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.

In United Methodist Church, "Ecclesiastical Disobedience Is on the Rise" Over Issue of Gay Marriage

For the New Yorker, Casey N. Cep reports that the United Methodist Church is deeply divided over the issue of full inclusion of LGBTI members in the life of the church--especially after the church started putting fathers on trial for officiating at the weddings of their gay sons. At its latest General Conference, UMC conference delegates voted 61% to 39% against the full inclusion of gay members and for upholding the ban on such inclusion that has been inscribed in the church's Book of Discipline since 1972.

Mid-Week News Roundup: Catholic Gender Gap and Schism, Gay American Diaspora

There are a number of excellent articles online in the past several days, which touch on themes central to this blog. Colleen Baker has an outstanding statement yesterday at Enlightened Catholicism about the gender gap in Catholic church participation.

As Colleen notes, though male participation in church services is lower than female participation in most churches, in Catholicism, the gender gap is pronounced: in the U.S., the gap is double what it is in other churches. (And I suspect it is higher still in Europe.)

Colleen notes several different window-dressing responses to this phenomenon on the part of the institutional church—e.g., the attempt to scapegoat gay priests for sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. But she thinks these window-dressing approaches are not going to work. They won’t work because the ultimate problem is rooted in a lack of respect for the “dignity” of men doing ordinary things like working, marrying, and raising families.

I agree with Colleen. Many studies show that male participation in church life began to drop off in Europe in the 19th century, when leaders of many churches appeared to cast their lot with wealthy ruling economic and social elites, and turned their backs on working families. To the extent that churches gave the impression that they were for owners and against workers, they began to lose adherents—working men, in particular.

During this period of rising disaffection with the church among working folks, many European men began to conclude that the church simply did not have their best interest—their dignity as workers and human beings—at heart. And evidently the churches have not been successful in altering that perception, no matter how hard they have tried to create a “muscular Christianity” designed to convince real men that the church is congenial to their interests.

I also highly recommend Frank Cocozzelli’s article on the politics of schism in the Catholic church in the latest issue of Public Eye. Summaries of the article are also at Talk to Action and Street Prophets (here and here).

Cocozzelli notes the deliberate attempt of some contemporary leaders of the Catholic church, including Pope Benedict himself, to drive dissidents out of the church, to create a leaner, meaner church of true believers. And he relates this attempt very convincingly to a political agenda designed to serve the interests of economic elites.

As I’ve done on this blog, he notes that the influential right-wing American activist group called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) was founded by leading American Catholic neocons to split Protestant churches with a strong legacy of social justice teachings. It’s not difficult to show that IRD has worked very hard to use wedge issues like gay rights to try to divide the Anglican/Episcopal, United Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, primarily in order to mute the witness of these churches re: issues of social justice in the public sphere.

And so movements to “purify” the Catholic church theologically, to silence theologians who raise critical questions, to return to a Latin Mass, to embrace anti-semitic right-wing schismatic groups like the Society of St. Pius X (the SSPX or Lefebvrites), have a decisive political intent. This is to return the Catholic church to its pre-Vatican II stance of support for right-leaning authoritarian regimes that give free reign to the haves, and keep the have nots in their place.

Running against that strong current in Catholicism is, of course, a clear and persuasive body of social teaching that critiques the unbridled market and challenges owners and managers to treat workers like persons and not things. And so one of the objectives of political and economic groups working to create schism in the Catholic church around theological and moral issues is to undercut the Catholic church’s important legacy of social teaching, and to silence Catholics, including some Catholic church leaders, who dare to articulate that legacy clearly in the public sphere.

I think Cocozzelli is right on the mark with this analysis. Anyone who seeks to analyze the liturgy wars or issues like perpetual adoration of the Eucharist in the Catholic church without adverting to the political backdrop against which these battles are being fought will not see the real and full significance of what, at first glance, appear to be parochial, in-house battles between Catholics about issues with no political significance.

