An Insight-ful Birthday Reflection

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Views from a Ridge

Eight years ago, just about this time of year, I received word from the Boston Wesleyan Association that publication of The Progressive Christian magazine for which I served as editor was being “suspended indefinitely.” In other words, I joined the ranks of countless journalism colleagues whose jobs were eliminated by the decline and fall of print journalism.

That weekend, I received an unexpected call from a friend and benefactor, Barbara Wendland, who asked what I was going to do next. I answered that I had no clue about my future. Then Barbara asked a key question, “What would you do if you could?” And I told her that I would set up an online forum to amplify voices from the margins of United Methodism, voices that I believed were being shut out of crucial mainstream conversations in advance of the 2012 General Conference.

To my shock, Barbara responded that she and her family foundation would be willing to contribute toward such a project, but according to the foundation’s by-laws they couldn’t contribute to an individual. We both had the same thought at once: perhaps my congregation, St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Mesquite, Texas, would be willing to sponsor the project.

My plea to St. Stephen’s then-Council on Ministries was approved, again to my surprise and relief. Within weeks, a check arrived from the Joe B. and Louise P. Cook Foundation in an amount sufficient to sustain the project, now dubbed United Methodist Insight, through General Conference 2012.

The months between that fateful decision and GC2012 are blurred now. I remember my daily survey of a dozen or more websites looking for content that seemed to be overlooked in more mainstream discussions. (I also remember the tribulations of learning a new online content management system, but let us not dwell on technical woes).

By the time my husband John and I arrived in Tampa, United Methodist Insight was established as a new player in religion journalism. People began to seek us out. My early frantic search for content had eased somewhat because word spread that there was a place where voices beyond institutional channels could be heard.

I expected that Insight would end with that General Conference (Plan UMC, anyone?). I was wrong. I hadn’t had time to look for a new job, being so absorbed with what Insight had uncovered. Moreover, the online forum was praised and welcomed by dozens of readers who pleaded fervently for “the project” to continue.

Their pleas fell on “ears willing to hear,” as Jesus said in many parables. We managed to eke out that first year on a six-month stipend, and then the Cook Foundation became one of our major annual benefactors.

Insight’s format has evolved through the years. Originally, I intended Insight to be a forum where representatives from across the UMC spectrum would converse with one another in a mutual quest to discern God’s will for The United Methodist Church. The quest for discernment remains a priority – it’s the tagline on our masthead. Yet discernments along the way have shaped Insight into a channel for mostly centrist and progressive news and views, while traditionalists offer their perspectives far less frequently. Partly I attribute this change to the polarization in the UMC. Partly I attribute it to my own editorial judgments in welcoming extremes that have offended others beyond their willingness to engage in dialogue.

If any one challenge has captured United Methodist Insight’s coverage, that challenge is the one now facing the entire United Methodist denomination: how do we read and interpret scripture as authority? The presenting issue for this epic struggle is that of human sexuality, but Insight’s history gives evidence that there are other institutional oppressions that also play into the struggle.

I place racism alongside, perhaps even above, the sexuality debate. A favorite quote of mine, whose origin I haven’t been able to trace, goes something like: “Behind every Southern liberal lies the issue of race.” I don’t think this view is limited to Southern liberals anymore, if it ever was. Racism pervades everything we Americans do, especially in the organization and governance of The United Methodist Church.

I was blessed to have studied the history of the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction with the late Bishop James S. Thomas. I cannot imagine a more thorough-going account of that era than Bishop Thomas’s history. I can’t substitute my head knowledge for the heart knowledge of Black Methodists who lived through that time, but Bishop Thomas did his best to bring it to life, both its bad and good aspects.

With that background and the help of my Black friends, it hasn’t been hard to see that racism still pervades The United Methodist Church. Together racism and sexual prejudice form the twin arrows of evil pointed at the heart of United Methodism, and yet so few of us seem to have eyes to see them. This is where, for me and many others, the authority of scripture reigns supreme: Jesus made it abundantly clear in all his teachings that the love of God sweeps past all barriers, including race and gender. Once perceived, that love enables us to see all the ways in which we separate ourselves from God and each other, which is the essence of sin. From this perspective, our lifelong efforts to be “perfected in love,” as Methodism’s founder John Wesley termed it, form our paramount mission.

This greater goal of reconciliation undergirds what has always been United Methodist Insight’s mission: to be a channel that amplifies voices from the wild and messy margins where God’s Holy Spirit blows freely. Even at my worst moments, when human hatred, anger and fear have raked their claws across my soul, Insight’s “god thing” has sustained me.

Many of our faithful readers have said the same thing over the past eight years. And so on this birthday I thank God that we continue to serve you. No journalism prize could mean more.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.