Listen to the SEEK Podcast Interview.
Darryl Stephens Interviewed by Cynthia Astle for SEEK, the podcast of United Methodist Insight
February 22, 2016
[adapted transcript]
INTRO: The Rev. Dr. Darryl W. Stephens is Director of United Methodist Studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary and a clergy member of the Texas Annual Conference. His recent article "Unfinished Business of a Worldwide Nature," was excerpted from his forthcoming book, Methodist Morals: Social Principles, Marriage, and Sexual Sin in the Public Church (University of Tennessee Press, April 2016).
1) Tell us a little more about yourself and your scholarly work.
I’ve been a Methodist my entire life, born just a few weeks prior to the formation of the UMC in 1968. My grandparents and parents are Methodist. Having grown up in this church and now serving as an ordained deacon, I approach my research very much as a participant-observer. These are the practices and beliefs of my community, of real communities of faith in which I am blessed to be a part. My scholarship in Methodism I consider equal parts academic endeavor and devotion to my faith tradition.
2) Tell us about Lancaster Theological Seminary.
Lancaster Theological Seminary is one of the oldest seminaries in the country. It is located in historic Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Our engaged community of students and faculty represent many Christian traditions and backgrounds. We are an a richly diverse graduate school of theology educating and nurturing leaders to join in God's redemptive and liberating work so that all creation may flourish. We also have a lot of musicians and artists in this seminary community, making our weekly public worship a really meaningful experience. United Methodists are the second-largest group of students at Lancaster Seminary.
3) Tell us about your new book coming out this year?
My new book is the first major study of Methodist social teachings in over fifty years: Methodist Morals: Social Principles, Marriage, and Sexual Sin in the Public Church (University of Tennessee Press, April 2016). My editors have worked very hard to get this book out before General Conference.
4) What led you into the focus on the Social Principles?
I’m an ethicist. I first gave scholarly attention to the Social Principles in 2003, as a teaching assistant to Tom Frank for a course in UM polity. At that time, I was a student in the PhD program at Emory studying Christian ethics. I was surprised to find that there had been very little scholarly study of Methodist social teachings since a four-volume series developed out of Boston University on Methodist Social Thought and Action, the MESTA series published in the early 1960s. I wondered, Why is that?
5) Have you been a part of the effort of over these last four years to revise the Social Principles?
Yes, I was a presenter and participant in a General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) consultation in Washington, DC, in January 2015 (video at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/59481955; my presentation begins at the 20 min. mark).
The effort to revise Social Principles goes back much further, though. As I note in my article in the January 2016 issue of Methodist History, (excerpted in UM-Insight in April 2016), Europeans have been petitioning General Conference since at least 2000 to address the US-centrism of the document. In 2006, I was invited as a plenary speaker for an international consultation on the United Methodist Social Principles sponsored by the Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe, held in Vienna, Austria. Jim Winkler and other GBCS staff members also participated in that consultation. Two years later, in an edited volume written in German, United Methodists discussed the challenge and potential of the Social Principles for the European context. So, this conversation has been going on for quite a while, at least in Europe. It’s just taken General Conference a long time to awaken to this need.
6) In the Introduction to your book, you talk about how there seems to be a resistance to studying the Social Principles for some reason? Can you talk about that?
Yes. As one denominational leader explained to me, United Methodist clergy “see the Social Principles primarily as a product of political compromise reflecting the General Church about which they care and, admittedly, know little.” There are some reasons some people may feel this way. In contrast to Roman Catholic Social Teaching, for instance, which prompts a lot of scholarship, the Social Principles is not the product of a well-orchestrated magisterium and often does not exhibit carefully crafted theological reflection and ethical argumentation. The teaching office of the UMC, in this context, is General Conference and the process is one of legislation and revision, which is not conducive to a good literary product in many cases. General Conference does succeed in legislating very important material, including the Social Principles. But, in the document, you’re not going to find very often very carefully crafted theological reflection or ethical argumentation. That’s not what this document is.