I also appreciate Andrew Sullivan’s statement yesterday at his Daily Dish blog about the new American diaspora. Sullivan notes a growing tendency of highly qualified and accomplished American citizens to relocate abroad.

To be specific: many gay American couples, including couples in which one partner or the other lives with HIV, are choosing to leave the U.S. and live overseas. Why? Same-sex couples in civil unions are, in general, regarded as married couples, for all intents and purposes, in most other developed nations around the world nowadays.

In the U.S., not only do many of us have no access to the rights and privileges of either marriage or civil unions, many of us live in areas in which we have no legal defense against being fired, denied housing, or turned away from hospital visitations to our loved ones, solely because we are gay.

I live in such an area. I know first-hand the constant anxiety these possibilities create for me and others. Though I have a partner who works full-time at an institution with a stated non-discrimination policy, that same institution does not grant partner health benefits to same-sex partners. I live with no health coverage because we cannot afford to pay for health coverage.

Life for many gay citizens of this nation is a daily struggle against strong odds created solely by prejudice, and as Andrew Sullivan notes, the election of Mr. Obama and a Democratic Congress has not given us hope for progress in the foreseeable future. We have long known that under a Republican-dominated federal administration, we will see our humanity assaulted and our rights eroded.

We did not anticipate seeing this happen under a Democratic administration, despite our dismal experiences under the last several Democratic administrations. And now we’re seeing once again that, when push comes to shove, we are still regarded as sub-human, even by those who tell us they are fierce advocates for our rights.

I’ve said before and I will say again on this blog: if I were younger and able to uproot myself with more ease, I would definitely move someplace, anyplace, that treats me and my sort more humanely. I would definitely advise younger gay folks in the U.S. to think seriously about relocating to one of the many countries in which life is not such a struggle for gay people, simply because we are gay.

We have too much to contribute, to keep wasting it in places that do not welcome us and affirm our humanity. When those who assault our humanity continue to take what we have to offer—our talents, our hard work, our money—and then kick us to the curb without shame or compunction, it’s time to find places that value us and our gifts more.

More Welcome at Work Than in Church: State of the Workplace for Gay Citizens

In a posting last week (here), I cited a recent interview with Soulforce co-founder Mel White (here), in which he notes that the movement to treat gays as human persons with rights equal to those of other persons is far more advanced in the laws and practices of most Western cultures than in the churches.

Mel White notes that the United Methodist Church remains split about the question of whether even to admit gay members, let alone affirm the human dignity and divine worth of those members in God’s eyes once they are admitted. He notes that, even as awareness of the human rights of gay persons is increasing in Western cultures, many churches are permitting themselves to be held hostage by right-wing political groups whose real agenda is to undercut their traditions of social engagement and solidarity with the marginal.

In a posting last Friday (here), I noted the continuing strong influence of groups like the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) in the United Methodist Church. As numerous well-documented postings of mine about this political organization have noted, IRD is essentially a neoconservative political-activist organization operating under the guise of a watchdog group to preserve orthodoxy in mainline Protestant churches in the U.S.

Its real goal is to eviscerate the tradition of critical social teaching in these churches. It uses wedge issues like abortion and homosexuality to divide churches, to siphon away energy for and commitment to social teachings critical of rapacious free-market capitalism and injurious to the poor, and to distract church members from the really significant moral challenges facing churches today.

Many churches have only slowly become aware of the real game of groups like IRD. These groups have been given large room to participate (some would say, meddle) in the inner deliberations of various churches up to now, in part because these groups can buy that room with their abundant funding sources and connections to the politically and economically powerful.

As Frederick Clarkson notes in a 2006 PublicEye.org article about the battle for the soul of mainline churches in the U.S. (here), unless church leaders and members begin to recognize the political context of what now seem to be internal church struggles around abortion and homosexuality, and unless they repudiate the undue influence on church institutions of these right-wing political organizations masquerading as watchdogs for orthodoxy, the churches will end up becoming mouthpieces for the rich and powerful, rather than what they are meant to be, prophetic critics of the status quo.

