Protest Outside General Conference
“Where do we go from here… Chaos or Community?” appears on the sign held by the Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell by the entrance to the plenary for the 1968 Uniting Conference in Dallas. The phrase is the title of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final book, and a reminder of the church's ongoing call to confront racism. Photo courtesy of Archives and History.
Special to United Methodist Insight
Dear Dale,
You and I on the evening after GC 2019 ended, spoke at the “Let’s
Talk About Race Series” at the Red Bank, New Jersey Library. We talked about the challenges lgbtqi persons face in the United Methodist Church and Society. These thoughts awakened me this morning.
1. Eighty years ago in 1939 the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction was created. In February of 2019, a General Conference created a UMC that excluded same sex married clergy couples, marginalized LGBTQI persons, and punished clergy who were their allies.
2. Black delegates and visitors at the 1939 “Unification Conference” wept and protested as the Central Jurisdiction was created. LGBTQI persons, same-sex couples and their allies, wept and protested at GC 2019 as a “Traditionalist” heterosexist UMC was created. “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
3. Traditionalism is the parent of racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Thus, racism, sexism, and heterosexism are siblings.
4. Despite the fact that slaves arrived in what is now Virginia, 400 years ago, contradicting the best of Christianity and the Bible, and the principles that became Democracy and the Constitution, there is a peculiar reluctance to acknowledge racism, nor the learnings that could be derived from racism. Just as it was asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” There seems to be an unspoken question: “Can anything applicable or of universal good, come out of the history of anti-Black racism?”
5. It is interesting that Traditionalists have made of tradition, one of the four aspects of the Wesleyan theology method known as the Quadrilateral, superior to Scripture. Scripture is “used” to justify the centuries old traditions of racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Those seven last words of the Church, "We have never done it that way” have in the assumption of “the sacredness of tradition,” justified prohibitions against blacks, women, and LGBTQI persons.
6. Some Historians have written with honesty and clarity about the “covenant” between white southerners and northerners to create the all-black racially segregated Central Jurisdiction in 1939. The “Unification Conference” as it was called, “unified” white folk, and “segregated” black folk. Of course in New England and the West, a handful of black churches were not in the Central Jurisdiction, but the Methodist Church that was founded in 1939 did not become racially unsegregated until the creation of the United Methodist Church in 1968.
7. There will come a time when some scholars will make comparisons between predominantly white UMC Traditionalists and the white Christian evangelical sycophants of Donald Trump. They will explore whether the last-minute introduction of anti-homosexuality legislation at the 1972 General Conference was an effort to avert attention from and response to the bold expectations/demands made by Black Methodists for Church Renewal at the 1972 General Conference. And, hopefully these scholars will “call out” the names of those who were leaders in seeking to make the UMC a heterosexist Church, as Martin Luther King in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” called out two Methodist Bishops who were among the white clergy who challenged his right to be in Birmingham.
Since 1972, the United Methodist Church has been wounded by our brothers and sisters who seem to believe that a Bible that is not “weaponized” to segregate, separate, and exclude, is of little use. The wounding of blacks at the 1939 Conference, and the wounding of LGBTQI persons at the 2019 Conference, are similar. Only fools waste time debating equivalency.
Dale, during the Civil Rights Movement we sang as we marched amidst hateful words in the presence of those who sought to harm us, “Ain’t gonna let nobody, turn us ‘round.” We said, “We gonna keep on marching, keep on marching, keep on marching to the Promised Land.”
Many of us have sought to be “wounded healers” in a Church that has wounded us. We who we are Black United Methodists have a rich history of “staying” despite the slavery our ancestors experienced, and the racial segregation we have known/know.
I want to believe that some of my Traditionalist sisters and brothers have now seen and been changed as they have realized the harm, hurt, and sometimes hate that has resulted from their proposals.
A wounded United Methodist Church is in need of “wounded healers” (Henri Nouwen). It is said that a broken bone is stronger at the place of healed brokenness, than it has ever been. May that come true as the UMC experiences healing as a wounded people heal a wounded Church.
Love,
Dad
Dale Gilbert Caldwell is a Certified Lay Minister in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference. The Rev. Gilbert Haven Caldwell is a retired clergy member of the Mountain Sky Conference, formerly the Rocky Mountain Conference.