The United Methodist Church's General Conference and the Question of Welcoming and Including LGBTQ People: A Reflection and Prediction (UMC Will Not Move to Welcome LGBTQ People)

* UMC offer of "all" does not include LGBTQ people.

The videotaped theological conversation between Ivone Gebara and me that I've just posted here mentions several times the prophetic witness of Rev. Gilbert Caldwell, a longtime civil rights activist who marched with Dr. King — it mentions Gil Caldwell's prophetic witness within the United Methodist Church, as he stands with fellow Methodists calling on their church to welcome and include LGBTQ human beings. As I've noted several times in discussing Gil Caldwell's civil rights activism, he and other United Methodists who protest the exclusive and condemnatory policy of the UMC towards LGBT people have been arrested at General Conference for doing so.

Embracing and Affirming LGBTQ Diversity Within the Black Church: Notes from a Conference Sponsored by New Millennium Baptist Church, Little Rock

Fred Clark, Slacktivist

As I mentioned on Saturday, this weekend, Steve and I attended a conference on "Embracing and Affirming LGBTQ Diversity Within the Black Church" sponsored by New Millennium Baptist church in Little Rock. Those of us attending this wonderful event made a covenant not to tweet or share personal information revealed by participants in conference discussions, but unless I completely misunderstand, we're welcome to share information about the conference itself and about the important discussions that took place over the course of the weekend.

African-American United Methodist Minister Asks Other African-American Ministers to Support LGBT Rights: Heads of White Heterosexual Catholic Men Explode at NCR

I know some Bilgrimage readers have been following (and participating in) the mind-blowing discussion of Gil Caldwell's Religion News Service article at National Catholic Reporter in the past several days, because I can see your contributions in the discussion thread. For those who don't know what this discussion is about: Reverend Gilbert H. Caldwell is a United Methodist minister with a long, admirable history of advocating for equal rights for people of color within the United States and in the church in which he's ordained. His book Something Within recounts his life story, his days of marching with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights movement, his years of work for racial justice and reconciliation in both the culture at large and the Christian churches. (I've blogged about Gil Caldwell's work in the past: click his name in the labels below for my previous postings about him.)

Gil Caldwell on RMN Blog: A Call for Responses re: Churches and Inclusion

The Reconciling Ministries Network blog has a posting today by United Methodist minister Gil Caldwell, whose prophetic ministry on behalf of justice and inclusion of gay and lesbian persons in the United Methodist Church I value greatly.  I’ve blogged repeatedly about Caldwell at Bilgrimage.  I won’t cite those postings.  Anyone interested in finding them can simply enter “Caldwell” into the search engine for the blog, and they’ll pop up.  Or click on "Gil Caldwell" in the list of labels for this posting.

I want to mention Gil Caldwell’s latest posting at the RMN blog for this reason: it contains a call to action.  I want to support this call to action by passing on Rev. Caldwell’s request to readers of this blog.

The Kind of Place from Which Hate Comes: Discerning the Spirit in Political Decisions

In a previous posting on this blog, I noted a brilliant observation of Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell from this year’s United Methodist General Conference (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/04/dirty-money-united-methodist-church-and_28.html). At a panel discussion sponsored by Soulforce, Rev. Caldwell spoke about the interconnected –isms by which social groups (including churches) engineer the denigration and exclusion of despised outsiders.

Dirty Money: The United Methodist Church and the IRD

Interesting news from the United Methodist General Conference in Ft. Worth. On Saturday, Soulforce held a rally outside the Convention Center to ask delegates gathered inside—at the big table—to pray and think about full inclusion of their LGBT brothers and sisters at their big table.

A report on this rally is found on the United Methodist News Service website for General Conference: Robin Russell, “Black Civil Rights Veterans Advocate Inclusion”