Clarkson quotes Rev. John Thomas of the United Church of Christ, who calls on the mainline churches to become more critically aware of the game that groups like IRD are playing with the churches, and to combat attempts of such groups to take over the churches. Rev. Thomas states,

“Groups like the Evangelical Association of Reformed, Christian and Congregational Churches and the Biblical Witness Fellowship,” he said last year, “are increasingly being exposed even as they are increasingly aggressive.” Their relationship to the right-wing Institute for Religion and Democracy and its long-term agenda of silencing a progressive religious voice while enlisting the church in an unholy alliance with right-wing politics is no longer deniable. United Church of Christ folk like to be “nice,” to be hospitable. But, to play with a verse of scripture just a bit, we doves innocently entertain these serpents in our midst at our own peril.

And, as if to confirm Mel White’s observation that the churches are lagging far behind the secular culture in recognizing the human worth and rights of gay persons (and are lagging behind because they have allowed themselves to be captivated by right-wing political-activist groups like IRD), in a recent article entitled “Better Gay at Work Than in Church” (here), Paul Gorrell reports that many secular employers are far ahead of the churches, when it comes to granting equal rights to gay employees.

Gorrell cites a recent Human Rights Campaign report on “The State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans,” which shows that 85% of Fortune 500 companies have protections based on sexual orientation for employees, 57% offer partnership benefits, and 18 Fortune 100 companies offer transgender-inclusive health benefits. Gorrell concludes, “In general, gay people are more welcome at work than they are at church.”

Sad, no? And, sadly, I concur. As I’ve noted on this blog, based on Steve’s and my experiences in Catholic and United Methodist colleges and universities, I would not encourage any openly gay LGBT young person to consider a career in most churches or church-owned institutions. The churches and their institutions are, on the whole, failing lamentably at being welcoming places for those who are gay or lesbian.

The agenda of the Maxie Dunnams (here) of the world—and the churches and their institutions are unfortunately full of Maxies—is decidedly to make anyone who is gay or lesbian unwelcome. No matter what Jesus said or what Jesus did.

This is proud bigotry and proud hypocrisy. Those engaging in this anti-ministry of exclusion in the name of Christ are, of course, cynically aware that they do not and do not intend to hold heterosexual church members to the standards they wish to impose on gay and lesbian members. The selective and hypocritical appeal to standards about celibacy in singleness and fidelity in marriage is bluntly not about sexual morality at all: it's about keeping LGBT people out of the churches and demonstrating to us that we are despised and unwelcome.

Sadly, many secular employers today offer young gay folks what the churches claim to offer, but refuse to deliver, when the one knocking at the door is gay. Young gay folks entering the workforce who want affirmation of themselves as human beings, economic and social resources to live with dignity, freedom from discrimination, a place in which to offer their talents and fulfill themselves as human beings, hope for the future, a social space in which to form healthy, long-term, committed relationships, would be well advised to avoid most churches and their institutions.

People do have to find salvation and hope somewhere. When the churches’ doors are decisively closed to gay folks, we’ll look elsewhere. That’s the only choice the churches are willing to offer us right now, in many instances.

A Reader Writes: Did Vatican 2 Happen?

A very astute reader of this blog left a wonderful response to my posting yesterday about Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s recent address to the nation (here). Two other astute readers have added valuable replies to that response.

I’ve been thinking all day about the points these readers are making. It strikes me that there’s something very important about the questions this thread is raising, and they deserve extended conversation. I do not have all the answers to the significant questions the reader who began this thread is asking.

So I’d like to offer this space as a space for further discussion of the reader’s response. My hope is that by doing this, I will open a conversation to which many voices contribute. My own perspectives here are limited and partial, and need other perspectives to complement them.

First, here’s what Brian has to say:

In the last decades of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th century, the Episcopalian Church (Anglicanism in the USA) grew by 300%. I read this stat in Nicholas Lemann's book, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy.

