Photo courtesy of commission
Commission on A Way Forward
Members of the Commission on a Way Forward are pictured during their first meeting held in January 2017.
This post is framed within a United Methodist context, but the essence of it is applicable to the larger Church....
The Way Forward Commission just finished meeting in Germany, continuing its mandated process to discern the nature and expression of unity in The United Methodist Church. We must pray earnestly for this group. It is the only official one (that is, established by the General Conference) in a larger arena of unofficial groups who are speaking variously about the future.
Meanwhile, the elements which comprise our agreements and disagreements continue to swirl around with great force, making the finding of a "middle way" more perplexing and problematic--another reason to be interceding for the Way Forward Commission, which cannot escape being in the whirlwind.
In this post, I only want to focus on one of the many elements--how to honor and manifest our Wesleyan commitment to "do no harm" in our relationships with any human being (actually, our Christian commitment, as Wesley himself made plain in early Methodism's documents: 'The General Rules of the United Societies' and 'The Character of a Methodist.').
At the base is the unavoidable decision as to whether the UMC will make relationships or regulations the foundation of our life together. I realize this is not an either/or choice, and in the institutional church both theology (our affirmations of faith) and sociology (our adjudications of faith) must somehow co-exist. But they are two sides of a coin, and one side must be "face up."
Even in a non-dualistic environment (hard as that is to actually achieve) there must be a designing and directing emphasis, which like the coin will put a "face up" on the UMC. This "face" will be what we use to live, move, and have our being internally---and it will be the "face" the world sees as we make our public witness.
In that context, I believe we must insure that our future polity is rooted in love, not law--in relationships, not regulations. This is difficult when the Book of Discipline is a regulatory document--but one not separate (even in its content and organization) from our relational affirmations. We must design the future UMC using our affirmations to craft our adjudications, and not the other way around. The language of obedience/disobedience (which gets played out through institutional retributive justice rules) must not take precedence over our higher calling to incarnate the two great commandments.
The best laws always emerge from our highest values, and in Christianity (indeed, in all religion, as the Dalai Lama keeps reminding us) the highest value is love. If that is our base--as Jesus made clear that it is, we can write our regulations accordingly. But if law is the starting point, ensuing regulations will likely be written with the way of love in eclipse.
Among other things, this means that the future of the UMC must not include polity that leaves the door open to the doing of ongoing harm to LGBTQ+ persons anywhere in the world. This would institutionalize a definition of unity that is antithetical to the Gospel and to our Wesleyan commitment to do good to all, both inside and outside the Church. It would perpetuate a binary (in/out) understanding of membership with respect to who can (and cannot) receive the services of the church and participate in its ministries. This is a "doing of harm" we must avoid in the definition of unity we use to navigate our future.
"Heads (the way of love), we win. Tails (the way of law), we lose."
The Rev. Dr. Steven Harper is a retired seminary professor, spiritual director, retreat leader and author. This post is republished with his permission from a Facebook post.