Frozen 2: The United Methodist Church

Sometimes, when I'm running or otherwise exercising hard, the endorphins flooding my brain combine with whatever I'm listening to on headphones to give me one of those faux-transcendent experiences. I think, Oh my heavens, this is so profound. I get teary-eyed and choked up at song passages or lyrics that I'd normally ignore.

Tonight's pseudo-profundity arrived courtesy of the Frozen 2 soundtrack. Cards on the table: I liked Frozen 2 just fine. It was, I recognized, exactly the sort of stuff that would have captured my fantasy life for months had I viewed it when I was a preteen. It's little gay me crack. That water horse Elsa rides? The quasi-superhero elemental battles? The gorgeous (for a cartoon) Kristof? All of it.

Old boring woke me recognizes the problematic colonial subtexts that the script attempts to grapple with. (The story ends up with a kind of utopian Canada arrangement.) And of course I know that there's a good bit of cynical cash-grab behind the whole sequel endeavor.

But I do like the songs. Lyrically, I think Moana's the stronger contender. But Frozen 2's "Into the Unknown" has a surprising climb up to some soaring heights:

Just a fun, stirring song. And Panic! At the Disco's cover is equally fun.

As I ran and listened, though, I started thinking about some expanded meanings for some of those songs.

Context: I just came from my church's quarterly council meeting. All went well, no big conflicts. Of course, unspoken were the conflicts facing the United Methodist Church. The pro-inclusion folk in Louisiana are circulating a letter to sign on to, asking our Bishop to agree to a moratorium on trials and disciplinary actions against clergy who violate the new (and incredibly restrictive/punitive) rules about LGBTQ issues. Schism is coming to the Church. It's now just a question of what kind of schism it'll be (sorta amicable? horrifically messy? mutually destructive?) and what remnant will survive.

It's a scary time, I reflected, going into the unknown. Suddenly, I started seeing all the Frozen 2 songs as commentary on the future of my Church.

Consider Kristof's Chicago-inspired "Lost in the Woods":

Again, you're gone, off on a different path than mine
I'm left behind, wondering if I should follow
You had to go, and of course it's always fine
I probably could catch up with you tomorrow
But is this what it feels like to be growing apart?

...
Up 'til now the next step was a question of how
I never thought it was a question of whether
Who am I, if I'm not your guy?
Where am I, if we're not together forever?

Where indeed? What can we as a church be without each other? I do fear that, in venturing into the unknown, each side following what it hears as the Spirit's voice, we're destined to spend time lost in the woods.

And in such a situation, what can we do? Anna's "The Next Right Thing" fits perfectly:

I've seen dark before
But not like this
This is cold
This is empty
This is numb
The life I knew is over
The lights are out
Hello, darkness
I'm ready to succumb

I follow you around
I always have
But you've gone to a place I cannot find
This grief has a gravity
It pulls me down
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind
"You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on
And do the next right thing"

Look, I get that all this is a stretch, a juxtaposition of an overstressed brain high on running chemicals and caffeine. I'm reading way against the grain here, recruiting pop culture fluff into my own spiritual processing. But hey, if I were a pastor (which, under the Traditional Plan of the UMC, I'm not able to be), I'd be building a sermon around some of these songs. 

It's a confusing time. I'll take whatever vehicle the Spirit uses to impress on me some comfort and guidance, even if the ultimate message here is less a happy ending for the Church as I know it and more permission to let it go.

Love and Splits and Methodists

Amidst all my current thinking about friends and enemies, agonism and antagonism, impeachment and fundamental splits, I'm trying to create an opening meditation for a meeting tomorrow. Some Louisiana Methodists who lean to the center and left are gathering tomorrow for a time of updates, learning, connection, and encouragement. We're between crises: the sorrow of the 2019 Conference, the uncertain future of the 2020 Conference.

I present this in a little over 12 hours. I have, right now, only a few inklings about what I'll do or talk about. I'm tired. It's been a long day of meetings, three classes in a row, more meetings. I need to work in a work out. Also I need to eat. It doesn't help that, when I think about the United Methodist Church, the energy and hope drains out of me.

Two plans for the denomination appear to be in competition for General Conference 2020, at least from USAmerican Methodist perspectives: the "Next Generation UMC" plan and the Indianapolis Plan.

The Indianapolis Plan is, essentially, a plan for separation, creating two (possibly more) different Methodist denominations: Traditionalist and Centrist. The Wesley Covenant Association stands poised to institute its vision of the Traditionalist Methodist Church. It has already drafted a "Doctrines and Disciplines" document, outlining a new "leaner" and more "nimble" expression of Methodism, essentially weakening connectional structures in favor of congregational ones. LGBTQ people are not mentioned at all; the document simply affirms that monogamous marriage between men and women is the only proper expression of human sexuality.

The Next Generation UMC Plan smooths pathways out of the denomination but defaults to staying a united church. It repeals the Traditional Plan passed at the 2019 Conference and removes all restrictive language regarding homosexuality from the Discipline.

I'm generally for staying together. But I suspect that, of the two plans, something like the Indianapolis Plan is more likely to get the votes necessary. I do wonder how delegates from the Central Conferences will perceive the two plans; their support is essential for anything to happen. The Next Generation Plan seems to contain more provisions for continued support of Central Conferences. The Indianapolis Plan, as I skim it, provides for General Conference funding of Central Conferences only through 2024.

I suspect, however, that the Traditionalist/Wesley Covenant Association's hard-line heterosexuality-only stance will move most Central Conferences to vote for Indianapolis, since that offers the more robust expression of straight/cis-only positions. Righteousness defined by sharp boundaries between Us and Them has historically proven more appealing to humans than messy coexistence amidst disagreement.

Then again, the Central Conferences may simply balk at any change, insisting on keeping the Traditional Plan version of the UMC. We'll get more messy (and legislatively murky) coexistence for a while--but not forever.

Nothing will prevent the exodus of churches wishing to join the new Wesley Covenant Association denomination, however that appears. They have made the decision to separate, arguing--not without basis--that the "quarrel" in the UMC year after year over homosexuality has made for a "caustic" atmosphere. They've been wanting to go. They just need the path to let them keep their properties and monies. "We will release one another to joyful obedience to Christ's call on our lives," reads the Indianapolis Plan.

In my tiredness, I must admit that there's part of me that wonders if separation isn't just better after all. Psychologist Harriet Learner quotes a sign a counselor friend of hers had prominently posted: "You've got to learn to leave the table when love is no longer being served." Or, more colloquially: if you love something, let it go.

I can't make you love me if you don't. 
I can't make your heart feel something it won't.  

I wish I could make hearts and minds more open, break what I see as bounds of fear that manifest as exclusion and discrimination.
I wish that openness for my own heart as well, for those times when it becomes hard for me to empathize with my sisters and brothers in Christ when I see their stances as harming the least, the lost, the left-behind.
I wish I could be patient enough for the turn of generations to do its slow work of adjusting us to new worlds.
I wish I could look at 2020 and see hope and noonday sun rather than trepidation and twilight.


Here in the dark,
In these final hours, 
I will lay down my heart, 
'Cause I feel the power. 

There is Power even in the dark, we're told. "If I ascend to Heaven, you are there," writes the Psalmist (Psalm 139), "if I go to sheol, you are there. . . . Even the darkness is not dark to You." 

The essence of the Wesleyan tradition is grace, especially Wesley's own innovation of prevenient grace, the "grace that goes before." Before we knew God, God knew us.

I find it helpful to imagine prevenient grace as something that persists beyond our conscious commitment. Even as we struggle with God's grace on the path to perfection, God's grace continues ahead of us, preceding us into the future, into the darkness.

May God precede me tomorrow morning, helping me to get out of the way of God's Spirit before a group of loving Methodists in crisis.

Ashes, Practice, Belief

Ash Wednesday--

Growing up, I was largely unaware of the holiday at all, Lent--or any other Liturgical Year event--not being a typical Southern Baptist observance. My small-town Oklahoma experiences (largely bereft of Catholics) didn't prepare me for our mid-1980s move to south Louisiana, where it seemed that Catholics and Baptists waged an eternal cold war for Cajun souls. I had to learn to create a new mental box for Catholics, an addition to my childhood taxonomy of "Christians" (i.e., Baptists), "sort-of-Christians" (i.e., Methodists and other Protestants), and "Non-Christians" (e.g., Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus).

At the time, Catholics seemed to fall somewhere between "sort-of-Christian" and "Hindu." There was so much that was so different. Their crosses had Jesus still crucified on them. They called their pastors "Father" instead of "Brother." They apparently thought that Mary should be worshiped (not accurate, I know, but such was Baptist propaganda). And one day out of the year, everyone showed up to school with dirty foreheads.

I don't recall thinking too deeply about what the cross-shaped smudges meant. I just lumped the practice into my ever-growing category of "weird [i.e., non-Baptist] things Catholics do."

As I grew older, of course, my concept boxes changed. I asked my father once if he had a Catholic Bible because I wanted to see how their Bible recorded the story of Mary differently. Daddy of course informed me that the Gospel accounts were the same for both Catholics and Baptists. Interpretation and tradition, not the text itself, proved to be the distinguishing factor.

