If the spirits of saintly forebears in Heaven pay attention to human endeavors, then I pray that Fannie Lou Hamer knows what the members of United Methodist Insight’s sponsoring congregation, St. Stephen United Methodist Church, and one of its sister congregations, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, independently voted to do on March 25, 2018.
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer addressing the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964. (United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division)
For those unfamiliar with Mrs. Hamer, she was an influential, yet often-overlooked, figure in the civil rights movement. She’s precious to many of us because she dared to speak out, first against racism and then against the sexism that infected the noble movement for black freedom. Even in civil rights endeavors, women were expected to “make coffee, make nice, and stay home,” as New York Times art critic Holland Cotter wrote recently in his review of a new exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination April 4.
I’m thinking of Mrs. Hamer and Dr. King in connection with St. Stephen’s and Oak Lawn’s actions because the civil rights leaders came to see that the fight against discrimination wasn’t only about voting. Citing Cotter once again, “It had become clear to [Dr. King] that racism was not a stand-alone evil. It was an organic element in a disease complex that included capitalism, colonialism and militarism.” To which Mrs. Hamer, along with her freedom sisters such as United Methodist laywoman Dorothy Height, would have added: sexism.
Sexism permeates the struggle within The United Methodist Church for LGBTQ equality, because sexism involves more than injustice toward women. Like most human prejudices, sexism rests upon a lie that only a certain kind of masculinity merits respect, authority, and self-determination. Heterosexism became official United Methodist policy in 1972 because a small group of white cis-gendered men were threatened when, like black people, gay men dared to stand up and say, “we’re here and we’re equal.”
The interrelatedness of these prejudices – what today we call “intersectionality” – form the deep taproot anchoring St. Stephen’s and Oak Lawn’s actions. In the case of St. Stephen, a member of the LGBTQ-affirming Reconciling Congregations Network since 1998, members voted 101 to 6 to approve a new policy regarding marriage. The policy reads:
“We resolve that St. Stephen United Methodist Church will support and honor marriages of couples without regard to their sexual orientation. We will offer the use of our church, including our sanctuary, for ceremonies of marriage to all couples, including same-sex couples. We pledge our full support to any of our clergy who choose to perform marriages without regard to sexual orientation. We recognize that our position on same-sex marriage is not without risk. Nevertheless, we believe that the benefits of seizing this long-overdue opportunity to offer God’s unconditional love to all make it worth undertaking those risks, and we do so with the hope that our action will help the UMC as a whole to move toward full inclusiveness for LGBT persons.”
Ironically – or perhaps in a prophetic sign – St. Stephen UMC’s sister Reconciling Congregation, Oak Lawn UMC in Dallas, also on March 25 approved a consensus statement. Oak Lawn’s lengthy resolution says in part that the church, “should open our doors to support and honor marriages of all couples licensed to be married. We also agree that our church property, including our sanctuary, should be available for all ceremonies of legal marriage,” as the Dallas Voice, a local LGBTQ-oriented newspaper, reported. The Dallas Voice quoted Oak Lawn’s pastor, the Rev. Rachel Baughman: “Members of our church put hard work and intellect into this in a compassionate way we can all be proud of. We’ve all grown through the process.”
St. Stephen took nearly two years to get to its March 25 vote; Oak Lawn says on its website it studied the matter for five months. To put their deliberations in the language of current unity proposals, both United Methodist congregations exercised their “local option.”
Many United Methodists now will consider St. Stephen and Oak Lawn, along with other churches that have adopted similar policies, to be renegade, if not apostate, congregations. Bishop Michael McKee, episcopal leader of the Dallas Area where both churches are located, issued a sternly worded letter to clergy on March 28 reiterating the Book of Discipline prohibitions against same-gender weddings being performed in United Methodist churches. The bishop also stressed that pastors, who are responsible for upholding church law, could face charges if they perform same-gender weddings.
While acknowledging these risks, rank-and-file members have dared to challenge the current United Methodist system that for four-plus decades has inflicted untold harm on hundreds, if not thousands, of LGBTQ people and their loved ones. Restrained from ministries with LGBTQ people by General Conferences held hostage to politics, people in the pews have followed Fannie Lou Hamer’s advice: “You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.”
As Dr. King counseled in his final speech on April 3, 1968, St. Stephen, Oak Lawn and other congregations have embraced “a kind of dangerous unselfishness” in the service of those who wish to marry. Now we wait to see if leaders in The United Methodist Church will finally overturn the discrimination that thwarts the expression of God’s unconditional love for all.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011 through the sponsorship of St. Stephen United Methodist Church.