Good-bye, Grace

by

I tend to hang out a lot in United Methodist circles. Even outside official UMC realms, when people find out what I do professionally, they respond, “I’m a Methodist.”

Until the 2019 General Conference, that is. Now, when I tell people what I do, they say, “I USED TO BE a Methodist.” Even some of my card-carrying United Methodist friends are, as they say in national surveys, “done” with church.

Take my friend, let’s call her Grace, who I’ve known for a quarter-century at least. If there was a church event, she was there. You name a United Methodist affiliation or happening, Grace was involved. United Methodist Women, Lay Speaking Ministries (before it was decimated in 2012), local church committees, district committees, lay member of annual conference, small group and Bible studies, short-term mission trips, even observer at General Conference – Grace has done it all.

Until two weeks ago.

This week I finally got back to my usual routine and saw Grace at one of my exercise classes. When it was over, she motioned me aside.

'I'm done with the United Methodist Church'

“I just wanted you to know – and I’ve told my pastor this – I’m done with The United Methodist Church,” she said. “I couldn’t go to worship the Sunday after General Conference. I’ve cancelled my reservation for the Wesley history trip. I don’t want to hear any more about Wesley – we’re not following him.”

Apparently my face revealed my surprise at her announcement. “I mean it,” she said firmly. “We should have thrown out that ‘incompatible’ language years ago. I’m not waiting any longer.”

Grace’s words weighed on my heart for two days. At our next meeting, I asked her permission to tell about her decision without disclosing her identity.

“Oh, absolutely,” she responded. “Things have gotten a little better. My pastor, who’s always been on the fence, went to a clergy gathering about it, and now she’s on board. My congregation says they want to become Reconciling. But I still don’t think I’ll stay. I just wish I had somewhere to go.”

My friend’s decision pierced the emotional numbness I’ve felt since GC2019 ended. The reports I’ve published about backlash to the Traditional Plan have centered on outrage and anger, so I’ve been able to maintain some professional detachment. But the news of my friend’s intention to part ways with the religious tradition that has shaped at least 50 years of her life has grieved me deeply.

Over and over, I’m reading that many of us United Methodists are processing similar grief about what has been irretrievably broken by GC2019. Intellectually I know that public gestures of support for LGBTQ people are going on across the United States. I know many of us have held weeping family and friends in our arms as they mourn what GC2019’s action means to them personally. I know that one region, the Germany Central Conference, has used its constitutional power formally to repudiate the Traditional Plan and has refused to implement it. I know that there are resistance strategies coalescing all around U.S. United Methodism, and that meetings about the denomination’s future are being planned or held.

Yet I’ve only now begun to appreciate how seriously people have been damaged spiritually.

Many readers will be offended by my next statement, but I think some Traditional Plan supporters are shocked by the depth and breadth of harm inflicted through General Conference. I think leaders of the Traditionalist movement – who really aren’t following any Wesleyan tradition – are taken aback by the groundswell of outrage, anger and resistance that has erupted and continues to strengthen. I say this because I’ve been reading between the lines of some the post-GC2019 articles and comments from leaders of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, Good News, the Confessing Movement and even the ultra-right Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). Negative media reports alone must be causing them heartburn, because they see themselves as the good guys, defending the faith against the evils of culture. In reality, they’re not all that good, and with the discernment of 20/20 hindsight, they’ve realized that their actions in getting the Traditional Plan adopted have wounded them as much as they have others. In achieving their end, they’ve lost their claim to righteousness.

Yet the Traditionalist faction will neither repent of having violated John Wesley’s first rule – Do No Harm – nor can it find anyone to absolve it of its sin. As we say in business, the wounds and ill will generated by the Traditional Plan are a “sunk cost;” we’ll never get it back.

All has been destroyed

Which brings me back to my friend Grace. Will The United Methodist Church ever get her and the thousands like her back into the fold? I seriously doubt it. All that she has ever been taught, believed and lived out about God and faith in the Wesleyan tradition – especially our doctrine of God’s grace above all, for all – has been destroyed. That unique understanding of how God works in people’s lives has been Methodism’s greatest gift to the world, and we’ve squandered it. Deep down we know this and our Christian siblings in other traditions know it as well. If not, why would the dialogue on full communion now be in “prayerful pause” between the Episcopal Church, which doesn’t discriminate against LGBTQ people, and The United Methodist Church, which officially does?

There are many church legalities that likely will prevent full implementation of the Traditional Plan; they may even kill it entirely. What’s at stake for The United Methodist Church now isn’t its rules, it’s the denomination’s soul and the souls of those who comprise it. We tell ourselves that God will bring us out of this valley of death, that God is doing a new thing with Methodism.

True as that may be, we must not forget that birth is an agonizing, bloody act, and that an unsuccessful labor has killed many a woman and her child. Only when our mourning is complete and our labor on God’s behalf fulfilled will we hold a new offspring in our arms. If we can comfort one another and restore our hope even as we stumble forward, then perhaps my friend and other wounded people will return to be godparents of whatever new Methodism is born.

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