Moving into the Methodist Church (which my family did during my high school years) meant incorporating some more high-church, "Catholic-y" traditions and interpretations into my spiritual life, a practice I initially resisted. I have to admit, though, that the performer in me was thrilled to be able to join the club of smudgy foreheads. It took me a few years, however, to think through exactly what Ash Wednesday means, to realize that it was more than just a piece of liturgical theatre.

The little service I went to at noon today nicely encapsulated what I've absorbed. There about thirty of us gathered in our small chapel. We prayed, sang, and heard a short homily. Then came the ashes, to remind us of our mortality. Then another prayer. Then a silent exit from the chapel, with bowls of water to remind us of our Baptisms (the dialectical complement to mortality). Simple enough.

But in that brief service I realized a deep distinction from the faith of my Baptist childhood. For Baptists, the focus of Christian faith lies primarily in belief--faith in Christ and acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior. Baptists understand this core belief as manifesting in or prompting certain practices: walking down the aisle to get saved, giving a testimony, getting Baptized, taking the Lord's Supper. But these practices remain secondary effects, radiations of the belief in God's saving grace. It's belief, not practice, that saves.

My pastor in today's service titled his mini-sermon "Practice, Practice, Practice," inviting us to take advantage of Lent as a time to be aware of the practices that define us as Christians. The call to a discipline of awareness echoes a similar call made during Advent. I like to think of Advent and Lent as parallels, two sides of the same coin; both are times of preparation for the coming of God-With-Us. The Liturgical Year in general imposes on believers a call to remember, to keep in mind, to practice awareness of faith. In this understanding, belief accompanies practice, grows from it, rather than causing it. To believe is to do is to believe.

I'm reminded, for example, of the story (I've heard various versions from various sources) of a priest who was asked by a man how he could become a Christian. "I don't believe in God," the man told the priest. "I've tried and tried, but the faith won't come." The priest instructed him to rise at each dawn, kneel, and pray. "But I don't believe," said the man. "Pray every day as I've said," advised the priest, "and you will."

To my childhood Baptist self, and I think for many evangelicals, such advice runs counter to their understanding of how Christianity works. You pray out of belief, not to create belief. I remember hearing sermons warning of such fallacious thinking, sermons that pointed to passages like Matthew 7:21 ("Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven."). Prayer doesn't save; belief does.

But, as I've written before, belief--the feeling of conviction in certain truths--often proves uncertain. Belief wavers. Confidence gets shaken. Sometimes my faith (as feeling) seems so small that even a mustard seed could dwarf it. Does this mean that my Christianity--my status as God's adopted--wavers with my emotional or cognitive state? For many, many years I thought just that. Doubt became an enemy not just of faith but of salvation. Questioning my faith opened the door to hell.

That I now think differently stems from a number of sources and teachers, but I think my adoption of the Liturgical Year, with its Advents and Lents, has played an important role.

Certainly I'm cognizant of the dangers of empty practice, words and motions that really are nothing deeper than a display of piety. As the readings in today's service reminded us, Christ speaks harshly against such showiness.

Yet I have found a great deal of comfort, a ring of deep truth, in the practice of the Liturgical Year, in the idea of faith as a discipline of awareness and action that persists regardless of my emotional state. Like the service today, the discipline of faith warns me that mortality and loss happen no matter my feelings toward them. But that same faith reassures me that God works for my redemption and reconciliation, that the Spirit intercedes with deep cries, that Christ arrives and is with me always--even when I don't feel it.

Happy Ash Wednesday, all. Remember to remember.

More later,

JF

More About the Ugandan Bill

The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill debate proceeds apace, both within and without the country itself.

This editorial from Sylvia Tamale of Makerere University provides some helpful background information on Uganda's longstanding criminalization of homosexual behavior as well as more evidence that Ugandans are not of one mind on this issue. From a US, conservative-Christian perspective, Warren Throckmorton writes this rather eloquent editorial posing the cliched-but-compelling question, What Would Jesus Do? The Facebook pages, both anti-Bill and pro-Bill, continue to garner members.

From the comments and from the text of the bill itself, the mentality behind the legislation appears to view homosexuality (primarily male homosexuality) as an always coercive violation of another person. Several of the Ugandan commentators ask perplexedly why Western Christians would deny them the right to criminalize an offense they consider to be as awful as rape or molestation. The idea that any male could be homosexual and enjoy consensual sexual contact with another homosexual male seems well-nigh unthinkable. Other arguments for the bill cite nature, reasoning that since sex is of course for procreation, homosexuality is contrary to nature itself.

Christian groups, both conservative and otherwise, both from Africa and from abroad, continue to issue denouncements of the bill, urging Ugandan Christians to reconsider their support for its draconian measures. Several pastors from the Church of Uganda have in fact recommended that the death penalty clause be removed, though many still support the life imprisonment clauses.

Disturbing sentiments such as the latter from some Ugandan Christian leaders ("don't kill them, but do lock them away forever") highlight the tensions emerging in global Christianity as Western denominations encounter the explosion of members in developing nations. In the Anglican and United Methodist Churches, for example, the influence of African members have breathed new life into the conservative wings of those denomination, as they almost uniformly take extremely conservative stands on issues such as sexuality and the role of women in ministry.

In the General Conferences of the UMC (i.e., the once-every-four-years meeting of representatives from the entire denomination) I've been to, the African delegations played a particularly important role in debates about GLBT issues. Their testimonies and arguments draw special attention--one might even say deference--from the US members who are keenly aware of the need for conscientious fellowship with overseas brothers and sisters.

Distressingly from my perspective, statements about GLBT issues by African delegates often mirrored the exasperated, why-is-this-even-up-for-debate tones of the Ugandan blog commentators. Pleas by various US-based delegates for their overseas brethren to extend to US congregations the same degree of cultural considerations (e.g., realize what it means to be a pastor in San Francisco) that the brethren themselves enjoy (non-US Conferences have a greater degree of flexibility in following UMC Discipline than US Conferences do) largely fell on deaf ears. The GLBT issue, in the arguments I heard from several African delegates, is an all-or-nothing litmus test of Christianity. That the church would even consider the possibility of, say, ordaining an openly gay or lesbian person is evidence of how decadent the American church has become. Of course, such anti-GLBT sentiments jibed perfectly with those of the more conservative sectors of the US delegation, who were for once happy to be the advocates of diversity within the church.

US conservatives in the Anglican Communion have similarly reached out to African Anglican Bishops as a way to disassociate themselves with the US Episcopal Church, creating the novel situation of African missionary outposts in the US. With these African Anglicans, US conservatives find a church home that conforms to their beliefs about sexuality (heteros only, please) and female ordination (none of that, please).

I am curious, then, to see how United Methodist and Anglican clergy in and around Uganda feel about this bill. I spoke yesterday of "intervention." As I hope was clear, I do not see that the US has any real authority to intervene in Uganda's internal affairs.

As a Christian living in communion with Ugandan Christians, however--more, as a Methodist, I feel a different kind of intervention is possible and appropriate. While I am skeptical that a Facebook page against the Bill can exert much persuasive power, I support overtures by people like Throckmorton that attempt to meet pro-Bill Ugandan Christians on their own ground.

I've noted that some more liberal GLBT advocacy groups have argued that various conservative and (especially) ex-gay ministries bear much of the blame for the Ugandan bill to begin with and that such ministries have been slow or tepid in their response. Though I have considerable qualms about ex-gay ministries (a label, I should note, that many such ministries do not embrace), I do not see such criticisms as entirely fair. Uganda, it seems to me, did not require the special intervention of a handful of US ministers over the summer to suddenly decide to prosecute homosexuality. Moreover, as much as I may disagree with the pathologization of homosexuality, the bill's provisions convince me that seeing GLBT people as people in need of prayer or treatment is preferable to seeing them as rapists or (as one facebook commentator put it) "sewage."

Randy Thomas of Exodus International (the premiere "ex-gay" ministry) was quoted on one anti-ex-gay blog: "It isn’t going to be a gay activist yelling at the Ugandan government that will actually get our ssa [same-sex-attracted] brothers and sisters out of jail. It will be people like me pleading with these leaders to recognize the Christ-likeness inherent in respecting self-determination and the dignity of every soul that draws breath." (quoted on this page). I have to admit that Thomas has a point. Reading the conservative commentators on Throckmorton's blog doing their darndest to make a reasoned, Biblically sound argument against the bill reinforced Thomas's point: if the anti-gay conservative Christians in Uganda are going to change, it will likely be from people like Thomas, Throckmorton, and others.

That reality, in turn, forces me to rethink how I position myself in relation to such people.

Part of what makes this whole situation so murky is how it reformats the topography of faith-based culture wars. As the century progresses, conservatives in the US are likely to find, I think, that what counts as "conservative" or "traditional Christian" here in the States differs quite a bit from what is meant by those same terms in Africa. Indeed, Christianity itself takes different forms in various parts of the global south, where Pentecostal traditions of speaking in tongues, faith healing, ecstatic worship styles, and a much more strictly conservative theology seem to enjoy the most robust growth rates.

I am curious, then, to see how this debate turns out.

More tomorrow,

JF

PS: I am curious about the stance of the United Methodist Bishop of the East African Annual Conference, Daniel Wandabula. Anyone know?

