Still Holding an Open Platform 10 Years On

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Somehow, 10 years have sped by since I seized a moment of unemployment to start a little website that I called United Methodist Insight. I thought it would be a six-month transition through the 2012 General Conference to whatever God had next in mind for me. Little did I know then that Insight was what God had next in mind for me.

From a decade’s distance, Insight’s existence still seems miraculous. So many streams converged in its creation: the demise of The Progressive Christian magazine (formerly Zion’s Herald) that left me without a job; a caring phone call from a longtime friend and benefactor concerned about my joblessness; several social media conversations with United Methodists feeling shut out of General Conference discussions about the denomination’s future; the advent of a user-friendly content management system that made it possible for one person to publish a credible online journal.

The strongest motivation to found Insight remains the core of its mission: to provide an open forum for United Methodists to share their thoughts and perceptions about where God might be calling the denomination to go. That overall mission has sharpened during the past 10 years to be especially open to ideas from the church's margins no matter how heretical or blasphemous those ideas seem to others, especially to those in power.

Aspiring to a noble purpose

Aspiring to a noble purpose, like that which energized my parents’ generation, fell out of fashion over my 50 years as a journalist. For a time, some people scoffed at or even derided the merest hint that a value other than one’s own benefit motivated an undertaking. Nonetheless, United Methodist Insight was founded on a principle taught to me by my journalism mentor, that the people, not the powerful, deserve unfettered access to today’s media.

Here I confess that Insight’s openness to marginal expressions which often rile readers stems directly from my formation and experience as an “old school” journalist. I recently came across a quote that aptly describes my view of journalism as a public-service-oriented vocation:

“Journalists’ fundamental role in democracy is to hold those in power, especially those in government, accountable. But if they have close relationships with those in power, their independence, or at least the perception of it, can be compromised. Independence coupled with accountability and transparency underpin the public’s trust in journalists.”

– Jane E. Kirtley, The Conversation

Looking back over the past decade, I celebrate the many times when Insight’s array of volunteer contributors hit this mark. I also reflect upon and wince at the times when I as editor failed to hit this target, most often due to what I can only describe as a passion for justice that the prophet Jeremiah said, “burns like a fire in the bones.” I credit the great prophets of my Judeo-Christian faith, especially Jesus, for this “fire in the bones” that can both infect me with reckless zeal yet lifts me back up when I stumble and fall. As scholar Obery Hendricks Jr. writes in his new book, “Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith,” my life and my vocation have been shaped by people who practiced Jesus’ two great teachings: the “Greatest Commandment” from Matthew 22:37-39 and the “Great Commandment” from Matthew 25: 31-46. The first describes the love we owe God who first loved us, and the second describes God’s love in action that we call justice.

Strange to quote scripture

I suspect readers find it strange that a progressive editor quotes scripture so freely, but those teachings from childhood and adolesence are deeply embedded in my soul. I’ve been accused more than once by our evangelical friends of publishing blasphemy and devilishly quoting scripture to my own evil ends. However, in this time of chaos and confusion, one thing has become abundantly clear in the United States, at least: Christianity has been hijacked by forces that hold most dear the very values that Jesus explicitly condemned in his preaching and teaching, and this corruption must be called out and resisted at every turn.

More than anything, amplifying Christianity’s love and justice – beyond even the great gifts of practical spirituality from our Wesleyan tradition – has been the intention of United Methodist Insight. As one of my favorite historical she-roes, Elizabeth I of England, reputedly said: “There is but one Jesus Christ; all the rest is dispute over trifles.”

This commitment has often found Insight and its editor receiving barbs and brickbats from those who disagree with our content and editorial stances. Some critiques have been justified, and I apologize for those mistakes, but most criticism has been “dispute over trifles,” and sadly mean-spirited dispute at that. Mostly I've resisted the urge to hit back, as both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. advocated, but sometimes I failed, and I repent of those failures. At such painful times, I’ve come to rely upon Jesus’ words from Matthew 5:11: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” It doesn’t make the hurt go away instantly, but Jesus’ blessing does make the pain more endurable.

Bearing pain – our own and one another’s – has proven to be one of the unexpected side effects of publishing United Methodist Insight for a decade. This pain-bearing – this compassion – demonstrates another basic ideal of Christian faith that power-hungry false gospels reject. Our times are showing that in both our church and our society, we’re dividing ourselves into two worlds, one in which power, privilege and money are gods, and one in which the love and justice exemplified by Jesus Christ form us into beloved community. We’re at one of those crossroads of history where we must choose whom we will serve, and I vow that Insight will continue to serve God as long as I am its editor.

Such has been the life of United Methodist Insight for the past 10 years – a place of openness for those willing to engage in the struggle to know “the Reality that transcends all other realities,” as a colleague put it. Starting a new year, we can see only enough light for another step, but we take that step confidently – “con fidem” in Latin, meaning “with faith.” I invite all to come along on the journey, secure in the Psalmist’s promise:

“[God] will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday.” – Psalm 37:6 (NRSV*)

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

*New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org