However, the document offers an invaluable view onto the UMC as a moral community. If you look at the Social Principles document, it is patchwork, it’s put together through legislative process. It’s amended and re-amended – the text gets pretty messy sometimes if you look at it as an ethical argument. Like a stained glass window, it can look pretty crude up close. But from further back, as a view onto the UMC as a moral community, it is really fascinating and reveals a lot about ourselves as a church. So, I think of the Social Principles as a window – not primarily a stained glass window to look at but as a windowpane to look through. What I see is a moral community continually grappling with vital issues of faith and practice. So, if you look at the document without looking through it to see the practices and the discourse behind it, you’d be missing a lot about what is going on in the Social Principles.
7) We’ve always struggled with the disconnect between the Social Principles and the local congregation. The Social Principles aren’t always studied with the same attention as, for example, Catholic Social Teaching. Why do you think that happens?
Even in Catholicism, Catholic Social Teachings are often referred to as “our best kept secret.” So for social teaching not to permeate to every member of the community is not unusual. Certainly we have other United Methodist documents and teachings that have trouble finding their way to the pews. For example, This Holy Mystery is just a wonderful theological document on our United Methodist understanding of the sacrament of holy communion. I teach this document whenever I can—for adult Sunday School and other adult education venues. Rarely do I come across a layperson who has already read it. The same is true for other documents. There are a lot of laity who are not aware that we have a Book of Resolutions. The Social Principles are, of course, part of our Book of Discipline—but so are our doctrinal standards. There are many congregations in which new members are not aware that we have these documents. So the Social Principles is not alone, but it’s a common challenge of being in community together. Sometimes it’s information overload; what do we look at first? Once we have the Bible and the hymnal, what else do we look at? I’ve been in congregations that include as part of a new member packet, a booklet of the Social Principles.
When I teach local licensed pastors and seminarians, I will often have opportunity to teach about the Social Principles. Sometimes I get pushback about the Social Principles – “I don’t agree with the Social Principles;” “it’s too liberal;” “I find some statements offensive;” etc., some might argue. I can empathize: you cannot possibly agree with everything in the document—it includes internal contradictions. But I guarantee that every lay and clergyperson will find something of value in the Social Principles for their ministry context—teachings on drug abuse, immigration, suicide, alcohol—the Social Principles offers tools for ministries in all of these areas.
8) What about the influence of the Social Principles as a public witness: do they work that way?
Yes. When people want to know, “What does The United Methodist Church believe about ____ (fill in the issue)?,” we have a document to go to. What does the UMC say about creationism, for example? I just saw an article recently about an “intelligent design” vendor not being allowed a booth at General Conference because it does not comport with our teachings. We do have a good statement in the Social Principles about science and theology, about how these are complementary ways to understand the world. Science does not negate theology, and theology does not negate science; there are compatible ways to use both our reason and our experience of the Holy Spirit to understand God’s good creation through science and through our theology. Creationism tends to pit science against religion. Well, we have a pretty good statement about science and theology in our Social Principles that helps guide us. So, there are a number of issues where, in the public, people want to know what the church says about, and we have statements to guide us.
9) We’re facing a major challenge now, because the effort is to make the Social Principles into more of a global document rather than a US-society focused document. Can you talk a little bit about your experience in the GBCS consultation? That was one of the focus points of the GBCS consultations, how we adapt or transform the Social Principles into a global ethical document.
For the Social Principles to reflect the worldwide nature of this church, we have to be in fact a moral community that transcends national boundaries. In my research, I discovered that there were multiple versions of Social Principles concurrently in use across the UMC, in German, French, Danish, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, …. Furthermore, none of them are the same. They are not simply translations of the General Conference text. They are adaptations, and that’s a power given in the UMC’s Constitution to the central conferences, to adapt the Discipline for purposes of ministry and mission (¶31.5). Well, central conferences and annual conferences within them, in Europe particularly, had been adapting the Social Principles, and necessarily so, because it was legislated in the US by US delegates about primarily US issues. There were some things that simple didn’t translate. For example, at one point in the Social Principles (this has been rectified since then), it talked about discrimination against non-English speaking persons in the legal system. That’s an issue in the US, but in Germany that really didn’t make a lot of sense.