Polarizations and Organic Intellectuals

So--to pick up from yesterday's theme--Bishop Spong recently released a manifesto in which he resolves not to debate any more on the issue of GLBT inclusion in church and society. He considers that battle won (i.e., that GLBT people should enjoy the same rights and opportunities as straight people) and further debate counterproductive.

The problem is, first, that debates of that sort aren't won simply by one side's saying so. I can respect that Spong himself is weary of fighting; he has, after all, invested much of his time, energy, and reputation over the years into advocating for GLBT rights. But regardless of the weariness of the participants, the debate about GLBT people in the church continues (should they be members? should they be allowed to marry their same-sex partners? should they be ordained). Winning this argument--realizing a day in which GLBT members aren't categorically treated differently in terms of the life of the church--simply isn't up to the will of single person or a single side.

Another problem with the Spong manifesto tactic is that one could just as easily imagine a manifesto from a spokesperson from the "other side," a manifesto that declares the debate settled once and for all. Indeed, such statements are common in my own denomination's ongoing struggle over the status of GLBT people. Inevitably, after every General Conference in which some compromise or pro-GLBT resolution gets defeated, the more conservative partisans on the GLBT issue release a statement to the effect of "Well--now that that unpleasantness is over, we can finally move on. Case closed." But conservative "mission accomplished" manifestos don't end debate any more than progressive ones.

I'm sure that Spong himself is under no illusions that his statement actually reflects reality; the fact that the manifesto enumerates so many people and institutions (including the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury) who continue to support less-than-progressive stances belies Spong's claim that GLBT inclusion is fait accompli. Nor do I buy that Spong actually believes that his preemptive withdrawal from the fight will end the fight.

I remain curious, then, just what effect he's going for. If he's withdrawing due to purely for-my-own-sanity reasons, why release a public statement--more than that, a manifesto--about it? Why not simply withdraw and be done with it? What's the point, in other words, of a manifesto?

Manifestos summon an audience and aim for a particular rhetorical effect, generally either solidarity ("Yes, that's just what I believe, too!") or anger ("How dare he say that! What a rebel!"). Many of Spong's full-length studies (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, for example) could be considered manifestos, attracting the like-minded and repulsing the opposition. He's a polarizer.

Not that I'm knocking polarization per se. Sometimes it's valuable and necessary. In defining the "sides" of this debate, Spong, performs a function similar to what Antonio Gramsci calls an organic intellectual. In his explorations about about how and why certain political parties achieve dominance (hegemony) in particular states, Gramsci spends time discussing how parties form in the first place. They don't just spring into being ex nihilo. Most people--even those who would ostensibly be unified under a certain banner or issue--simply exist together without any political organization. They are a mass, not a party.

For a party to form, a organic (as in "organizing") intellectual must emerge--someone with the power to frame for the mass a new vision of themselves as unified by a commonality--generally some kind of shared injustice. Moreover, the organic intellectual gives to the people a vision of the state as it could be, a "concrete fantasy" or myth of the possible community (usually a situation in which the key injustice is rectified). Once a mass of people internalize this concrete fantasy, they can begin the logistical/educational processes necessary to reform themselves as a party.

Similarly, Spong's work has provided many in the progressive Christian church with an intellectual and moral support structure for pro-GLBT (and, more broadly anti-fundamentalist) reform movements. Like any organic intellectual, Spong defines an activated movement of progressive Christians by identifying both what the movement is for (a concrete fantasy of a church-that-can-be) and what the movement opposes.

Clarity, however, comes at the price of consensus. It's useful to remember that Gramsci formulated his theory keeping in mind the life-and-death struggle between Communists and Fascists in Italy during the 1920s. It was vital, in his view, to make neutrality an untenable position. Or, more precisely, Gramsci's analysis implies that Mussolini's party proved so successful not only through its bullying tactics but also through the concrete fantasy of a masculine, revived, respected/feard Italy--a fantasy that caught on with many Italians who had been disaffected since World War I. As this fantasy gained traction among more and more people, the Fascists ratcheted up the polarization, making those who felt ambivalent about or opposed to the fantasy of New Italy under Il Duce not only "people who hold a different opinion" but active traitors, agents of the foreign governments intent on keeping Italy firmly under Western Europe's thumb. Thus, the Fascists gained power by making "not being a Fascist" unthinkable and unattractive. For or against--you choose.

Beneath the ongoing disagreements about the proper status of GLBT people in the church is a deeper debate, a meta-disagreement, about how the church ought to frame and navigate its differences on this issue. To whit: is the GLBT issue an either/or question? Is polarization inevitable or necessary?

Or, as one study about the United Methodist Church's conflict put it, the GLBT question can be parsed not only into pro-inclusion and anti-inclusion sides but also into the side of those who see it possible for pro- and anti-GLBT folk to co-exist in the same denomination and the side of those who see pros and antis as so divergent that schism is the only logical or ethical solution.

In his manifesto, Spong adds little that is new to the pro/anti-GLBT debate. But to a greater degree than in previous work, Spong establishes himself as firmly on the "there's no way to agree to disagree" side.

More tomorrow,

JF

"In the Bowels of Christ..." the Possibility of Being Wrong

What if I'm wrong?

Lately on this blog I've been asking about how Christians can and should deal with fundamental disagreements between themselves. I mean here not the minor (though sometimes heated) personal disputes over, say, the color the church's next carpet should be. No, fundamental disputes happen when one or more sides of a debated issue raise the stakes, arguing that their point of view isn't merely correct to have but essential to have.

Evangelicals may disagree, for example, about whether the rapture of Christians will occur premillennially or not and yet remain in fellowship with one another. The disagreement's shift to fundamental status occurs when one side (of sufficient size/influence) asserts that affirming the premillennial rapture functions as a sine qua non of Christianity itself. Those who deny the premillennial rapture, that side asserts, are not only wrong but apostate and in danger of the fires of hell.

The fundamental disagreement within Methodism of late has to do with the degree of inclusion and tolerance the church ought to extend toward GLBT members. A range of beliefs of course exist, but lately this range has polarized into two predominant tances. One side (my own) holds that non-heterosexual identity and behavior is not automatically incompatible with a faithful Christian life. GLBT people should enjoy a status equal to that of heterosexual people in the Methodist church, having the opportunity along with heterosexuals to be ordained as ministers, married as committed couples, and accepted without reservation as members. The other side would say that "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" have by their behavior chosen to live a life contrary to Biblical Christianity and are therefore inappropriate for ordained ministry, recognized marriages, and (for some) even local church membership.

This disagreement has taken on fundamental dimensions in that some of the key spokespeople (mainly but not exclusively from the conservative side) have suggested that one's stance on the GLBT issue indicates one's stance on the inspiration and authority of scripture. Those not able to affirm the clear (i.e., plain-sense literalist) prohibitions against same-sex erotic behavior in the Bible, goes this line of thinking, have no business calling themselves Methodists. Or, at least, those who do hold fast to scripture need to separate themselves from a denomination now fatally compromised by disbelief in scriptural authority. (From the liberal side, the less-frequent argument for schism would be that a tolerant church cannot accept vehemently intolerant members. The Methodist church would not, for instance, accept pastors who preached that races ought not to mix or that women must remain silent in the church. On the whole, though, the move to separate tends to come from the conservative forces).

I have not yet spent time on this blog elaborating how and why I hold the position I do; it does not, let me say, grow naturally from the fact that I myself am gay. Rather than elaborating that position, though, I want to tackle a different but related issue: what if I'm wrong?

Fundamental disagreements rarely allow for the possibility of the two sides' finding common ground or compromising. Indeed, as political theorist Chantal Mouffe has argued (in her The Democratic Paradox), if two sides of a disagreement can find ground enough to compromise, the disagreement is by definition not fundamental. At the "fundamental disagreement" stage, shifts in opinion manifest not as giving ground but as wholesale conversions or defections.

It is therefore odd for me to think of the other side as having merit or of finding ways to compromise. That side tends to see mine as absolutist in terms of accepting nothing short than ecclesiastical approval of GLBT behaviors. Mine sees the conservative side as absolutist in that it resists even statements that officially acknowledge a diversity of opinion (though, as they point out, such an acknowledgment would undermine the legitimacy of hard-line prohibitions on GLBT people).

I feel, however, that I have a duty as an intellectual and (more importantly) as a Christian to consider the fact that they might be right.

Two quotes ground my thinking in this area. The first comes from Oliver Cromwell (not necessarily a Protestant to imitate, I realize), who in 1650 found himself addressing the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, members of whom had been allies in the war against King Charles I. At this point the Assembly had declared Charles II to be Charles I's son, essentially aligning against Cromwell's cause. "I beseech you," he pleaded, "in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Of course, Cromwell meant for the other side (the Church of Scotland) to think it possible that they may be mistaken. I find the statement more powerful, though, when I apply it to myself and to my convictions. I first heard this quote, in fact, at a conference of, by, and for pro-GLBT inclusion Christians. A theology professor from a southern Methodist university (not the Southern Methodist University, though) held a workshop about the theology and ethics of our struggle.

