UMCOR Was Made to Deal with Global Crises

Crisis Watch, July 1, 2020

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Here’s a bit of Methodist history: The United Methodist Committee on Relief was established in 1940 at the outbreak of World War II to respond to the largest human migration in recorded history (until now).

As of this week, UMCOR has provided provided $1.3 million in direct aid for food and grocery cards, hygiene products, Personal Protective Equipment, and water and sanitation support to those in need all around the world thanks to more than 6,000 donors. Yet more requests, mostly for food support, come in daily from local churches, annual conferences and non-profit agencies.

UMCOR’s “Sheltering in Love” campaign focuses directly on coronavirus pandemic aid. Since The United Methodist Church pays for UMCOR’s administrative costs, 100% of donations go to meet human needs. There’s hardly a better place to contribute to helping others through the COVID-19 crisis. Click here to donate online.

The word from Dr. Fauci: We’re not in control

This July 1 headline from The Washington Post pretty much says it all: “U.S. infections surged nearly 50 percent in June, and July 4 celebrations are looming”. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Senate committee on June 30 that the United States is “headed in the wrong direction” with infections. He speculated that the daily number of new infections could more than double, from over 40,000 a day now to 100,000 a day. He and other health experts urged people to wear masks, continue social distancing and avoid crowds, even over the July 4 holiday.

Getting a bigger picture

One of the most accurate sources I’ve found this spring for coronavirus news and interpretation is The Conversation, a non-profit website where scholars share their knowledge in ways that reach beyond academic circles.

United Methodist Insight has published several of The Conversation’s excellent religion-related articles. This week, under a clever headline, “COVID-19 Messes with Texas: What Went Wrong and What Other States Can Learn as Young People Get Sick,” two professors at Texas A&M University explain how the pandemic got away from control, namely by opening too early. The report gives an excellent big-picture look for United Methodist leaders struggling to know when to reopen churches. It’s also a cautionary tale about the perils of underestimating the power of the coronavirus to infect even young and healthy people like those who flooded South Texas beaches when the state re-opened too early.

National Public Radio also has a good overview for understanding and planning purposes, As Coronavirus Surges, How Much Testing Does Your State Need To Subdue The Virus?, which includes an interactive map to check your state’s status.

For a more directly related United Methodist view on public health precautions, check out the excellent essay, “To Mask or Not to Mask, That Is the Question,” by the Rev. Dr. Lanette Plambeck of the Iowa Annual Conference. It’s included in a blog post by Bishop Laurie Haller.

Mississippi: So long, ‘Stars and Bars’

One of the latest developments in the anti-racism uprising that has occurred since the killing of George Floyd: legislators in Mississippi have voted to remove the Confederate battle flag, known as the “Stars and Bars,” from the state flag and Gov. Tate Reeves has signed the resolution into law. Mississippi is the last state to give up the Confederate symbol in its flag.

For Black United Methodists, this action has taken much too long to happen. Despite all its overt racism, Mississippi holds historic significance for the UMC as the longtime site of Gulfside Assembly in Waveland, the place where Black Methodists held meetings of the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction from 1939 to 1968. Founded in 1923 as a church resort, Gulfside had just finished a complete restoration when it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Since then, Black United Methodists have worked to restore the site, with a new chapel dedicated in 2016. Thankfully now Gulfside will no longer exist under a Confederate flag.

Until all are free…

JJ Warren, the young evangelist whose passion for Jesus made him into a star at the ill-fated 2019 special General Conference, has come up with wisdom beyond his years in his latest newsletter, The Circuit:

“Liberation means a recognition of the truth that if you are not free, I am not free; until everyone is free, no one is free. Until Black people in the U.S. are free from the oppressive power of systemic racism then we are not free to participate in the fullness of God lived out in all people. Until Black bodies are free from the hands and knees and guns of police officers murdering them at a horrifically disproportionate rate than white people, we are not free. Until the Black Trans women are free from the double-edged sword of racism and transphobia, we are not free. Until the gay Black kids are welcomed into their churches and are affirmed both in their Blackness AND in their Queerness, we are not free. 

