If She'd Been a White Male, a Trial Would Never Have Happened

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Now that the testimony is over and the jurors are sequestered in deliberation, it's time to say the heretofore unspeakable:

Had Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño been a white male bishop, she never would have been brought to trial.

Not one whit of testimony from the complainants or their supporting witnesses demonstrated any attitudes or behaviors that haven't existed among Methodist bishops since Francis Asbury rode the circuits of pioneer America. The difference is that whatever occurred over the time of the complaints, the behaviors brought to light at last sadly have not been rare among past episcopal administrations. Not one bishop who has exhibited such behaviors has been brought up on charges in the past, even when clergy didn't learn of their yearly appointments until annual conference.

Let us be clear: soft-spoken, demure and devoted to God and Christ's church, Bishop Carcaño is no spotless saint. Like every human she has bad days and short tempers, misunderstandings and thoughtless remarks and big mistakes. Nothing in this editorial condones bad behavior on the part of any supervisors, but we know it occurs. If her behavior has been as bad as alleged in the complaints against her, how was she elected a bishop?

Even though described as a woman of "two books" – the Bible and the Book of Discipline – she also has been a visionary whose inclination to seek collaboration, inclusion, and innovation explodes the little boxes in which church professionals like to hoard their power. These qualities make her a tremendous threat to entrenched movers and shakers.

The California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church is no different from any other human institution. It's run by humans who want to conserve their power to decide their own fates and that of others, even when that power proves toxic. Witnesses themselves testified that tensions, especially in the conference office in West Sacramento, have been building for years. To whatever extent Bishop Carcaño contributed to the escalation of those tensions, she has been severely and publicly punished for her part in the rupture by the UMC's own legal process even before a verdict is rendered.

Nonetheless, there's an inescapable fact at the bottom of l'affaire Carcaño: the trial testimony made clear that the complaints brought against her were all about power and ego. Some of that ego was the bishop's, but testimony showed that most rancor stemmed from church professionals seeking to defend their fiefdoms from the kind of broad-based collaboration that Bishop Carcaño attempted to implement.

To her credit, former district superintendent Rev. Staci Current blew away some of the fog in the multi-point complaints against the bishop. As another clergywoman of color with similar experiences, Rev. Current clearly understands the uphill battle faced by any clergywoman of color in authority in the exceedingly white, male-dominated institution that is the UMC. Her testimony during the trial outshone that of every other witness, not because she supported the bishop, but because she spoke truthfully without undue emotion and backed up her testimony with simple facts. Against her testimony the church's case appeared contrived, based on hearsay, misperceptions, misunderstandings and in some cases suspiciously inaccurate evidence.

The trial of Bishop Carcaño has exposed the worst of the UMC: its nit-picking hidebound rules, its mean-spirited infighting, its preoccupation with minutia, its lust for power, its absence of grace. If anything, the trial has shown two major needs the UMC must meet if the church is to have any future at all:

  • Conflict resolution skills must become essential for all clergy and lay church professionals. Teaching such skills to laypeople in congregations would be an added benefit. The time is long past to be "nice Methodists;" we must learn, as John Wesley stressed, to speak the truth in love with one another.
  • Every UMC unit should have access to a spiritual director who can receive wounded souls and hold them in care and confidence until the Holy Spirit heals their hurt. Spiritual directors for pastors have been recommended in clergy health reports since the early 2000s, and yet few if any such counselors are installed. Spiritual direction is not a function that pastors can perform given the UMC's current appointment system for fear of vulnerabilities being used against clergy.

Finally, the Council of Bishops should censure its colleagues in the Western Jurisdiction for the cruel and unusual punishment of Bishop Carcaño's extraordinary 19-month suspension with its attendant secrecy. The Council itself bears a large measure of responsibility for how horribly their colleague has been treated by not having intervened when it had the chance. It should repent, if not publicly, then at least within the closed doors of its executive sessions.

Bishop Carcaño described her suspension as "banishment" and that's what it was. She testified in open court that she was prevented from any contact not only with the California-Nevada Conference, but she was also supposed to refrain from attending worship in United Methodist congregations and was chastised twice when she attended the funerals of longtime friends. She was subjected to surveillance. She was isolated and physically guarded at the Western Jurisdiction Conference in November 2022. She was expelled from the solace of her church at the moment of her greatest agony.

In short, after a lifetime of service to the Church, Minerva Carcaño has been chewed up and spit out by an institution drunk on power and imprisoned by an anachronistic rule book for possible infractions that have never hampered a white male bishop. If there's any good that comes out of this fiasco, we must take the lessons from this shameful affair and make The United Methodist Church better because of it.

This editorial is the corporate voice of United Methodist Insight.