What I found disturbing was the lack of knowledge collectively within the institution about the practice of adapting the Social Principles in the central conferences. (See my article in the January 2016 issue of Methodist History.) I started researching and collecting these different adaptations and translations and discovered that the UM Archive did not have these documents. I began asking bishops and other United Methodist leaders in other countries where to find these documents. Well, no one could tell me exactly how many adaptations of the Social Principles and other parts of the Discipline were in use in the “worldwide” UMC. What I was discovering is that there were multiple books of Discipline and multiple parts of the Discipline that were being adapted in the UMC. Not only was there no single bookshelf that contained all current adaptations of the Book of Discipline and portions thereof, no one knows which books would belong on that shelf. What kind of “connection” is that?
10) That’s astounding! That really brings into clearer context for me what went on at the January pre-General Conference briefing, when the topic of creating a global Social Principles came up. The legislation coming before General Conference this year is simply to continue the study, something we United Methodists are good at. One of the reasons given was that there were so many adaptations floating about that had not been collected or collated in any way. Is it necessary to collect those adaptations in order to move forward with a global statement of Social Principles?
No, but it’s an indication that we have not in fact been in community. If we don’t know what each other is saying, if we’re not even aware of each others’ existence, it’s hard to claim that we’re actually in community together. When we gather at General Conference and strive to realize the “worldwide” nature of our church, the first step is to have relationships and be aware of each others’ existence. So, yes, we can move forward and legislate a global Book of Discipline and a form of Social Principles that would apply globally, but I do believe that that document of global Social Principles, were it actually so, would look different from the kind of document we have now. Even in the Roman Catholic Church, Catholic Social Teaching is really at the level of general principles. It is up to the regional bodies, like the USCCB, as a regional body, to then teach on topics that are more specific to that context and culture. I do think that a global Social Principles would look much different; it’s not merely a matter of taking what we have and amending it.
11) So, would that be your counsel for the Social Principles study as it moves into the next quadrennium, or is there something else you would add to that?
I would encourage General Conference to consider developing a document parallel to “Our Theological Task” currently found in Part III of the Discipline relating to “Our Ethical Task.” This proposed document would provide our theological rationale and process for our engagement with the world. The UMC ecclesiologically is the public church. It’s not a sectarian withdrawal; it’s not a stance of the church being over and against the world. It’s the public church. It’s large scale; it’s big tent. It’s a community engaging its members and society in public issues. We have a voice in the public arena, in civil society. We need to understand why and how we engage our ethical task—that would be the basis for a worldwide document. Now, our stance on the death penalty, that may or may not find agreement among United Methodists worldwide. But our stance on abstinence from alcohol would not. Our stance on alcohol is one of the most consistently adapted parts of the Social Principles in Europe.
12) If I understand it correctly, apart from your participation in the January 2015 Washington consultation, you are not involved in the study group that is currently working on adapting the Social Principles, is that correct?
That’s correct.
13) Are you a delegate to General Conference?
No.
14) So, you’re someone who currently is outside the official legislative process that will adapt the Social Principles. You’re coming at this as a United Methodist scholar. Is there something more you’d like to say to the church about the Social Principles—what they are, how they work, or what to do with them?
Our Social Principles is a vibrant, valuable witness of our church. It shows a profound commitment to human rights, with huge overlapping concerns with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We need to keep that emphasis, which is such an important part of our witness. As United Methodists, the more seriously we can take our witness in terms of human rights and being part of the public arguments of the day, it’s important. But we also need to recognize that, first and foremost, we need to strive to be a community, the body of Christ, and that means knowing each other so that we can love each other.