Great Plains Conference | March 27, 2024
Two Great Plains Conference cabinet members were part of the estimated 4,000 United Methodists from around the world who had a hand in writing revisions of the Social Principles for The United Methodist Church for the 2020 General Conference.
Although that was three delayed General Conferences and one global pandemic ago, Rev. Cindy Karges and Rev. Dr. Kalaba Chali said the revisions are essentially the same as they had signed off on four years ago.
“It’s the same version we had presented for 2020,” said Chali, a clergy delegate from the Great Plains and the Wichita districts superintendent. “However, the process is continuing.”
Rev. Cindy Karges
Great Plains Conference Photo
“In a sense, it’s been sitting, waiting,” said Karges, superintendent of the Great West and Gateway districts.
The revisions to the Social Principles will go before at least two of the three Church and Society committees during the first week of General Conference — April 23 to May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina — before they are presented to the plenary the second week.
The proposals, through petitions submitted by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, were in response to a 2012, eight-year project of making the denomination’s teachings “more globally relevant, theologically founded and succinct.”
“GBCS wants it to be accessible and all of those things,” Karges said. “GBCS wanted it to be global, to be succinct … .”
“And to be Wesleyan in theology,” Chali added.
The Social Principles differ from the Book of Discipline, said Chali, who was one of dozens of committee conveners who met with the general editor.
“We talked about the difference between the Social Principles and the Book of Discipline. The Book of Discipline is the book of law, a legal book,” he said. “Social Principles is our stance — what is our stance on these things? Many people might not even agree.”
Karges praised the cooperative effort in writing the principles.
Social Principles Cover
Check out the Social Principles page of Great Plains website, including a list of the revisions.
“It’s beautiful, I think. It’s beautifully written,” she said. “It has more input than any other thing we’ve done across the denomination. It really speaks to the global nature of the church. For GCBS, the hope is that can be a unifying document after all the disaffiliation focus.”
The principles provide a contrast to the Book of Discipline, Chali said.
“We value the personal holiness and all aspects of spirituality, but also the social holiness,” he said. “The Book of Social Principles is our call to social holiness. How do we engage in the communities so that the love of neighbor is evident as well.”
Each team had to consider Biblical principles and those of the founder of the denomination and see how they would fit in with the present day.
“We think of what John Wesley would say about that? Is it a path of nonviolence that Jesus himself would take?” Chali asked. “We had to compare with the current one. There are changes in the sections, but that was because of redundancy, so if you had the same topic talked about here and there, with different emphasis, it would be changed.”
In one of the entries, marriage is defined as the union of two adults, although Chali said central conferences have pushed back against that language.
“They would prefer to amend saying one man and one woman,” he said. “That’s one of those things where the conversation continues.”
Chali was the convener of the social community writing team, while Karges was a member of the nurturing community team.
Rev. Dr. Kalaba Chali
Great Plains Conference Photo
“The social community is really about us and our relationships with each other and nature. Whereas the political committee has taken what was part of the world community. The social principles speak for the whole church,” Chali said. “The world community is all these other parts, particularly the social community and the world committee.”
Karges said changes were made to reflect the growing worldwide mission of The United Methodist Church.
“There was a time when it was even more U.S.-centric, and for a time things were added to it and added to it. In my mind, some of those things could have been resolutions,” Karges said. “It’s going to make for conversation.”
Discussion about what to include and what to change brought examples of language differences, Karges and Chali said. For example, the word “race” was not recognized by representatives from other countries.
“Some of the members of the task force were saying, ‘We don’t use that word.’ We were the only ones to use the word,” Chali said. “It led to some pretty important conversations.”
While Chali is attending as a delegate, Karges — a delegate in the former Nebraska Conference — will be in Charlotte two days before the General Conference for a GBCS reception as she ends her 12 years as a board member.
Karges, who is retiring at the end of the appointive year on June 30, said working on the Social Principles has been one of the highlights of her 40-year ministry.
“We needed to get this right,” she said. “We needed to figure out how to be global, because we were struggling. And there’s hope that, because this is a global document, and nothing else we’ve done has been that way.”
UMC's explanation of Social Principles.
David Burke serves as a content specialist for Great Plains Annual Conference. This article is republished with permission from the conference website.