legitimate church-related publication, we fully expected to attend Way Forward meetings and report on their deliberations as required by the Book of Discipline (Paragraph 722). Instead, a cloak of secrecy, disguised as a means for developing relationships among the commissioners, was drawn over their conversations. Were it not for the diligent efforts of Heather Hahn of United Methodist News Service to document the commission’s doings by means of post-meeting interviews, we might never have known anything about Way Forward except for sanitized press releases. The entire UMC owes Ms. Hahn and her agency a deep debt of gratitude for their persistence in the face of constant stonewalling. (And to those who have accused her of an “adversarial attitude” in pursuit of truth, we say: Look first to your own adversarial attitudes toward church media before you cast aspersions).
Credit also must be given to those leaders who realized that preserving secrecy was not an effective strategy. We owe much to the Rev. Tom Berlin, pastor of Floris UMC in Herndon, Va., and Dave Nuckols, lay co-leader of the Minnesota Annual Conference, for their early and consistent efforts to put the core of Way Forward discussions before the entire church.
When we come to the Way Forward deliberations of the Council of Bishops, there seems to be no end now to their “star chamber” procedures. When Insight’s editor first began covering The United Methodist Church in 1988, a closed-door session of the Council was reserved for the matters laid out in the Book of Discipline: personnel, legal negotiations, and/or the sale of property. Now it’s almost useless for a communicator or an interested United Methodist to attend the Council of Bishops meetings because executive sessions are the norm, not the exception. This principle has been applied assiduously to any discussion regarding Way Forward, with the result that the bishops have been responsible for increasing mistrust throughout the denomination instead of decreasing it, as they say was their purpose for secrecy.
While these machinations continue, reports from the field find that rank-and-file United Methodists fall into two categories regarding the impending decision over the denomination’s future.
According to comments from pastors on United Methodist Insight’s website and Facebook page, many folks in the pews are unaware of or resistant to the conflict. Despite the wealth of resources produced over the past year, few except the most politically attuned can explain what has been happening at its highest levels regarding future institutional unity. For this group, only what happens in their local congregations matters; only the continued existence of the local church merits their time and attention. If the superstructure of the denomination falls, so be it.
On the other hand, those who care deeply about the denomination’s sexuality stance remain entrenched in decades-old bunkers. The library of Way Forward resources means nothing to them, because they’ve already been through all the arguments for and against the topic. In this context, the prospect for reconciliation remains slim between these polarized segments of United Methodism – not only because they think and believe oppositely, but because past fights over accepting LGBTQ people have inflicted deep wounds that have been left untended. The adage remains true: pain not transformed continues to be pain transmitted, and not even a “Praying Our Way Forward” effort has helped to reconcile these longtime adversaries.
From its founding, this publication has insisted that what infects The United Methodist Church is not a political, organizational or structural virus, but a profound illness of heart and soul. The clandestine nature of the entire Way Forward process through the most recent actions has done nothing but exacerbate the UMC’s soul-sickness, amplifying the mistrust felt throughout the global church. We would have done better had we modeled Way Forward on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission spearheaded by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Rather continue to debate “homosexuality” as a political issue, we could have developed a mechanism for United Methodists to look one another in the eye and say, “You hurt me.” Then we could have sought mutual forgiveness, the first step in developing a relationship of trust.
Ultimately, The United Methodist Church has been torn asunder by its battles and by the propensity of its leadership to hide conflicts behind closed doors rather than directly addressing them. Now all we can do is await the final spin of the wheel, which many fear will bring down the house.
Part 2: Uniting the Two Long Divided, Evangelism and Social Justice
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.