Responding to the many waves of mostly non-Protestant, Eastern and Southern European immigration that America welcomed in the late 19th century, it seems that many white Americans were looking for some conservative, respectable institution with cultural gravitas that would serve as a redoubt for "American" values or, in a variation, "Anglo-Saxon Civilization". In this way, the ECUSA, which was known as "the Republican Party at prayer" back then, became the spiritual home for the Establishment.

My feeling is that throughout the 1990s and up until late, this phenomenon has been happening on a smaller scale in the Catholic Church in the US.

Let us consider some well known converts to Catholicism in the USA in recent years:

the late Richard John Neuhaus (not as recent, but deserves mentioning), Senator Sam Brownback, reporter Richard Novak, former Governor Jeb Bush (brother of you know who), conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham, Governor Bobby Jindal, Fox News Supply-Sider Lawrence Kudlow(!), one-time Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, and the sleazy ex-literature professor Deal Hudson, now a full time GOP booster... oh and (drumroll please) this Easter 2009, Newt Gingrich will enter the Catholic Church.

Basically, they're all GOP activists and operatives who, other than opposing abortion, don't seem to espouse the Catholicism I was taught. I don't know much about Jeb Bush, but, well, he's got some baggage, let's just say that.

Most of these names are found within or around the Beltway in DC. I've read that one of the biggest sources of these right-wing conversions is the Opus Dei center in DC, where a priest named C. John McCloskey works. It seems to me that these converts have retained their authoritarian nature, apparently seeing nothing but good in throne-and-altar politics where people know their place. Oh, and they've expanded their "liberal bias in the media" agitprop to include "anti-Catholicism in liberal media/politics".

Is the Catholic Church in the USA to become the new "Republican Party at prayer"? On the bright side, there are too many people of other stripes already involved in the Church for it to become an establishment sect (fingers crossed).

Furthermore, it's unfortunate that bishops like Chaput, most prominently, are basically the personal chaplains for these new converts.

Is my analysis incorrect? I'm just wondering why all these right-wingers are deciding that the Catholic Church is the church for them. Did Vatican 2 happen at all?

In response, Carl notes the ties of beltway politicians and some of the right-wing Catholic groups named by Brian to money. And Colleen suggests that there’s a “sort of Trojan horse strategy” at work in the conversion of these neoconservative political figures to the Catholic church, as their former allies in the evangelical religious right go up in flames (many of them) in various scandals.

I think Brian and the respondents are onto something. And I think this phenomenon of right-wing political leaders crossing the Tiber deserves analysis.

Brian’s insights are powerful:

▪ “GOP activists and operatives who, other than opposing abortion, don't seem to espouse the Catholicism I was taught.”

▪ “Found within or around the Beltway in DC.”

▪ “Authoritarian nature, apparently seeing nothing but good in throne-and-altar politics where people know their place.”

▪ “Did Vatican 2 happen at all?”

Here are some initial points that strike me as I try to deal with the question Brian is raising here:

▪ With regard to progressive social movements, I shy away from the pendulum-swing explanation of history, in favor of action-reaction theories. As I’ve stated on this blog, in my view, the project of Vatican II has deliberately been stalled by strong reactionary forces within the church—and strong reactionary political groups have colluded with that reaction because they do not want the Catholic church to have a progressive face in social movements.

▪ What happened culturally with the 1960s was a moment of opening to a future that some powerful groups within our society (and in the churches) did not wish to entertain. In particular, there was exceptionally strong resistance within the churches to the emergence of women onto the stage of history as free agents and actors, rather than taken-for-granted decorative stage props reflecting the refulgent glory of preening heterosexual males (or males capable of convincing us that they are heterosexual).

▪ A counter movement occurred following the 1960s, in which the political and religious right cooperated to close the door to the future that had been opened in the 1960s.

▪ I have enormous respect for Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and his book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. One aspect of his analysis of Vatican II does not persuade me, however. He speaks of a pendulum movement in which reaction to Vatican II was necessary, in order to correct the out-of-control movement that had taken place in the church after Vatican II.