“May we muster the courage to set each other free. May we be courageousness enough to call out our friends/family/fellow church goers with grace--AND with firmness--when they say something prejudiced. May we be courageous enough to admit when we get it wrong; courageous enough to put our bruised intentions aside; and, courageous enough to get back out there--wherever that is for you--and proclaim release to the captives for no one is free until the Black Trans women are free.”

JJ has been holding online conversations around LGBTQ concerns. His next will be Wednesday, July 1 at 8 p.m. ET, with Cameron Malakai, a Black Trans pastor in Milwaukee, along with his partner and co-pastor, Jonah Overton, to talk intersectionality and Pride. The 30-minute sessions stream on his YouTube Channel.

Yes, there’s too much news

It’s good to get confirmation of one’s perceptions – and the decisions made from such perceptions – from an outside source. That’s what happened for me while reading one of my regular newsletters, “The Media Today,” from the Columbia Journalism Review, arguably the number-one publication about media in the United States.

Here’s a paragraph from Jon Allsop’s column, “There Is Too Much News,” that illustrates why I decided last week to combine updates on the coronavirus pandemic and the uprising against racism into a single “crisis watch” column:

“What constitutes ‘too much news’ might seem obvious: loads of important stuff happening all at once. But that’s an over-simplification. Some massive stories—hurricane season, for instance (hello, second half of 2020)—are to some extent random, and even those stories are usually tied to broader, omnipresent forces and threats that demand constant vigilance. (By the way, the Arctic just had its hottest day on record.) Other big stories that may appear separate are actually intimately connected, as my colleagues Betsy Morais and Alexandria Neason demonstrated recently. Systemic racism caused both the killing of [George] Floyd and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color; the latter fueled the protests that were nominally a response to the former, which in turn drove forward change, both synthetic and real, across the world. …”

Allsop continues: “At times like this one, when almost everything in the news is actually important, it’s especially difficult to maintain a well-calibrated sense of proportion.” He acknowledges that there are no easy answers to this media conundrum. “… now, with America and the world rushing into an ever-darker place, it feels harder than ever to separate clear urgency from clear triviality. When I started writing this newsletter, in October 2018, the pace of the news felt impossibly frenetic; in hindsight, that time looks quaint. Now, for the first time, it feels to me that to be astride everything of importance is to be pulled apart.”

Reconnecting our sense of what’s most important to God and our neighbors forms a large part of our mission here at United Methodist Insight. After all, the very word “religion” comes from a Latin construct meaning “to (re)link, to tie together.” I choose from among the vast mediascape those items that have a clear relevance to the life and work of The United Methodist Church. In some cases, the links are obvious; in others, the ties come as a surprise to many, including me.

The point here is that we humans are not omniscient, which is why we need one another to make sense of the world around us and to know where to direct our energies for the greatest good of the church and our community. If a reader tells me that something is important because it matters to them, then I’m going to share that perception in order to test its value. Sometimes things pop up like the prairie dogs from their holes on the little ridge behind our son’s apartment building in Colorado. The critters look around and then pull back into their holes. But sometimes that first peep leads to something else, something larger, something that has greater importance to more of the people called United Methodist.

In order to gauge importance fully, I need your feedback as fellow workers in Christ’s vineyard. So please respond in the comments section below or send an email to us at um-insight@as-tex.net. These are extraordinary times, and in order to discern where God’s Holy Spirit would have us go, we need to plumb the breadth of news together, looking for those sparks that God sends up to get us to go where we’re most needed. There undoubtedly is too much news in the world today, but nothing can overcome the Good News of hope that we United Methodists can bring to any situation.

Media Mentions as of July 1, 2020

Keeping safe while serving, church groups tackle pandemic and protests – Religion News Service

Hey hey, ho ho white Jesus has to go… but the issue is more complicated than you think – Religion Dispatches

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.