Prove Me Wrong, Please

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People are abuzz with the news that the Connectional Table has voted to submit language to change The United Methodist Church's discriminatory language against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. While I commend the motion and the spirit behind it, forgive me if I remain skeptical of the effort's chances, history being what it is.

I have seen The United Methodist Church's history on homosexuality firsthand over the past 25 years. With the exception of one meeting, I observed all the gatherings of the homosexuality study committee from 1989 through 1991 as an associate editor for the United Methodist Reporter. Figuratively and literally, I sat at the feet of some of the UMC's greatest minds as they theologized about interpreting and applying scripture, tradition and reason to contemporary human sexual experience. With the committee members, I listened to hours upon hours of personal testimony about what it was like then to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. I heard medical and psychological experts speak about the science of the spectrum of human sexuality, from totally heterosexual to completely homosexual.

I watched as the committee struggled to prepare its carefully written and nuanced report, which was approved unanimously with one abstention. After three years of professional observation and encounter with the committee members, I came to understand that these two dozen or so people were all faithful Christians trying to understand and apply ancient gospel precepts to a contemporary moral challenge. I didn't always agree with them, but I respected them. They were and are people of faith and integrity.

Then at the 1992 General Conference in Louisville, KY, I watched aghast as conservative forces stood up in legislative committee and outright lied about the report's findings, about its development, and about the people who wrote it. I was so thunderstruck by the false accusations against the homosexuality study committee that I very nearly broke my own journalistic ethics to speak out publicly against the smear campaign. Only the counsel of some study committee members held me back.

That was my introduction to the dirty politics of The United Methodist Church, and I've never forgotten it. The 1992 conclave for me was the kind of rude awakening that etches a permanent sensitivity. At every General Conference since then, I have seen how the United Methodist political process was manipulated by a small group of people with sufficient resources to spread fear and mistrust about any genuinely innovative policy. (The one exception could be the Shalom Communities movement, which was enacted from the General Conference floor after Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police).

Twenty-two years have passed since the Louisville conclave, and I have come to believe that the United Methodist General Conference is now as corrupt on the homosexuality issue as the U.S. Congress is on corporate greed. That's because anti-LGBT forces in every annual conference make sure that only those of like mind, with the time and money to serve, can get elected as General Conference delegates.

In other words, the game is rigged, and so far the house has always won.

Many annual conferences are electing their General Conference delegates at this year's sessions, in part because they need sufficient time to review proposed changes in the Book of Discipline in advance of the October 2015 legislative deadline. I can speak only to my experience with the North Texas Conference, but here it has been easier to get a camel through a needle than to get someone with even the slightest progressive inclination elected to General Conference. The last time I was around for a General Conference delegate election, a progressive pastor started out leading the clergy pack until anti-LGBT forces started a whispering campaign during the voting sessions. And yes, it was the same kind of fear-mongering falsehoods and half-truths that derailed the 1992 homosexuality study report. Of course he lost, and so did the denomination for being deprived of the service of a highly intelligent, compassionate, reasonable and industrious ordained minister who could have brought much to the legislative process.

The election of laity is even more fraught. Laypeople elected to serve in General Conference are generally older than 55, have sufficient time and money to spend two weeks away from home, and are usually white males. These are not merely my observations; they're gleaned from the statistical demographics of past General Conferences. In order to get elected, lay candidates are either backed by powerful tall-steeple clergy, or they've played the annual conference game well enough to be noticed. The average person in the pew has no way to send to General Conference a genuine grassroots representative of his or her own faith experience. The system simply doesn't allow for it.

These encounters have caused me to turn a cynical eye toward the United Methodist political process. Like American democracy, the church system is so broken that it has ceased to function at all, as was shown in the debacle of the 2012 General Conference. There is no space for God's Holy Spirit to act in the zero-sum polity that has been enforced over the past quarter-century. And as our church governance has become ever more rigid, the less we have been open to God's grace moving us toward greater love and justice.

I wish we United Methodists could be more hopeful about the potential results of the 2016 General Conference scheduled for Portland, Ore. I feel sure that the Connectional Table members of 2013-2016 will do as thorough, responsible and faithful job as did their predecessors, the 1989-1992 homosexuality study committee. Yet I also feel sure, given our current political arrangement, that all their hard work has a snowball's chance in Hell of getting a fair hearing, let alone a fair vote.

I truly hope that this year's annual conferences, and subsequently the 2016 General Conference, will prove me wrong.

United Methodist Insight coordinator Cynthia B. Astle, a journalist with more than 40 years' experience, has reported on every General Conference since 1988.