"It's vital," he told us (and I'm paraphrasing from memory--perhaps this is what I think he should have said), "that we realize the magnitude of the transformation we're expecting from conservatives. We expect them to let go of beliefs they have held dear for some time. If we expect them to undergo a thorough process of soul-searching reflection, we must be willing to do the same. And that can't be done--we aren't really being soul-searching--unless we open ourselves the possibility that we in fact are the ones in the wrong here."

I have tried to take that counsel to heart, recalling it at moments of greatest pride or greatest desperation: What if I am mistaken?

More tomorrow,

JF

Everything else will follow.

I want to send a thank you out to Bishop William W. Hutchinson, bishop of the Louisiana Annual Conference, for some very kind words he wrote about an entry on this blog. I am very honored. His column appears in the September 25 issue of Louisiana Now!, the biweekly newsletter of the Louisiana Conference (website here). The entry he references is here.

There I reflect on a baptism ceremony--actually a baptism remembrance ceremony--I saw while visiting another Methodist church to see my friend preach her first sermon there. The service came just as I was in the middle of delving into and reacting against the hellfire-first evangelism of my youth. I had been ready to rant, but the beauty of the service and of the pastor's meditation on Methodist baptism moved me to belay the tirade I had planned.

Baptismal themes resonate with my memory of the 2004 General Conference (the quadrennial meeting of United Methodists to hash out contentious issues and set policy). I attended the 10-day conference in Pittsburgh working for an alliance of pro-GLBT-inclusion (and pro-social justice more generally) Methodist subgroups such as the Reconciling Network and the Methodist Federation for Social Action. My work there ranged from note-taking in day-long committee meetings, consulting with delegates about MFSA's stances on particular issues, drafting talking points that delegates could use if they so desired, and participating in a number of visual and performance displays to garner attention for the GBLT-inclusive cause.

Each General Conference has a theme, and in 2004 it was "Water Washed, Spirit Born" (From a hymn by Ruth Duck: We, your people stand before You/ Water-washed and Spirit-born/ By your grace our lives we offer/Recreate us; God, transform!). The progressive alliance I was a part of operated on a variation of that theme--"Watermarked"--which highlighted the indelible element of God's inclusion present in Methodist baptism. As baptized Methodists, we argued, God had already marked us as God's own, regardless of our orientation or gender identity. Our more display-oriented demonstrations inside and outside of the Conference sought to underline this theme. We bought loads of bottled water, for example (not the most environmentally friendly action, in retrospect), covering them with a fairly neutral label that said something like, "Enjoy this water, remembering that you are watermarked by God" and displaying the progressive symbol.

Some of my most rewarding moments in the conference (in addition to the ones I shared yesterday) involved me and several other volunteers stationing ourselves near one of the conference entrances, doing nothing more than handing out water with a smile to anyone and everyone coming by. The water served as a neat riff on our theme, of course, and the free drink was real relief on the hot spring days.

But the real magic happened with the person-to-person contact that happened as we gave the water out. Getting into the conference hall itself involves braving a double line of earnest volunteers from dozens of different Methodist interest groups, each handing out a flier, newsletter, or appeal. Some delegates and guests eagerly and cheerfully collect all of them they can, gaining a full pile by the end of the line (only to be greeted by more such lines inside the hall). Others set their shoulders, fix their gaze straight ahead (or on the ground), and barrel through the gamut as fast as they can. Most delegates fall somewhere in between, automatically grabbing fliers handed to them while looking ahead and beyond.

We set up our water stations before the paper hand-out lines, and we made it a point to greet people cheerfully, making eye contact and smiling. We did not discuss issues or press for votes. We just grinned and said "Hi, would you like a bottle of water?" Not everyone took the bottles we offered--particularly those who knew and disagreed with our stances--but just about everyone smiled and returned the greeting. It was a minor humanizing moment in a massive process full of bureaucratic impersonality. I have no idea, really, about the stances or ultimate votes of the people who shared that spark of communion with me, but it reinforced for me the commonality that God's baptism imposes even on God's feuding children.

Speaking of which, I am sorry to say that sense of commonality got strained by the Conference's subsequent votes, which reinforced rather than lessened stances against GLBT identity as anything but "incompatible with Christian teaching." Particularly painful was the narrow failure of a resolution that would have done little more than acknowledge that the Methodist Church was not of one mind regarding the issue. After those votes, the Conference broke for a recess, and all of the pro-GLBT people gathered silently at the front of the convention hall auditorium. There we received communion--our Church's only other recognized sacrament besides baptism.

As I've mentioned, Methodist communion is, like baptism, considered primarily to be God's action. "It is God who sets the table, not I," says my pastor father to his flock on communion Sundays, "It is God who gives the invitations, and he invites everyone." Feeling so rejected by my church at that moment, the simple act (repeated every month) of taking bread and juice--accepting and celebrating God's invitation to me--took on grander import. I wonder sometimes if people who never have to think of their inclusion within the life of the church realize what a gift communion and baptism are, how powerful and radical the open invitation of God is.

It took another friend at that conference to hammer home just how powerful that welcome is. This friend (whose gender I will mask for greatest anonymity) was a minister who was secretly GLBT but who of course had to remain closeted lest he/she be stripped of ordination. That person's support for the cause had to come at a distance, since he/she held a position of some visibility in the church. As the conference wore on and as the contentious votes on sexuality issues approached, I caught up with the person. I asked this minister if s/he were worried and hurt about the outcome.

My friend surprised me, though, by saying it didn't matter. Well--of course it mattered, s/he explained. But a vote about sexuality alone fails to address the underlying tensions and divisions that afflict the UMC. Apart from the hullabaloo about sexuality, my friend told me, the Conference was set to accept another kind of change. A committee appointed to examine and clarify Methodist beliefs on communion had finished its work, and its report was set to be accepted by the Conference as the official interpretive stance of the UMC. "It's all in the report," s/he assured me. "Once people read and accept that, everything else will follow."

The report, "This Holy Mystery," was in fact accepted and is currently in force as authoritative for Methodists. It is, as my friend promised, a firm statement about the open table of communion. All who come in faith are fed. It is not for individual Christians to deny communion to anyone.

Alas, my church (at the 2008 Conference) again declined to liberalize its stances on GLBT people. "But," I can hear my friend urging me, "give it time. Let the radical welcome installed into baptism and communion both work its way through the membership. Everything else will follow." From the seed of that teaching, from the hope of a shared smile, from the promise of a common cup--may a greater, deeper communion follow.

More tomorrow,

JF

Conference Conversations and Tricky Prayer Requests

I had a great chat with a friend of mine today, a pastor from another Methodist church. We share similar perspectives on a number of theological and social issues, so part of our conversation involved hashing out some of the current debates about health care, GLBT rights, and ecological awareness. I had forgotten how refreshing it can be to link into a like-minded/like-spirited person, especially in the context of long-terms struggles for justice and the good. It recharges my batteries, reminding me that in believing as I do, I join other good people of faith and hope.

Together, my friend and I asked the question that's been bugging me of late: how shall we as Christians disagree about fundamental issues? Or, rather: how do I work, pray, and live as one in Christ with people who espouse beliefs I find difficult to reconcile with Christianity? What is my relationship, in other words, to those people who declined to stand along with me at the trial of Jimmy Creech?

Our conversation on that topic reminded me of another conversation I had back in the spring of 2004. On that occasion, I was in Pittsburgh, attending the United Methodist General Conference.

Once every four years, about a thousand delegates drawn from every Annual Conference in the US and from Conferences outside of the US, along with the Bishops, Judicial Councils, heads of UM agencies, and of course thousands of other onlookers, lobbyists, experts, and activists--all of them gather in one location to spend about a week defining what it means to be Methodist. At the GC, official documents like The Book of Discipline (the go-to manual for Methodist polity and doctrine) become in part open to revision. Delegates to the General Conference vet hundreds of proposed revisions to various operational procedures and official stances. The great majority of these proposals involve noncontroversial matters of logistics and meet-and-potatoes operation. But certain topics soon emerge as incredibly divisive.

The hottest debates in Methodism (as in many other denominations) revolve around issues of gays and lesbians in the church. Can GLBT people be ordained as ministers? Can GLBT couples be married? Are GLBT people welcome as members? Can the UMC honestly declare itself as of one mind on GLBT status and rights? These issues had riven the Conference in years past; a mass arrest had occurred, for instance, at the 2000 Conference. Tensions were high in anticipation of similar events this year.

And I was there, as I had been in 2000, not as a delegate but as one of an army of activists/lobbyists for the pro-inclusivity side. In the Conference, I sat in various sub- and sub-sub-committee meetings watching, listening, and taking extensive notes to relay to my own team leaders. I drafted position statements and talking points. I made contact with "friendly" delegates and offered what assistance (info, recommendations, perspectives) I could. Outside of the Conference doors, I handed out flyers, helped to organize para-conference events, lined the sidewalks in silent (and not-so-silent) demonstrations, and basically sought to be part of the pro-GLBT movement.

Of course, the "other side" had a coalition of its own. For every note-taker, sidewalk-liner, flyer-distributor, and talking-points-writer "we" had, the more conservative side had just as many. Indeed, we faced each other on the sidewalk, handed out flyers next to each other breezeways, sat side-by-side in innumerable meetings, taking notes furiously.

