Formal Complaints: Birthing Pains Continue in Eastern Pa.

A couple of weeks ago, 36 clergy in the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference received notification that a formal complaint had been brought against them by their clergy and laity peers. In an action that many had hoped would be concluded unnecessary, the complaint was being filed in response to what the 36 viewed as a prophetic action when they joined together, in November of 2013, to perform a marriage ceremony for a long-term couple who worshipped at Arch Street United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Looming on the horizon of my already financially struggling annual conference lies the threat and potential of further trials and distractions that will continue to rip at the fragile fabric of a community already ravaged by generations of division.

It is hard to hear the words church and trial put together. The church is the body of believers who are to show the world who God is through their love for one another and to continue Christ’s ministry of reconciliation. A church trial is an act of institutional force – becoming necessary when individual dialogue has not brought about reconciliation. While we can use the language of “tough love” and covenant, the reality remains that a trial is simply not the place where the body of Christ is presented in the best light. The words themselves trigger for most people images of the Salem Witch Trials and the Inquisition. And it seems that the further removed we are in history from church trials, the more painful and illogical they seem to us. The reality that trials are conducive to further division and damaging to our witness – and not cowardice – is the reason why many of our Bishops are seeking to find different paths forward through this struggle.

The Philadelphia Episcopal Area, and specifically the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference, has seen more than its fair share of division, prophetic actions and painful trials, and it may not stop any time soon. Shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, in 1787, we had the grief of watching some of our greatest leaders, Richard Allen and Absolom Jones, walk out the door of St. George’s in Philadelphia in a prophetic action of their own. Having been told that African American members were not to pray at the altar but in the balcony, they finished their prayer and walked proudly out of the church – Richard Allen to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Absolom Jones to found the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas. A profound loss of effective leadership, but a necessary act of reformation on the part of Allen and Jones.

A little later, in the pre-Civil War era, we were referred to as “The Border Conference” because we were the first Conference north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Growing up only 20 minutes north of the Mason-Dixon myself, I can only begin to imagine what this felt like for residents in the 1800′s. The proximity with slave-holding territories not only provided our preachers with the opportunity to risk their lives riding the circuit and preaching against slavery in the slave-holding Maryland peninsula, but also – and unfortunately – provided some of them with the opportunity to profit from the slave trade while technically living in a non-slave-holding state. Thus, the weight and temptation of slavery advocates in the South put pressure on the Philadelphia area from below, while the weight and frequent criticism of the Northern abolitionists pressed down on them from above, threatening to crush the small Border Conference.

But with great pressure, there sometimes emerges diamonds – and there certainly were some preachers who emerged decisive and courageous in the midst of these pressures. One of them caught my eye in seminary, a man named John Dixon Long, who had written a book called Pictures of Slavery in 1857 about the slaves held by preachers in the conference and the conditions they suffered under; Long had been promptly brought up on charges of slander at annual conference in 1858. When I got a tip in 2007 that Long’s papers had been donated to the archives at Old Saint George’s in Philadelphia, I pored through countless newspaper articles and opinion pieces; letters between Long and his friends – checking to make sure one another were alive while preaching against slavery below the Mason Dixon; notes that Long had scribbled in his journal as he interviewed slaves about their lives. Perhaps most valuable, I found an account written by one of Long’s friends of the proceedings at annual conference that year and the way that his friends were inspired by his courage to speak up in his defense and take risks themselves. The newspapers at the time were in an uproar – especially the abolitionist ones, of which Philadelphia had plenty – and the silence and hypocrisy that had surrounded the issue was split wide open as the region engaged in vigorous public debate.

The conclusion of the whole situation was that the conference decided to quell the storm of criticism by dropping the charges against Long. A painful compromise seemed apparent, however, because the charges against the pastors who held slaves were also dropped. Long limped off into the sunset, living another 30 years and running a home for children in Philadelphia, but his health was ruined by the stress and toll of the trial.

Long’s legacy was clear – one person with immense courage can make a tremendous difference – inspiring others to action, shaking the institution out of complacency, bringing hypocrisy into the light of day and galvanizing public opinion to hold religious leaders accountable to live with integrity and compassion.

While I was consumed with researching this Philadelphia trial, I did so in ignorance of the fact that the trial of a young clergywoman, the Rev. Elizabeth Stroud, in my Conference had concluded shortly before I began seminary. I spent my life consumed with this trial in the 1800′s that exemplified the pressures often placed on my annual conference, while my decade of schooling in the Carolinas kept me completely unaware that the pressure was once again heavy on my home city. The young clergy that would soon be my colleagues and friends were struggling to cope with witnessing one of their own being defrocked at an equally public trial.

Now it is a decade later, and Eastern Pennsylvania has suffered already this year through the trial and appeal of the Rev. Frank Schaeffer. With the new complaints against 36 of our peers, it seems the pressure of the denomination is on Eastern Pennsylvania once again as we sit in that Border space, that crucial territory, where no caucus has full control and where no opinion reigns supreme, where there is still space for debate and there is a diversity of opinion that is stronger than in areas where opinions lean heavy in one direction or another. Our diversity has always been our greatest strength, as well as the source of some of our greatest pain.

To my Eastern Pennsylvania friends, family and colleagues, I have this to say – we have been here before and we will be here again. We are strong and we can take the pressure; but don’t stop short at showing the world our strength, reveal to them our compassion as well. May we show ourselves to be the Body of Christ, even in the moment when we look the most like an institution. May we show we desire to hear as well as be heard. May we show we desire not merely to preserve and protect the past, but to be open to what new things God is doing in our present and our future.

Sitting in the birthplace of our nation, I pray that as you suffer the birthing pains of a new day you will be given strength and the ability to remember that as excruciating and bloody as birth can be, it is also a beautiful calling to be given that responsibility.

To my friends around the world, pray for Eastern Pennsylvania. We have been through so much already; we have borne more than our fair share of the traumas of this denomination. From the loss of Richard Allen and the painful split with the AME church at Old St. George’s in 1787, to the trial of J.D. Long seventy years later; from the trial of Beth Stroud to that of Frank Schaefer a decade later in the same spot; and forward, to whatever lies ahead. Whatever camp you are in, you will be tempted at one moment or another in the process to throw stones at Eastern Pennsylvania and the way that we handle things, but be kind. Remember what Jesus said to do with stones. Instead offer your prayer and support as Philadelphia is once again made to endure the birthing pains of a denomination finding its way forward.

The Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner is an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church and a member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference. She currently serves at St. John's Downtown in Houston, TX. This post is reprinted with permission from UMC Lead.