Protest Outside General Conference
Protests outside the 1968 General Conference that created The United Methodist Church sought to have the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction dissolved in the merger between the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church. (File photo)
Special to United Methodist Insight
My response to news of a meeting between Mainstream UMC leaders and Central Conference bishops.
1. How timely; it should happen more frequently.
2. There are parallels between national legal persecution of homosexuals in some of the Central Conferences and state-sponsored persecution of Blacks in the USA.
3. In the USA, the Methodist racially segregated Central Jurisdiction was an accomplice to the legalized racial segregation in southern states.
4. In Central Conferences, where there is national legalized persecution of homosexuals, UMC anti-homosexuality legislation is an accomplice to this persecution.
4. Some Central Conference Bishops support the Traditional Plan, because it does not challenge the persecution of homosexuals in their nations. This resembles some bishops in the U.S. South who did not challenge legal racial segregation because of the Methodist sanction of the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction.
5. The strength of Methodism is that there were white Bishops in the South who challenged southern racial segregation as they challenged the racial segregation of the Central Jurisdiction. Likewise, today bishops who are able to link their administrative, presiding, pastoral, teaching/preaching, prophetic roles, will rescue the UMC from its suicidal inclinations. I/we seek to support them.
6. UMC legislation ought not be able to be used by those who persecute women, blacks, or homosexuals, anywhere in the world.
The future of the UMC is being determined now! GC 2020 will be too late.
We United Methodists speak of “the transformation of the world” in our mission statement. Legislation that screens some people out implies that those not screened out are without spot or blemish. The lie this stance perpetrates is unGodly.
My Father and his generation and the Black Methodists before him who remained in a racially segregated Methodist Church, despite its racial bias, did so not to accept racial bias but to confront it. If the Traditionalists cannot remain in a UMC where many of us resist heterosexual bias, they probably will resist those of us who resist racial bias as well.
A personal note: I cannot understand a professor at Perkins, a scholar mentor of Traditionalists, who rejoices in an academic relationship with a colleague whose views on homosexuality are different from his own, yet feels that living under the UMC umbrella with same-gender loving clergy is blasphemy
Galloway Memorial Church in Jackson, Miss., once refused Bishops Charles Golden and James Mathews entry to a worship service because Bishop Golden was African American. Galloway has changed! And rejoices in its change. My prayer is that supporters of the Traditional Plan, will change, and rejoice that they have changed!
There is so much to learn from the history of Methodism and race, if we have eyes to read, minds to translate and absorb, a willingness to admit unacknowledged racial prejudice, and hearts that love.
Gilbert Caldwell
The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell. Photo by Mike DuBose, United Methodist Communications.
The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell of Asbury Park, N.J., is a retired clergy member of the Mountain Sky Conference (formerly Rocky Mountain). He describes himself as "a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement" and was co-founder of Black Methodists for Church Renewal and United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church.