And, inevitably, we struck up conversations. Early in the conference, I was assigned to take notes on one of the relatively noncontroversial sub-committees. Most of the work of the conference during these first few days consisted of sub-committees hashing out the hundreds of proposals specific to their committee's purview. I watched along with dozens of other onlookers as fifty delegates slogged through rote votes, peppered with the occasional controversy.

During a break halfway through the second or third day, I spoke at length to one young woman sitting next to me. As it turned out, she was an alternate delegate from the Alabama conference. Just graduated from high school, she was at her first General Conference, representing her constituency, which was overwhelmingly conservative and opposed to the GLBT-inclusive cause I represented. We quickly identified each other as political adversaries, joking about how we worked for the "other side," but then moved on to chat about a number of other topics. Her boyfriend and family. My partner and family.

Another woman representing another conservative group overheard us. "What's your name, young man?" she asked, not unkindly, but not joking, either. I told her, and she opened a little notebook to write it down. "I'm writing your name down so I can pray for you," she said. My Alabaman friend, deciding this was a good idea, also wrote my name down.

This was a tricky moment. "I'll pray for you" can often be code for "You are so desperately in the wrong that only God can help you." I fear this is the message many people outside of the church hear when a Christian tells them this. I considered the possibility that the woman was communicating just that message. You poor, benighted person caught in your destructive, sinful lifestyle--all i can do is pray for you to find Christ. I quickly went through possible responses: question? educate? argue? take offense? ignore?

In the end, though--and I have to believe this was a Spirit thing--it struck me that I should be honored and glad to have someone praying for me. Heaven knows I need it. And so what if the woman's subtext matched my suspicions? Is not prayer still a good and appropriate response? She is, after all, not attacking me but promising to commune thoughtfully and earnestly with God about the well-being of my soul. I realized I wished more of my adversaries did that for me. In fact...

"Can I have your name, too?" I asked. "I like people praying for me, and I'd like to return the gesture." So we exchanged names, wrote them down, and I did pray for my two adversaries. I hope and trust they prayed for me.

Prayer, as CS Lewis said, transforms humans more than it transforms God. Like the act of writing, the act of articulating concerns, submitting them to God, and opening yourself to God's response changes the way I picture those concerns. I hoped, I suppose, that my acquaintances would be led by God to see my point of view--but in prayer I recognize that what God does is up to God. God knows best, not I, and my trust in God's power and wisdom (and--always--grace) must be greater even than my convictions about what side God is on.

As the Conference wore on and debates grew ever-tenser, one side or the other floated the possibility of a schism. Perhaps our differences on the GLBT issue (and the deeper doctrinal matters upon which that issue rested) were too great for us to remain in communion with each other. Perhaps we had best amicably depart. Conference-goers buzzed with nervousness about this possibility. I saw my friend from Alabama, a worried look on her face. She saw me. We caught up briefly with some small talk. Sure is busy. Sure am tired. It will be good to get back home.

Then she stopped. "Do you think we're going to split, John?" she asked. "I hope not," I said. "I don't think so." And we agreed to pray. We prayed not for the other person to see our side of things, but for the church by which we call each other brother and sister to remain whole.

And it did. And it does--barely.

God, be with the people I met in Pittsburgh. Be with my adversaries who believe so differently than I. Open me to their needs, their thoughts, their fears. Make us, keep us, one in you.

More tomorrow,

JF

Here I Am, Here We Are--Creech Trial, part II

I learned what community meant in Grand Island, NE, in 1999, at the trial of the Rev. Jimmy Creech. It was an ecclesiastical trial, not a criminal one, so the proceedings merged the legal with the spiritual. Creech was on trial for violating the United Methodist Book of Discipline, which had been revised to prohibit UM ministers from performing same-sex holy unions. Creech, a vocal advocate of inclusivity in the chruch, defied the prohibition by officiating at a public union ceremony for a lesbian couple.

The Nebraska Conference, following Discipline standards, brought formal charges against him. I was at the trial, ostensibly to do some protest-ish street theatre. I found myself caught up, however, in the theatricality of the trial itself.

The trial took place in a church sanctuary hastily repurposed as a courtroom. Center stage (where the pulpit and altar usually were) sat the "judge," the Bishop of the Nebraska Conference. The choir loft seated a jury of twelve other Nebraska ministers. Facing the judge and jury on the right and left sides of the congregation, church attorneys sat at tables in front of the first row of pews. On one side sat the prosecution (the Nebraska conference) and on the other the defense (Jimmy Creech). There were even gentleman standing in as what I guessed were Methodist bailiffs. And filling the pews behind both tables were scores of onlookers, some wearing Soulforce's "Stop Spiritual Violence" shirts, but most simply dressed in business-casual, as if for a Sunday night service.

The trial itself was a relatively brief affair, as Creech did not deny that he had in fact married the same-sex couple as accused. The jury quickly returned the expected "guilty" verdict. The real tension revolved around the issue of sentencing. Would the jury strip Creech of his ordination? Would they reprimand him but still enable him to retain his credentials as a minister? Or--as the pro-inclusion forces hoped--would the jury return no sentence at all?

Creech himself had asked the jury to do as much in his statement to them. He spoke simply but eloquently about why he had defied the church's rules, aligning his actions with a tradition of civil and ecclesiastical disobedience. By asking the jury to return no sentence, Creech was in essence asking the jury to join him in his act of protest against what he (and perhaps they) saw as an unjust, unchristian rule.

This time, the jury's deliberations dragged on. We in the audience/congregation moved outside to get some air, murmuring to ourselves about what the delay meant. Could it be that the jury was considering taking Creech's offer? By this time, all protests had ended. Fred Phelps and his crew had long since vacated the premises, and the assorted policemen summoned to handle Soulforce's morning mass-arrest had also gone. Everyone seemed weary that afternoon, just waiting for the jury to return.

In time I wandered back into the sanctuary, where more and more people were gathering, hearing some rumor that the jury's decision was at hand. But the waiting continued. Finally someone asked if anyone could perhaps play the piano.

I volunteered. Now, I had been the fill-in pianist for my parents' churches for some time but had been generally unable to practice (not having a piano at my disposal) for the last few months. I was rusty, but I could get through most hymns just fine. So I sat at the piano and took requests.

Some requests were for old standards--doctrinal favorites about faith and duty. Some were the newer social-justice songs (which were also harder to play, being more unfamiliar). I plunked along, and gradually more and more of the congregation joined in.

Then someone suggested "Here I Am, Lord"--a hymn that still felt new to me. It is not a Southern Baptist standard, and the first time I heard it I remember disliking this newfangled hymnizing. (It was also a mite trickier than "Just As I Am"). I began playing with some trepidation.

In walked the Bishop. My heart skipped, and my fingers slipped on the keys, but the Bishop waved at me to continue. Jimmy Creech handed him a hymnal open to the page, and we sang on. As we were finishing the last verse, everyone in the congregation standing and singing lustily, the jury filed in. They joined us on the chorus:

"Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord,
Where you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart."

I love that song now.

I fled from the piano to the front pew, as the Bishop gave the universal pastor sign for "please be seated."

"As we hear the sentence from the jury," he told us, "I'd like for there to be a division of the house. Would those who support the Reverend Creech please stand with him?"

As I got to my feet, I looked at the crowd behind me--a goodly number for a Sunday morning, really. Just moments before, all of us had been standing together, singing a hymn of common Christian commitment, one in the Spirit/one in the Lord. Now about two-thirds of those gathered stood with Creech, throwing into sharp relief those who pointedly remained seated.

The sentence was read: Creech was stripped of his ordination. He was a United Methodist minister no more. The Bishop thanked the jury, and Creech (anticipating this outcome) led a procession outside to speak to waiting reporters.

The image of the Body of Christ--standing together, then divided--remains at the core of my scholarship and practice. This, I realized, was community at its extremes--unified and conflicted. I keep that paradox of community before me as I ask how I can--must--live with those with whom I disagree deeply.

More tomorrow,

JF

Unity in the Body Of Christ: The Creech Trial, part I

This morning in church we sang one of my favorite hymns, "We Are One in the Spirit." For those who don't know, the lyrics are as follows:

We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
And we pray that our unity
May one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love.

If you'll indulge me in a bit of old-school text analysis: the fascinating thing (one of the fascinating things) about this hymn is the tension it presents between the now and the not-yet, the present indicative and future subjunctive moods. We Christians are one in God, insists the hymn (four times, in fact), but we pray that our unity may one day be restored, implying that in fact such unity does not at present exist.

In this tension I find the truest and most poignant picture of temporal Christian community. We are one, but we are as yet disunited. I have even had occasion to see this paradox manifested in performance.

In the fall of 1999, the then-Rev. Jimmy Creech, a United Methodist minister in the Nebraska Conference, was tried before an ecclesiastical court for violating United Methodist prohibitions against performing a holy union ceremony for a same-sex couple. This was the second time he had been tried. The first time, the court refused to convict, insisting that the sections of the Book of Discipline (the authoritative rules for Methodist polity) regarding homosexuality were meant as recommendations rather than as full-fledged rules.

The UM General Conference subsequently established that those sections, a part of the Discipline known as the Social Principles, were in fact regulative. Furthermore, the Church added formal prohibitions against the performance of same-sex holy unions by its pastors or on its properties. Creech, in an act of civil-ecclesiastical disobedience, defied these rules by solemnizing the union of a lesbian couple. Members of the Nebraska conference filed charges, and Creech was brought to trial.

