Discourse Rules for Holy Conferencing: Speaking Truth in Love

In my next series of postings, I’d like to spell out some discourse rules that, in my totally unsolicited view, would help churches of the radical middle stay faithful to their traditions of holy conferencing and sacred conversation. In my humble opinion, these discourse rules would do much to further the holy conferencing of all Christian churches that have any interest at all in remaining in fruitful dialogue with the culture of their day—that is, church traditions that don’t want merely to turn their back on culture and hurl scriptural or doctrinal invectives at it, as if the world is not God’s parish.

I don’t pretend to any sort of comprehensiveness in the list that follows. I have drafted these as I observe, listen to, and pray (all from afar) about the holy conferencing that has took place at the latest UMC General Conference. These ground rules arise out of my own experience and theological reading, and probably have many different theological and philosophical sources. If there’s any one primary source from which I have derived them, it’s the conversation about religion and public life in American life that has been going on for some decades now, and about which I have published for several decades.

Discourse Rule One:

1. In effective holy conferencing that aims at the practice of faithful Christian discipleship, truth claims need to be backed by evidence and sources that are accessible to all, and capable of being evaluated by all.
   

This is crucially important in discussions of complex issues of morality that require attention to the most compelling testimony of the natural and social sciences.

A case in point is homosexuality. In any public Christian discussion of this topic, every participant has, of course, the right to state her or his opinion, bias, interpretation of scripture and tradition—provided, of course, that the opinion as so stated is not a hateful attack on any group of people. People have a right to believe and to state that the moon is made of green cheese, if they wish to do so.

But if public conversation in an ecclesial discernment process of an issue like where to “put” our LGBT brothers and sisters is to be effective and to further faithful Christian discipleship, the discussion has to move beyond expressions of opinion and to search for the truth. Not to seek the truth when people’s lives are radically affected, positively or negatively, by decisions contingent on a public discussion of an issue like this is to abandon fidelity to the gospel, which challenges us always to ask how our decisions and beliefs affect real people who live real lives in the real world.

If the topic under discussion is, as it was in medieval Christianity, whether the sun revolves around the earth, I might take the floor in holy conferencing to advance all kinds of scriptural warrants for my belief that the sun revolves around the earth. Christians in the middle ages did precisely this when this topic was discussed in church forums.

I might also add my deeply held conviction that changing how scripture has been viewed for centuries would be disastrous for the church and the world—that people would stop believing in what the church teaches if it admits it has been wrong about such an important matter, that the scriptures are inerrant, that changing such a central belief would result in social chaos and the decay of social institutions.

But I shouldn’t expect to be listened to carefully or believed if I didn’t also seek the truth about heliocentrism from whatever scientific sources are available to me, particularly when those sources have devloped refined techniques for helping me understand the relationship of the earth to the sun. As a Christian who believes that the world is God’s parish, I am committed to listening to scripture and the church, as well as to the most credible scientific sources possible, since I believe that God speaks in manifold ways in the worldwide parish.

As a Christian in such a dialogue, I would also approach these questions with a strong degree of humility, knowing that the church had sometimes been deeply wrong in its previous teachings and had, in fact, caused serious harm to human beings by committing itself to wrong interpretations and wrong teachings, including teachings that incorporated outmoded scientific information. The churches have in the past executed witches, burnt Jews at the stake for being Christ-killers, held human beings in chattel slavery, taught that women are misbegotten males, and so on.

Unless those involved in a process of holy conferencing listen carefully to, weigh, and ask for further information about the truth claims advanced by each participant, the church cannot engage in sound discernment, move forward to meet the demands of the future, or provide good pastoral ministry to the world in which it lives.

What do I mean by listening carefully to, weighing, and asking for information about truth claims? To return to the case of homosexuality (that is, to the real lives of real gay brothers and sisters, since that is ultimately what the discussion is about), churches would be remiss—they would not be upholding a sound discernment process, they would not be faithful to their commitment to seek truth and to provide good pastoral ministry—if they discounted or distorted the best scientific evidence at their disposal, when they conference.

It is certainly possible for Christians today to believe and to propose that homosexuality is “curable,” is a mental illness, is “caused” (in males, who seem to be the predictable focus of these discussions, even when this bias is never brought to the table) by overbearing mothers and weak fathers, will be rooted out when boys have strong male role models, does not exist in the nations of the global South, etc.

I say it is possible to believe and to propose these entirely erroneous theories. But they should not hold sway—they should not have legitimacy—in the ecclesial context of holy conferencing, if the church engaged in holy conferencing really is committed to finding the truth, so that its witness is truthful and not harmful to those receiving that witness.

Much valuable time—time the church can better spend in binding up wounds, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked—is misspent in holy conferencing, when people are permitted to postulate outrageous pet theories that have no basis at all in truth. Good holy conferencing sets ground rules that require truth claims to be backed by evidence and sources accessible to all, so that all can evaluate that evidence and those sources—and so that valuable time is not wasted in fighting losing battles about issues long since resolved by scientific research.

When it becomes apparent that groups within a church continuously seek to push truth claims that lack the backing of sound evidence and good sources, it is incumbent on those engaged in holy conferencing to challenge those brothers and sisters in Christ to be more careful about the truth, and to examine their motives in disseminating widely discounted “evidence” in th light of the gospel, with its challenge that we live in the truth in order not to harm others.

I say it is incumbent to challenge those promoting harmful theories based on pseudo-science, and using scripture to justify their commitment to bad science (to untruth), to challenge these brothers and sisters in Christ to be examine their motives in disseminating misinformation, because repeated attempts to bring untruth that is harmful to some brothers and sisters in Christ to the table in holy conferencing suggests ill intent. When lies such as the lie that people choose their sexual orientation and can opt out of the gay “lifestyle” through prayer and therapy continue to be brought to the table of holy conferencing even though these lies are readily disproven by abundant scientific evidence, there is clearly more going on in the attempt to repeat lies than a lack of concern for the truth.

Holy conferencing is a discernment process. Discernment calls on the people of God to seek the truth, to try to avoid doing harm to others as we do so, and to discern the motives of those who persistently try to divert the discernment process from truth-seeking. Fidelity to the gospel—to doing good and avoiding evil—requires us to engage in such discernment, even when naming the true motives of others causes controversy. We will not hear the voice of the Spirit if we are moved by spirits that are less noble than the Holy Spirit, in our holy conferencing.