▪ I have a different memory of the period after Vatican II. The Catholic right have been adroit about developing a spurious discourse of outrageous liturgical violations and kooky cultural practices following Vatican II. I do not remember such developments—not anywhere to the degree to which they are “recreated” in the discourse of the Catholic right.

▪ What I observed was a deliberate throttling of the Council and its reforms, a deliberate murdering of the spirit of hope that the Council engendered in many Catholics, and an iron-fisted, draconian return to the fortress church in which those who did not like what was taking place were invited to leave the church.

▪ One anecdote to demonstrate the process I’m describing here: in the mid-1980s, I was invited to write an ethics textbook for a graduate program in lay ministry sponsored by a Catholic university. When I wrote the textbook, the director of the program told me he had sent the draft to bishops and theologians all over the nation, and had gotten glowing reviews (except from one theologian)—including from most bishops who had written in response.

▪ Several years later, as Ratzinger’s restorationist agenda emanating from the CDF with the blessing of John Paul II began to have a strong chilling effect on Catholic universities across the U.S., I received a request from the same lay ministry program (now under a new director) to re-write the ethics textbook. I was told that it no longer adequately reflected the consensus of the best Catholic moral theologians writing today. In particular, I was told to incorporate John Paul II’s writings as much as possible into my text, especially “Splendor of Truth.”

▪ I labored for months on the revision, receiving back letters of single-spaced critiques, page on page, from a Jesuit appointed to read and comment on the text as I composed it (there had been no such censor when I wrote the first edition). These focused almost exclusively on sexual ethics, and on homosexuality in particular.

▪ My point? Within less than a decade, a textbook used in a graduate lay ministry program sponsored by a Catholic university had become problematic; it had moved from being an outstanding representative of the best Catholic thought on fundamental ethical issues, to being flawed—especially in what it had to say about sexual ethics. Nothing in the text itself had shifted, except that I flooded it with deferential quotes from John Paul II. The shift took place outside . . . .

▪ This movement from the mid-1980s into the 1990s corresponded with my finding myself without a job in any Catholic theology departments, after I was given a one-year terminal contract with no disclosed reason in the early 1990s at the Catholic college at which I taught. Steve and I have now been permanently outside the Catholic academic world--as in unemployed and apparently unemployable--for over a decade now.

▪ In the same period, one theologian after another (all certainly more important than me—in mentioning myself and Steve, who suffered the same fate, I’m pointing to a wide trend emanating from Rome) was removed from his or her teaching position, silenced, pushed out.

▪ As this went on—a very important point to make—there was hardly a peep on the part of the Catholic academic community in the U.S. There was not the strong movement of outrage and reaction one would expect from scholars. The academy, the center of the American Catholic church, was part of the problem—and, a fortiori, the liberal center was very much part of the problem, because it demonstrated no solidarity at all with theologians being robbed of their vocations in this period, no concern for the effects of this movement on the lives of those subjected to this shameful treatment.

▪ Why that lack of solidarity? Liberals want to be on the winning side. As the reaction set in (a point I want to insist on: it was deliberate and was manufactured from the center of the church; the pendulum did not swing of its own accord), what constituted the center moved ever more to the right.

▪ Consequently, there is a generation of American Catholic thinkers and commentators—our intellectual class of the center—who have grown up in a culture and religious milieu in what is considered centrist is well to the right of center. Whereas I remember the “installation” of John Paul II and Reagan by powerful groups of resistance to the movements of the 1960s and to the open door those movements created for us, this generation of centrists takes for granted that John Paul II and Reagan are admirable, praiseworthy role models for church and society who came on the scene through their own merits and dominated things through the force of their personalities and ideas.

▪ In part, they take this for granted because the religious and political right has succeeded for several generations in dominating political and religious discourse to such an extent that they have made the unthinkable thinkable, and have mainstreamed right-wing ideas that were once on the margins of church and society.