I had met Pastor Creech the summer before at a gathering of GLBT-affirmative Methodists. There he asked if I would attend the trial and devise/produce some sort of theatrical commentary or protest. Eager beaver that I was, I said "of course." The trial coincided with my first semester in graduate school (PhD program in Theatre History), during which time I took a a class called "Performance and Social Change." One of our projects required that we team with a local group or organization that used performance in the service of its social change mission. I chose the United Methodist Church.

I prepped my little street theatre protest, found a ride to Nebraska from one of the Twin Cities' many liberal-progressive UM churches, and arrived at Grand Island, NE, to find that my best-laid plans for dramatic commentary were upstaged by the larger drama that was the trial itself.

This church trial had sent ripples throughout the UMC. Conservatives, fearing a decline of biblical standards, pushed for Creech to be punished, his ordination stripped. Liberals, of course, wanted to see Creech's role as pro-inclusion activist validated, perhaps through the court's rendering of a "no verdict" verdict or a hung jury. The trial as media event attracted reporters, gawkers, and activists from around the country. The Rev. Fred Phelps was there with his small band of sign-wielders ("God Hates Fags," "UMC=Fag Church," etc.). Other sign-bearers set up displays next to him (verses from Leviticus), though they declared that they had nothing to do with Phelps's display.

The event also marked one of the first public displays by Soulforce, a pro-inclusion ecumenical group founded by the Rev. Mel White. White had been a former activist/ghostwriter for the religious right working closely with Jerry Falwell. He subsequently defected, becoming a minister in the GLBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Church. Soulforce sought to use nonviolent protest techniques to advocate within various Christian denominations for LGBT inclusion and nondiscrimination. "Stop Spiritual Violence," read their T-shirts. Soulforce planned (and implemented) a mass-arrest, first blocking the doors of the church with their bodies and then being peacefully led away by a police officer to be booked and fined--all arranged in advance with the police in question (standard nonviolent protest technique). Close to one hundred Soulforce volunteers, all wearing "Stop Spiritual Violence" T-shirts spent the morning standing in line to be booked at a makeshift processing table staffed by local police officers. They sang civil rights-era standards ("We Shall Overcome," etc.)

Already, then, anything theatrical I could do paled in comparison with the multiple and conflicting performances happening all around me.

The biggest performance of all, though, took place within the Methodist Church assigned to host the trial itself. It was there, most of all, that I saw firsthand the unity/division tension I value in the "We Are One" hymn.

More tomorrow,

JF

From PK to Double PK

Still finishing up a research article due tomorrow... so another brief post.

Before the Steven Anderson side-track, I had been relating my (and my family's) transition from the conservative evangelicalism of the Southern Baptist Church to the mainline Protestantism of the United Methodist Church. In the course of that shift--about a three-year period in the early nineties when I was in high school--I discovered a love of theatre, I internalized a whole new perspective on God, and my father became a Methodist minister. Since Methodists are appointed by the conference bishop, our family moved from the mid-sized city near Oklahoma City to a tiny town near the Oklahoma/Arkansas border.

It was my senior year. Life in a small town was nothing new, really, but I had grown accustomed to the offerings of the larger city--a robust theatre program in the school, a large group of friends, a university atmosphere. The new town had a stoplight. As I said--tiny.

Nevertheless, my sister and I managed, with the help of a supportive teacher, to start a mini-theatre program there. I adapted to the school's smaller offerings (Spanish instead of Latin, for example), and made friends with folk there. Daddy settled into his familiar role as minister, though he had a new appreciation for how much more regularized the Methodist Church was compared to the Baptists. My sister found a social circle of her own, and she and I went back to being preacher's kids.

My mother, though, was not nearly as content. Having largely supported us through her teaching job for the past few years, going back to being "pastor's wife" as a full-time job did not hold special appeal. It's not that she loved teaching that much--she did not. But she had always been either a kind of informal co-minister with my father or a full-time breadwinner herself. In this particular church, the co-ministerial roles were already more or less filled by a capable congregation. Methodist churches, I find, tend to boast more self-sufficient congregations. Since the clergy itinerancy system rarely lets ministers stay for more than five years in one place, congregations often learn to keep the church's ministries afloat themselves. It left less for my mother to do.

As I've mentioned, my mother had a seminary degree herself--a Master of Religious Education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The MRE was at the time she earned it the "women's version" of the Master of Divinity, the terminal degree for ordained ministers. Since Baptists (holding to a literal reading of certain verses in the Bible) forbade women from ordination, the MRE was often seen as the obvious choice. Many times I heard Mama express some regret that she had not gone ahead and pursued the M-Div anyway.

It did not take long, however, for Daddy's immediate superior, the District Superintendent (DS), to notice both Mama's theological training and her desire to serve in the ministry. It was that DS who first encouraged Mama to pursue a path similar to that my father was already on: professional ministry as a pastor.

Now, the understanding at the time was that people coming into the ministry from other Protestant faiths, people who had degrees from non-Methodist seminaries, began as a "local pastor" (or "local licensed pastor," as they were called then). Local pastors have full authority of a minister in their local congregations, but they lack the "member in full connection" status of ordained Methodist clergy (e.g., the ability to vote as clergy at Annual Conference meetings). Instead, local pastors undergo a weeks-long condensed training and are assigned to a congregation or two. Daddy's plan was to serve as a local pastor until such time as he could update his seminary degree by taking a few more classes in Methodist history and polity from a nearby (sort-of nearby) seminary. At that time, his M-Div would be accepted by the UMC and he could pursue "elder" status--fully ordained membership.

The same process, our DS told us, could work for Mama.

Thus, soon after I entered college, my mother became a pastor, and I became a double PK.

I remain so proud of my mother for achieving her dream--realizing her calling--of being a minister.

At the same time as she was moving into her new role, however, I was making some other discoveries that greatly affected my faith life.

More tomorrow (when, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll have finished the article to my satisfaction),

JF

Too Different?

Brief thoughts, I'm afraid, as I'm writing a research paper under deadline.

It's almost time, I think, for me to leave Steven Anderson and other God-as-hate-filled fundamentalists. As I've written, I do my best to delve into his theological worldview, to distinguish him from generic labels like "bigot" or "hater." Both are, I've argued, misleading. His hatred for the most part is ancillary to the bulk of his ministry and doctrine, most of which focus on what he understands as love for others. And to be sure, the fact that he spends most of his time on door-to-door evangelism--often a sweat-drenched, thankless task--bespeaks motivations far more complex and (dare I say) positive than those attributed to him by people who hear nothing more than his "Why I Hate Barack Obama" sermon.

But that sermon exists, certainly, and the rhetoric he expresses there and in many other sermons is from my perspective anathema to any configuration of Christianity. Anderson and I understand God quite differently; our first principles about God, the assumptions that shape how we pray, read, speak, and think about God--these are utterly different. I wonder, sometimes, whether even God is big enough to encompass us both. Anderson, of course, would say not. God is not, for Anderson, endlessly elastic in divine regard and mercy. As a gay person, I have strayed forever beyond the bounds of God's grace. Having hated God past the point of God's patience, I cannot be saved. To the extent that I claim to be a Christian, I'm simply lying.

Such extreme differences intrigue me even as they worry me. I've long been fascinated by how communities of various sorts determine insider/outsider status. It's a truism of scholars of community such as Anthony Cohen that no community includes everyone. In order for a community to exist as such, it must be able to point to people not included in that community. The performance of community, then, consists of twin gestures of inclusion and exclusion. Some (the French theorist Jacques Ranciere in particular) have suggested that politics is what occurs when someone on the outside of a community makes a play for occupying the inside of that community, changing the rules or conventions that have up until then governed insider/outsider distinctions.

To be sure, I am interested in politics so defined. But I'm also interested in how those on the inside of one community regard those who live outside of their community or who exist in a different community. Are these others merely different but not necessarily better or worse, as Lutherans might consider Methodists? Are these others mistaken (i.e., they should be part of my community, but they've unfortunately chosen otherwise)? Or are these others evil? Anderson's take on reprobation gives him a comfortable way to imagine others (well, some others) as totally evil and inhuman.

A related question: at what point do differences between members of a community become so great as to shatter the community? Schism, of course, is the key term here for churches and denominations. There is much nervous talk about schisms in mainline Protestant denominations of late. The Episcopal Church, for instance, faces considerable strain within its members here in the US and within the Anglican Communion at large, all due to its liberal attitudes toward GLBT people in the church. By ordaining the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop, the Episcopal Church set off ripples of local church splits and Anglican dissent. Archbishop Rowan Williams has urged the Episcopal Church not to ordain any more openly GLBT members lest relations within the church suffer more. It remains to be seen whether the Episcopal Church will remain connected to its Anglican siblings.

The United Methodist Church faces similar tensions over similar issues. Debates regularly flare up over how to regard GLBT people--should they be ordained? should they be married? most recently--should they even be members? I have participated in many national, state, and local meetings of Methodists riven by such questions. I of course am a strong partisan for inclusion, being a self-identified practicing homosexual (as the phrase goes) myself.

