The Golden Calves of the United Methodist Church

February 4, 2019

4:51 PM

Golden Calf

The amount of energy, organization, time, and money spent to keep persons who are LGBTQIA from full participation in the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church is shockingly high. This is the price of the idolatry of exclusion.

We United Methodists often refer to our General Conference as GC, but I think the GC may more appropriately stand for golden calf – the golden calf of exclusion. The ultimate price of this idolatry is the loss of our heart and soul and the loss of many lives of our LGBTQIA siblings. Many of us in the United Methodist Church have turned our backs on the work of social holiness for a Beloved Community to embrace an unholy and idolatrous project of discrimination, exclusion, and spiritual abuse of our LGBTQIA siblings.

For my whole adult life, I have witnessed individuals and groups in the United Methodist Church worship the golden calf of exclusion in various forms, often co-opting words that should bind us together in community for their project of exclusion – “Good News,” the “Confessing Movement,” the “Institute for Religion and Democracy,” and now the “Wesleyan Covenant Association.” Some persons have spent their whole lives and even made their livelihood on this idolatrous project of exclusion.

These same persons and organizations are scrambling in the last few weeks before General Conference 2019 to decorate the golden calf of exclusion just right so as to attract the requisite majority of delegates to worship at its hooves. The are trotting out the golden calves of the Traditionalist Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan, and they are adorning both with amendments so that more may bow before them.

Witnessing the power that their golden calves of exclusion seem to have over so many in our denomination, another golden calf of sorts has been created around the idolatry of institutional survival – the One Church Plan. It is in many ways a less pernicious idolatry insofar as fewer of our LGBTQIA siblings will find themselves trampled under its hooves. It is a golden calf created with the intent to do less harm. It is the pragmatic golden calf of many moderates and progressives in the denomination, and if it comes down to our being forced to choose between this less harmful beast and the extremely harmful golden calf of full exclusion, we may need to work with the One Church Plan golden calf, but let us not for one instant pretend that it is not a golden calf and that it does not continue to do harm. Let us not for one second believe that the One Church Plan golden calf is anything close to approximating the Beloved Community in which all are treated fully as persons of sacred worth.

The Simple Plan, the plan removing all discriminatory language and practices in relation to our LGBTQIA siblings, is the only plan being put forth at General Conference that comes anywhere near the Beloved Community vision. I am enough of a realist to know that the Simple Plan will not pass at GC 2019, but I am enough of an idealist to continue working for the Beloved Community that it represents. At GC 2019, the United Methodist Church will get nowhere near the promised land to which the Simple Plan points, but may our eyes continue to see the glory that is coming.

Mark Davies

Rev. Dr. Mark Davies

The Rev. Dr. Mark Y. A. Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics and Director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility at United Methodist-related Oklahoma City University. He is the Executive Director of the Leadership, Education, and Development (LEaD) Hub North America of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. Dr. Davies serves on the United Methodist University Senate, which is “an elected body of professionals in higher education created by the General Conference to determine which schools, colleges, universities, and theological schools meet the criteria for listing as institutions affiliated with The United Methodist Church.”

Comments (7)

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Do You Even Care?

John Wesley and the Methodists have always sought diligently to live holy lives, as we serve a holy God who demands we live holy lives because He is holy. You approve of immoral lifestyles, yet you claim to be a Methodist. How can this be? It's as if you have never heard of a Methodist. Don't you know the lifestyle you promote is destroying the relationship with God of the people you claim are excluded? Don't you care that they need a Savior and must repent and turn from their sin like all people to receive God's grace and forgiveness? Do you care where people spend eternity?

Skipper more than 5 years ago

Your premise is not supported

...by evidence, or anything else besides prejudice.

George Nixon Shuler more than 5 years ago

Makes me wonder

I wonder if the same voices who berate LGBTQ also used the same arguments when it came to equality of Blacks, Women, etc. This US based issue seems to be a fight as to whether we go back to Jim Crowe, women subjugated, and everyone "knowing their place" or a more open society? Are we a Beloved Society or a cloistered home church? I read the argument on the traditionalist side that they have the right to have their views as much as next person. And indeed you do. However, in America at least you don't get to have those views without them being challenged. Yeah I have the right to push people walking down a sidewalk. I can do that. But at some point people push back. And it doesn't matter that this has been the tradition. It doesn't make it right. We use to burn crosses on Black folks lawns and to threaten them to "keep our communities pure and safe". Whole communities bought in. Some still do. It doesn't however make it right. It doesn't make it Christian and it doesn't mean that people eventually won't fight back. We are at that point again and the crucible of justness, freedom, and our mission to bring light to the world balances in a cracked crucible. We must decide differently this time. We must decide again that Christs Blood is sufficient enough to cover all and that God's creation is strong enough to tolerate it.

eric pone more than 5 years ago

Golden Calves

It is clear that he views the One Church Plan as simply a step toward the so called Simple Plan once true enlightenment has settled in and we all embrace the LGBT agenda.
If he wants to throw out the term idolatry then how about those who are willing to sacrifice the unity of the UMC on the idol of homosexual relations?

Kevin more than 5 years ago

If there is a "high cost"

It is because there are some things worth standing your ground and fighting for. Reality is, you are critiquing traditionalists because we have not just let you have your way. Our beliefs are every bit as valid and important to us as yours are to you. And when you can get to the point of respecting and understanding that then things will go a lot smoother for all of us. I will defend your right to believe as you see fit. Problem is, with you, it is a one way street. And that is why the cost has become so high. You expect us to give way, but you don't have to.

betsy more than 5 years ago

Proof separation is necessary

Your comments prove why our differences as Methodists are not reconcilable, requiring separation into at least two Wesleyan denominations. You believe those of us who believe in following our Book of Discipline and a traditional understanding of Scripture worship a golden calf. I suppose you must think yourself a Moses who will enlighten us backward-thinking tradionalists. Or perhaps your golden calf is your “progressive” sense that leads you to worship at the altar of far left liberal identity politics. Either way, it trouble me that you have any responsibilities for training ministers who are required to take an oath to follow our discipline. I’m fine with you going your own way and wish you well. I just wish you had enough tolerance to let traditionalists go our own way without feeling the need to demonize us.

John more than 5 years ago

“idolatry of exclusion”, “Golden Calves” – fairly insulting words against my parents, former clergy and generations before…

Doesn’t bother me, however. I went to the U of Texas where I was confronted with some of the most outrageous liberalism anywhere and learned to just laugh at it…
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Yet, I wish to note that we Americans are unique in our inventiveness. When we see a need, or cannot find what we want, we invent it or adapt to something new the market offers which is close enough. Our plethora of fast-food cuisines, for example, our wide selection of cars and trucks, our amazing alternatives in clothing… If there is a need, our system fills it.
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So, it is a mystery to me why there is not a homosexual church. We celebrate our “freedom of religion”, so why would homosexuals suffer to the degree detailed by Dr. Davies rather than create a church where they control everything? If the UMC has been so unfair, why has a “GayMC” not sprung up down the street?
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In the absence of a church alternative to support their lifestyle, homosexuals and their proponents have sought to change traditional mainline denominations into their own image. That’s caused so much pain and anguish all around. For what? The Presbyterians finally split, following the Lutherans, and now the United Methodists are un-uniting and could veer as close to extinction as Episcopalians. Why did it have to be this way?

Reese more than 5 years ago