▪ Brian mentions Richard John Neuhaus. He is a shining example of the movement—the deliberate, cultivated, calculated movement—I am describing. I have written extensively on this blog about the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Since its founding in the early 1980s, that group has worked without cease to undermine progressive movements in mainstream American Protestant churches, and to shut the door to the progressive moment represented by the 1960s (culturally and politically) and Vatican II (religiously).

▪ Interestingly enough, though IRD targets non-Catholic churches, among its most influential founding members were Neuhaus and Michael Novak. It has always had a sizeable Catholic presence.

▪ Groups like IRD are predominantly concerned with the economic implications of some of the progressive movements of the 1960s. What they are combating, as they drive wedges into mainstream churches regarding the role of women and gays and lesbians in the church, is the social application of the gospel in a way that critiques the prevailing ideas of neoconservative capitalism.

▪ Because of their appeal to wealthy economic elites, groups like IRD are extremely powerful and well-funded, and have strong clout in our government. They attract the kind of politicians Brian is discussing. They are part and parcel of the cultural move that has been bringing those political (and economic—Erik Prince comes to mind) leaders into the Catholic church.

▪ What do these new converts to Catholicism see in the Catholic church? They see, in part, an institution that does not intend to critique their neoconservative economic ideas or practices. They inhabit a closed inner circle of the church impervious to the economic critique of traditional Catholic social teaching. They see an institution whose rich, powerful intellectual traditions have been co-opted (in their circle, at least) by a “Catholic answers” approach to religious truth that banalizes and trivializes and ultimately betrays the tradition—though they are very loud in their claim that they alone represent the tradition.

▪ These groups have been adroit about disseminating their soundbyte “Catholic answers” everyplace they can, about claiming the center for their eccentric, politicized, a-traditional theology, and about silencing and marginalizing critical voices. They appeal to authoritarian political activists who front for wealthy economic elites.

▪ They gleefully assisted in the dumbing down of the American Catholic church through their assault on the catechetical movement that sprang up following Vatican II, and through the imposition of a catechism now regarded not as a starting point for theological reflection or for study of the tradition, but as an instant-answers approach to catechesis that has robbed a generation of Catholics of the tradition, while convincing them that knowing the answers constitutes better catechesis than ever occrred in the past.

▪ And as they carry on in this way, there have not been powerful resistance movements within American Catholicism—certainly not (and this is shameful to me as a theologian)—in the theological community, and not in parish life, which has been gutted by the restorationist movement, on the whole, with the complicity of bishops appointed by the previous pope and the present one, and parish priests who are increasingly of the John Paul II generation.

Others will perhaps see things different, and I welcome responses. As I note above, my perspective is limited and partial. I was not part of the Reagan revolution. I have never been persuaded by any aspect of neoconservative ideology, whether in religion or politics. My understanding of Catholicism militates against that ideology in a fundamental way, and always has done so.

So I do not reflect (or perhaps even fully understand) the perspective of those who were infatuated with John Paul II and Reagan and have made a gradual journey away from neoconservatism when its flaws became too glaringly apparent to ignore in the Bush presidency. I have always seen John Paul II and Reagan as the religious and political face of one cultural movement, which was all about shutting doors and following the lead of William F. Buckley when he said that the obligation of conservatives is to stand astride history and shout stop.

But history cannot and does not stop, and the obligation of believers (it seems to me) is to participate in the movement of history and try to influence it to positive goals . . . .

More Light: Presbytery of Arkansas Votes Against Ordination Discrimination

Here's a bit of local news that deserves national attention: last Saturday (21 February), the Presbytery of Arkansas voted by a large majority to approve a change to the constitution of the Presbyterian Church USA that would permit the ordination of openly gay people. The vote was 116 in favor and 64 against.

At its General Assembly last June, the Presbyterian Church USA (to which churches of the Presbytery of Arkansas belong) passed a resolution calling for a change to Paragraph G-6.0106b of the denomination's Book of Order. This paragraph requires ordained officeholders to "live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."