But I do my best, even there, to get into the theological heads of those who honestly and fully believe that I should not be a member equally with them in the UMC. I try, in other words, to regard my opponent as my neighbor.

I wish I could say that I succeed. It is easier, in a way, to wax neighborly about Steven Anderson. I don't know him from Adam, really. I can listen to him on my iPod--or not. I don't have any plans to meet him personally. We exist in utterly separate spheres. But my fellow/sister Methodists--them I cannot so easily ignore or dismiss. Reading conservative Methodist rhetoric, I sometimes hear echoes of Anderson's attitude--these people (i.e., GLBT people like me) are not merely different, not merely outsiders, but utterly reprobate--corrupt and intent on destroying us.

Of course--and I do not mean to suggest a tit-for-tat equality here--sometimes I find that GLBT supporters have similar attitudes regarding those who see little or no place for GLBT people in the church.

That's why it bugs me to consider someone who claims to be Christian as being so different as Anderson (or Phelps) from anything I recognize as Christian...

More tomorrow,

JF

All the Time, For All People

Yesterday, I suggested that the image of "grace" I had from my Southern Baptist days was tarnished by a feeling that grace was a code-word for the capricious forbearance of a bully (isn't Biff graceful for not beating me up today, even though I clearly deserve it?). If that's Baptist grace, what's the alternative? Of course, a whole host of alternatives exist, many of which are likely taught and practiced by Baptists themselves. Nevertheless, as my family moved into the United Methodist Church, I had a whole new understanding of what grace can be.

This being the first Sunday of the month, I experienced a bit of that grace today through communion, which Methodists refer to as a "means of grace." Without knowing anything about the theology (reason, scripture, tradition, experience) underlying the ceremony, any observant visitor would note several key features that distinguish the Methodist practice of communion from the Baptist "Lord's supper."

First of all, there's the fact that Methodists celebrate communion often. Once a month is standard, but I've been part of many congregations that celebrate it weekly. Baptists, on the other hand, tend to celebrate (at least in my experience) once per quarter-year. On the surface, Methodism's comparative frequency bespeaks its closer ties to older, Catholic traditions of mass. Yet, while these ties exist, the focus of communion as common practice throughout the year binds the service closer to the regular life of the church.

In Baptist churches, I recall that communion (Lord's Supper, I should say--I rarely if ever heard it referred to as communion) interrupted the usual order of things. The sermon was shorter or done away with altogether. We sang fewer songs. Daddy (as minister) would read some sobering scriptures about the need to examine oneself to make sure that one was ready to receive the symbols of Christ's sacrifice and new covenant. People were very quiet, concentrating on remembering the proper conventions for a fairly rare event.

When I first encountered the Methodist preference for frequent communion, I had a moment when I thought oh, now it won't be special any more. In a way, I was right. Methodism makes the grace of God in Christ more ordinary, more accessible. God's grace isn't rare or singular but constant. Indeed, Methodists talk of God's grace not just in terms of Christ's passion and death on the cross but of every loving outreach by God toward humanity. For Methodists, this outreach--this passion of God to be at one with humanity (and for humanity to be at one with God) isn't the exception but the rule. Methodists even speak of prevenient grace--the "grace that goes before"--as a way of describing how God reaches out to us, shapes our lives and selves, and provides for us even before we are aware of God's doing so. This grace continues throughout mortal life, not descending at once in a singular conversion event, like some massive, Divine Download. No, grace is constant, as regular as breath, as heartbeat, as food.

The other major difference between Baptist and Methodist communions: in communion, Baptists perform a communal act of distinction from those not in their community. Only people who have been saved and baptized (by full immersion, preferably) may take communion.

I remember my pre-salvation days as a youngster, sitting next to Mama as she selected and held a pellet of cracker-like bread from the silver platter as it was passed around the congregation. Another platter followed, this time serving tiny cups filled with grape juice, and Mama would take one of these as well. Baptists wait until all have been served before--following the pastor's lead--taking the bread and "wine" together. As she waited, Mama would let my sister and I hold the cracker-pellet and the cup. I'd feel the smooth texture of the odd wafer (think of those rectangular, breath-freshening gum pieces that have hard candy coats--that's what the pellet looked and felt like). I'd sniff the juice as if it were fine wine. But only my mother could actually drink and eat them. I remember, too, the first time I got to hold and eat the bread and juice for myself.

Again, it can seem somewhat disappointing to shift to Methodism, where everyone gets bread (often real bread) and wine (still typically juice). But I've grown to love this feature of Methodism perhaps best of all. I wonder sometimes if lifelong Methodists realize the power of the simple institution of the Open Table. My father, fully cognizant of the differences between Baptists and Methodists, generally gives what I take to be the best explanation. I paraphrase the words he says at every communion, standing before the elements, facing outwards to the congregation, arms and hands stretched wide:

"My friends," he says, "this is God's table, not mine, not the church's, not the congregation's--God's. It is God who offers the invitation, and God offers it to all. You do not have to be a member of this or of any church. God invites everyone. Would you come?"

Thus the other major difference between Baptist grace and Methodist grace: not only is grace all the time; it is for all people. I remember explaining to my agnostic partner about this practice. He was incredulous. "What if someone came and wanted to take communion but was not a believer?" They are welcome to come. "But they don't believe. They'd be taking it ironically. Or cynically." Provided they didn't hinder anyone else, no one would stop them. We don't test people for integrity of belief. That's not our place in communion. God's invitation is to all, for all. Whether they believe or not is a matter for them to work out with God.

There's much more to Methodist grace, of course, but in communion the key features--features that among other things keep me a Methodist--remain central: all the time, for all people.

More tomorrow,

JF

The Grace of Queen Z

Prior to my family's switch from the Southern Baptist Church to the United Methodist Church, I had never give the idea of grace much thought. I knew that grace was a central part of my faith. We sang songs about how amazing was God's saving grace. But, in my Baptist upbringing, grace served at best as an adjunct to God's righteous judgment. Grace was God's withholding of our just deserts, i.e., hell. Being sinners, we deserve eternal hell. God, without having to, intervenes, offering us the chance to turn to Christ. That's grace for Baptists as I understood it.

The problem is that grace, in this configuration, gets mired in the same problems I've long had with hell-based evangelism (and hell-based faith) in general. Grace, in the Baptist view, works within a larger context of a God willing--even eager, depending upon the verses you choose to look at--to punish those who reject God. We are sinners in the hands of an angry God. God's forbearance is the grace for which we are to praise God.

Here's what rubs me wrong about this: suppose that you lived in an autocracy, under absolute dictatorial rule of an absolutely powerful ruler. Suppose that this ruler (Queen Z, let's call her) promulgates an endlessly complicated, intimate, and impossible-to-keep-perfectly set of rules for her subjects. It is illegal, for instance, not merely to make speeches against Queen Z in public but also to say anything subversive in private--or even to think about saying something against her. Ultimately, everyone in the society will at some point or another transgress this body of rules. The problem? Queen Z has established that, as much as she loves her subjects, she cannot be expected to tolerate fifth columnists. Anyone found guilty of breaking any of her laws, therefore, is condemned to painful death.

Obviously, this is a fantasy. But scholars and survivors of totalitarian regimes point out that his is how authoritarian governments in general operate. They create a set of laws so invasive and all-encompassing that everyone in the society is guaranteed to break them eventually. Everyone in the society is therefore guilty--and everyone knows it. Such societies also tend to encourage formal or informal systems of tattling, watching neighbors for transgressions and reporting those transgressions to the authority. For Christians, of course, the watchfulness of neighbors is moot since God (like Santa Claus) sees all and knows all. (Of course, this hasn't stopped Christian societies throughout history from adopting ideologies of informing-against, such as Puritan New England during the witchcraft trials or Spain during the Spanish Inquisition).

Back to the fantasy, though: Suppose Queen Z or her minions catch someone expressing some mild degree of impatience at, say, how inefficiently the trains are running nowadays. The person has transgressed the law and been found guilty. Just as the person, the convicted dissenter, the secret rebel against Queen Z--just as this person is about to face the tortuous execution, word comes down from Her Majesty: the sentence is remitted. The person can go free to sin no more.

Word spreads about how grace-filled Queen Z is. Rallies are organized to celebrate Queen Z's mercy and love for her people. And laws get added to the effect that questioning Queen Z's grace is itself evidence of capital-punishment-worthy treason. Grace thus functions as, yes, a kind of unearned mercy from the figure who is both offended and empowered to redress that offense. But grace also serves to occlude the fact that the figure's authority is unjust, that the offense should not have been an offense (or at least not a capital offense) in the first place. Grace ideologically short-circuits the question begged by the entire system: why is Queen Z worthy of honor in the first place?

It's difficult for me not to see the Baptist version of grace as operating similarly. God asserts a standard--perfection--that no human can possibly meet, and God specifies that the penalty for imperfection is an eternity in Hell. To call grace God's merciful snatching-away of his elect from that fate begs the question: what kind of just God would make any human transgression into grounds for an eternity--an eternity, mind--of unending, mind-blowing torment? Certainly, in such a grisly system, it's happier to focus on grace; it narrows one's focus to a less pathological feature of God's personality. But it's unsatisfying to a growing number of unchurched (or dechurched) people. And it's unsatisfying to me.

