Church Trial for Suspended Bishop Should Also Focus on Western Colleagues

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

Thanks to United Methodist Insight for covering the conundrum concerning Bishop Minerva Carcaño with two recent editorials (see "Is the UMC's First Latina Bishop a Victim of Its Culture of Secrecy?" and "A Church Trial, Not a 'Just Resolution,' Will Be Best for Suspended Bishop and the UMC"). What’s happened needs to be kept in view, and it needs follow-up investigation. I am glad her case is finally going to trial, but disappointed that it seems to have taken Insight's editorials and public outcry to get the bishops to do the right thing even for one of their own.

I’m also sad — for Bishop Carcaño and for our beleaguered church. Just when the UMC needs spiritual leaders who model the Wesleyan balance of vital piety, true knowledge, and prophetic zeal for justice that Bishop Carcaño has always sought to embody, the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops — a small group of five active bishops — essentially sidelined her. Based on unknown complaints as likely to be frivolous as serious, the group applied the harshest of penalties: suspension, rendering her inactive and silencing her for what was supposed to be a three-month period of investigation and resolution, max. But by ignoring their obligation to resolve the complaints and do so promptly, the Western bishops left her in a state of legal limbo and implied wrongdoing that publicly disgraced her. Was the plan to leave the case unresolved until mandated retirement age finishes the job of exiting her from active duty?

Abandoning anyone to an unending state of unspecified accusation and presumed guilt is akin to a death sentence. It goes against everything we believe to be true and right about how we live together in the grace of Christ and practice restorative justice. It’s wrong regardless of the validity of the complaints or the outcome of the upcoming trial. But that’s what the bishops have done.

The question with which Insight's first editorial ended still rings in my ears: "What has motivated the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops to impose such a harsh punishment against Bishop Carcaño before her case is investigated and judged?"

I respect the bishops of the church; when they act, I generally assume the best of intentions even when I disagree with the course they’ve taken. But in this case, the action the Western Jurisdiction bishops have taken against Bishop Carcaño — applying a penalty of unprecedented harshness and length under a mandate of silence without the timely recourse to fair process that the Discipline outlines — is so extreme and over the top that I find myself no longer wondering about her but about them and their motives.

My question is: Who is benefitting? One cannot help but wonder who wants her gone and whose sacred cow she has gored or threatens — in the California-Nevada Conference or in the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops itself.

Insight gave us a start on the answer in its last editorial. I have wondered for months now — and the Western Jurisdiction bishops have given us plenty of time to speculate — if Bishop Carcaño’s challenge to Glide Memorial UMC in San Francisco in 2018 (a story well-covered by church news at the time) is an example of why her episcopal colleagues might not like her and might have seized on a complaint to finally and so thoroughly "unfriend" her.

In that instance, she had the audacity to ask Glide Memorial UMC (at that time) to be a church, as well as the secular social service agency that it had become. As I recall, she challenged Glide to do what United Methodist churches do — to allow space for people to gather in the name of Christ where the Word is proclaimed, Holy Communion is served, and an appointed pastor is allowed to lead, or to quit claiming they were a United Methodist church.

We know from UM News reports at the time that the pushback was serious. It is unlikely that Bishop Carcaño's actions found support among or endeared her to any of her Western Jurisdiction episcopal colleagues, one having served as Glide’s senior pastor just prior to being elected to the episcopacy in 2016 and another having served Glide — in retirement — as an interim pastor. Apparently, Bishop Carcaño had stepped in to fix a mess they had blessed.

Bishop Carcaño, while kind beyond measure, is not conflict-avoidant. She gets high marks when it comes to speaking truth to power, and she is persistent. So, I can’t help but wonder how else Bishop Carcaño’s commitment to truth-telling might have threatened or ruffled the feathers of her colleagues and violated the culture of the college.

The trial to come will be about Bishop Carcaño. But the real focus of attention and need for inquiry has shifted from Bishop Carcaño to the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops and the motives for their actions. I am not alone in beginning to wonder if Bishop Carcaño was sidelined not because she’s been a bad bishop, but because she has been a good one.

The Rev. Stephen Bryant of Nashville, Tenn., is a retired clergy member of the Rio Texas Annual Conference and a former publisher of The Upper Room, a unit of Discipleship Ministries.