There’s a great line in the movie, “The Post,” spoken by Meryl Streep portraying Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham:
“We’re not perfect. We make mistakes. But we keep at it, and that’s what matters.”
That line pretty much sums up our week here at United Methodist Insight. We published an interview with retired Bishop William B. Lewis in which he described the discussions inside the Council of Bishops regarding the proposals for United Methodist unity from the Commission on A Way Forward. He also described how he asserted to the Council to beware a pernicious political influence from unofficial “reform and renewal” movements Good News, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, and the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
I wrote and published that interview. I have no regrets that I did, because Bishop Lewis has as much right to express his opinions and his experience as anyone else. I published the interview because from the first it has been Insight’s primary mission to amplify the voices of those who are stifled by system, custom, or authority.
That said, the “reform and renewal” groups and their supporters are due an apology for a factual error about their funding. As Rev. Walter Fenton, who is Good News' vice president for research, correctly states in his column on the Wesleyan Covenant Association website, I missed making more of an effort to contact the groups in question. However, none of the renewal groups made any direct effort either by email or telephone to contact me to correct the original error, preferring to excoriate me personally in public. A correction through person-to-person channels would have been much appreciated, and promptly acted upon. For my part, I will attempt to repair the breach in future. Whether Rev. Fenton and Good News will make known my apology and correction as broadly as they punished my mistake remains to be seen.
As to checking the Form 990s, as Rev. Fenton suggests, I investigated all three groups’ federal tax Form 990s published on two independent monitoring websites, GuideStar and NonProfit Explorer. I updated the original article with the information. I found that the Form 990s for Good News and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, along with Good News’ listing on the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability, show only bare-bones revenue-and-expense accountings. They don’t show where the money comes from or how that money is spent. The two-year-old Wesleyan Covenant Association has yet to file any public financial accountability documents that I’ve been able to locate thus far.
In short, the best an independent observer can say is that the “renewal and reform” groups’ funding apparently comes from like-minded sources that are kept confidential, and their revenues are spent to influence the future of The United Methodist Church. As the 2016 General Conference showed, these fellow travelers have amassed enough political clout to keep a stranglehold on the UMC, since the only way to change the denomination is by legislation at a General Conference. I would be glad to have my deep skepticism about the “reform and renewal” groups reversed by their future actions or statements, to which I reiterate I am open to receiving.
As for the Council of Bishops, United Methodist Insight has contended from the first that the cloak of secrecy thrown over the Way Forward proceedings has been a major stumbling block, if not an outright violation of the Book of Discipline’s “open meetings” rule. If The United Methodist Church is to stay united, we need to see our leaders model honesty and willingness to compromise. We need to observe firsthand how conflicts can be resolved openly, not hidden behind “covenants of confidentiality.” I’m discouraged almost to despair by the cognitive dissonance that comes when the president of the Council of Bishops proclaims in a sermon that it’s time to stop trying to control people's minds, only to find out days later that his colleagues berated a fellow bishop for having spoken forthrightly and publicly about what’s going on among church authorities.
So yes, this was a week when there are things I wish I’d done differently. Yes, I am not perfect. I make mistakes. But I keep at it, and that’s what matters ultimately to shine a light on the real workings of official and unofficial United Methodist power brokers. That’s why I’ve run this independent website with prayer, toil, tears, and sweat for the past six years: to give people who don’t have money, power, or influence the opportunity to speak their minds about the church to which they’ve pledged their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.
When I err in my zeal to let people speak, I remember what Jesus said about truth setting us free. Nowhere can I find where Jesus said that seeking truth is safe, easy, or comfortable.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.