I was not, as a Baptist, as aware or articulate about my problems with evangelical soteriology as I am now. But I do remember that I tolerated grace as a part of faith rather than celebrating it. To focus on grace as a point of worship seemed to me on some level too much like praising the schoolyard bully for not spiting on me or tripping me as I walked by. "How merciful and graceful Biff is. I deserved tripping, certainly, but in Biff's wisdom Biff extended me the Grace of Passage." Distasteful.

One of the most surprising things about becoming Methodist, then, was learning a whole different way of seeing grace--a definition defined not by God's inaction (which, again, could be due to boredom or indifference as easily as it could be due to love--evangelical salvation does not require that God love humans, merely that God save them from divine judgment). Rather, the Methodist tradition sees grace as God's love-filled action, God's ceaseless efforts to make us one with God.

More tomorrow,

JF

Baptist to UMC--the Quadrilateral

Switching to the United Methodist Church after a lifetime spent as Southern Baptists, as my family did in the early 1990s, challenged me to re-think my faith practice without many of the components I had long considered essential to that practice. The UMC's connectional rather than congregational structure meant that ministers and congregations worked within a standardized set of procedures and theological boundaries. The closer ties to Anglican and other high-church traditions made services and ordinances more formal.

But the most significant paradigm shifts I had to navigate were theological. As is the case in any denomination as large and longstanding as the UMC, Methodist doctrine is complex and multifaceted. Explaining all of its intricacies is beyond my abilities. I want instead to focus on three elements of UMC doctrine, that gave me a way to think of Christianity beyond evangelicalism.

First, although Methodists revere the Bible as the inspired and authoritative word of God, they do not espouse a "Bible-only" doctrine. I have recounted in past posts the "Bible-believing," plain/literal-sense, no-fancy-learning-necessary ethos underlying much of conservative evangelicalism. All you need, insist many evangelical churches, is a good Bible and the Spirit to lead you in reading it.

Historians of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, however, point out that evangelicalism in practice does not, can not, and has never worked purely by the People of God reading the Divine Words and acting on them in perfect accord. (Indeed, there are many stories in the 1800s of people locking themselves away with a Bible, reading it in the Spirit to see what God was really saying through God's Word, and emerging with profoundly Unitarian-Universalist conclusions). The sick, sad, truth is that different people will read the same text--even a divine text like the Bible--in radically divergent ways. As historians are quick to point out, the early Bible-believers also had strong, charismatic leaders who dictated exactly how believers were to be led in reading the scripture, grappling with its apparent contradictions, interpreting its ambiguities, and deciding (above all) which parts were more important to value than others.

There is to this day surprisingly little admission on the part of evangelicals that interpretive consensus by a few plays any part in shaping the evangelical theology and practice of the many. So dedicated are many conservative evangelicals to the notion of sola scriptura (i.e., Luther's argument that scripture rather than Church tradition ought to be authoritative) that they scoff at the very idea of a hermeneutic practice more complicated than "just read what it says."

I admit that the most common cause of my frustration with evangelical spokespeople I listen to or encounter comes from their tendency to meet differences of belief and practice with a smug, "Well, I just do what the Bible says." And yet, when pressed by a knowledgeable critic about why they manifestly do not do everything the Bible says (e.g., impose the death penalty for homosexuals, refuse to wear clothing made from two different fibers, keep slaves, honor the Jewish Sabbath), out come a whole host of complex interpretive guidelines not themselves contained in scripture: "Oh, see, that's the Purity code, and Christians don't have to follow that..." To be clear: I do not blame people for having interpretive or hermeneutic frames through which they read scripture, but I do expect that they be honest enough to admit such frames exist.

The Methodist tradition mirrors other traditions in recognizing and celebrating the fact that, of the many ways to regard scripture, Methodists practice a particular way. Methodists are not shy about valuing the writings of John Wesley as primary interpretive guides to use when reading scripture. But Methodists do not affirm simply: "Bible alone, with help from Wesley." Indeed, Methodists embrace what they call the Quadrilateral, a philosophy of balancing the testimony of scripture with three other considerations: reason, tradition, and experience.

Instantly, such a view makes scripture into something other than a stand-in for God. The more I learned about reading, writing, and literature, the more I realized how untenable it was to view the Bible as the literal, inerrant, infallible words of God written down by men. Human language is just too tricky a vessel to contain the flow of Divine discourse. Insofar as words are read, heard, or otherwise taken in by people differently, basing the whole of Christian faith and practice on the assumption that all true Christians read the Bible in one particular way strains credulity and produces a culture of heretic-hunting (is everyone reading just the correct way?) and schism (I don't think you're reading correctly, so I'm starting my own church).

The quadrilateral forces other factors than pure reading to share the burden of discerning What It Is We Christians Should Do. It expects and allows for divergent readings while recognizing overtly that limitations around those readings exist. It frees Methodists from being stuck following culturally bound norms espoused in the Bible (i.e., slavery, subjugation of women) while making it difficult simply to shift with the present-day cultural wind.

Most of all, the quadrilateral recognizes that, as Christians, we worship not a book, not even a God contained in a book, but a dynamic God-Spirit-Savior who speaks and acts constantly even today. Certainly that God acts and speaks through the book especially--but not exclusively. God gives us minds to reason, experiences to learn from, and forerunners in faith to converse with.

Encountering a tradition in which I could think beyond the (secretly unique Baptist understandings of) the literal reading of Scripture was life-giving for me.

More tomorrow,

JF

Creedal and Pastoral

After defining myself for so long as a Southern Baptist Preacher's Kid, I shifted along with my family into the United Methodist Church. As I mentioned yesterday, Methodism differs both in organization and in feel from Baptist traditions. Pastors are appointed to churches by their bishop rather than hired by local congregations. Methodist services are more sedate, more formal, and more consciously connected to the traditions of mainstream Christianity.

I must admit that, at first, I was not a fan of the Methodist tradition. I liked my life in the mid-sized (but big by my standards) town we lived in. I liked being part of a theatre program at high school. I liked the hellfire-free, unconditional love-heavy teaching of the youth leader at the Baptist church. In short, I didn't know or trust this new Methodism.

As my parents educated themselves about the UMC's beliefs, however, I began to see that Methodism represented a next step that was in keeping with my own theological drift out of conservative evangelicalism. Now, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was himself an evangelist, one of the spearheads of the Great Awakening--a revival of Protestant activity and theological innovation. Nevertheless, Methodism is considered today not an evangelical denomination but a "mainline" Protestant denomination (along with others like Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and United Churches of Christ), tied closely to historically long-lived and connectional faith traditions.

While many Methodist congregations and ministers espouse beliefs that bear strong resemblance to those of conservative evangelicals, Methodism as a whole side-stepped the fundamentalist upsurge of the late 1800s/early 1900s, the subsequent marginalization of fundamentalism in the 1920s, and the revival of neo-evangelicalism in the 1940s and 50s. Methodists also missed out largely on the "battle for the Bible"--the inerrancy wars--that so transformed the Southern Baptist Convention.

Radical transformation of that sort is relatively rare in Methodist history (though not unheard-of, such as over the issue of slavery) thanks in part to its creedal orientation. Whereas Baptists, like many evangelicals, resist imposing doctrinal creeds upon their members, Methodists overtly and often reaffirm their commitment to a set of doctrinal standards (the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the various writings of John Wesley). They therefore enjoy a stability that many evangelical churches lack. Theological innovation does happen, but very slowly and within some basic limits. Non-creedal traditions, bound often only by "what the Bible says," are by comparison ill-equipped to deal with theological disagreements and are prone to schism (partially explaining the large and ever-growing number of evangelical subdivisions).

Also unlike many evangelical churches, Methodists join other mainline denominations in requiring that their ministers dedicate themselves to advanced study in theology, Biblical interpretation, and church history/practice. Baptist ministers may (and often do) have the Master of Divinity (the M-Div) from Baptist seminaries, but they do not have to. The populist impulse of Bible-believing--You don't need fancy learnin' to understand the clear Word of God--translates often into a less-is-more resistance to higher education. (Of course, post-purge, the theological and hermeneutic education offered by Southern Baptist seminaries is of a limited range). Wesley, however, was an avid autodidact, and his love of learning informs the Methodist ethos that their ministers be professionally educated (i.e., that theological education is a good and positive thing rather than a dangerous dalliance with apostasy).

The most obvious difference for me between Methodists and Baptists, however, had to do with Methodism's lack of a central stress upon the individual conversion experience. As I've explored, the bulk of the Baptist solar system orbits around "getting saved"--formally and as a singular experience trusting Christ so as to avoid the eternal torment of Hell.

As far as I could tell, nothing like this existed for Methodists. Sure, they had a part of the service at the end called "the invitation," but the invitation seemed less about "getting saved" and more about "joining the church." The "testimony," a stock genre in Baptist churches, was almost completely absent in Methodist churches. Even the language was different. A question such as "When did you get saved?" (a subject as basic as the alphabet for Baptists) would likely be met with a confused look. Hell and all its attendant anxiety simply played no real part in Methodist discourse, not at least when compared to the Baptists.

What then did they believe if not in getting saved?

More tomorrow,

JF