The amendment passed at General Assembly eliminates that language and says, instead, that ordained officers would "pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ" and would "declare their fidelity to the standards of the Church." In order to change the Book of Order, two-thirds of the church's presbyteries have to approve this amendment.

The presbyteries of many Southern states (and some Midwestern areas) have historically resisted this change. And, true to form, presbyteries in states like Virginia and Alabama have voted the amendment down--as well as in south Arkansas, where Presbyterian churches belong to the Presbytery of the Pines, which also comprises Presbyterian churches in north Louisiana.

The vote of the Presbytery of Arkansas, to which churches of central and northern Arkansas belong, is surprising many observers. I can't say I am all that surprised. There has been a quiet revolution going on for some years among many Presbyterians in this part of the state, in which these thoughtful and well-educated folks are sifting through the arguments advanced against ordaining openly gay church members, and finding them insufficient. And downright discriminatory.

Though the media and right-wing mavens would like for us to think that the discriminatory language in the Presbyterian Book of Order has the force of longstanding tradition, it was placed in the Book of Order only in 1997. Anti-gay legislation like this in the Presbyterian and United Methodist churches is a recent phenomenon. It represents the attempt of right-wing political operatives in groups like the Institute on Religion and Democracy to split these mainline denominations by politicizing the discussion of gay human beings and gay lives.

I take heart in the fact that many Presbyterians are moving courageously against discrimination in their church life, and are combating the influence of right-wing political pressure groups like IRD. Paragraph G-6.0106b is inherently discriminatory. There never has been a tradition of examining non-gay candidates for ordination in the way gay candidates have been examined in recent years--a tradition of inquiring into the most intimate details of their lives, to assure that they were celibate as a prerequisite to their ordination.

And note that the requirement to remain in celibacy as a precondition to ordination affects gay clergy very differently than it does straight ones. As the present language of the Book of Order makes very plain, a single straight person who is ordained may then go on to marry. But a single gay person who is ordained is expected to live in celibacy for the rest of his or her life. No provision is made for recognizing gay unions ( see here).

This is arbitrary. And it is cruel. Kudos for the Presbyterian citizens of my state (well, at least of the central and northern parts of Arkansas) for recognizing the arbitrariness and cruelty of the stipulations the Book of Order places on gay lives, in its current wording, and for voting to change things. Perhaps one of the surprising effects of the overt racism expressed by many Arkansans in the last federal election, and of our shameful vote to deny gay citizens the right to adopt their own children, will be to make thinking, ethical citizens begin to work harder against prejudice in their back yard.

Questions That Won't Die: The Vatican and Human Rights

There are days I find Clerical Whispers one of the best blogs going. There are other days I wonder why Sotto Voce, its editor, chooses some of the reactionary—even outré—articles he picks to print. I sometimes wonder if there is pressure from on high (from clerical circles higher than that occupied by Sotto Voce) for him to give "balanced" treatment to controversial issues. At its best, this fine blog does an outstanding job of picking up news all too often overlooked by our American mainstream press, including the mainstream Catholic press—particularly news having to do with the Catholic church, but also with the Anglican communion and other churches, particularly in the British Isles.

I was struck yesterday by an article noting that a Dutch MEP, Sophie in ‘t Veld, has written the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, calling on Barroso to issue a statement condemning remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that incite hatred towards gays and lesbians (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/01/dutch-mep-seeks-condemnation-of-popes.html). I’m struck by this article—and by in ‘t Veld’s action—because the majority of mainstream American news outlets soft-pedaled the pope’s Christmas slam against gays and his opposition to seeing gays included in the United Nations human rights covenant.

Our media are, frankly, craven when it comes to the religious right, whether in its Catholic or its evangelical manifestations. They are so in large part because well-organized and strongly funded pressure groups like the Institute on Religion and Democracy, about which I’ve blogged repeatedly here, lean on the media and threaten them if they pursue stories about how religious rhetoric fuels hate (unless, of course, that rhetoric happens to emanate from Islamic fundamentalists).

People connected with groups like the IRD have managed to capture plum positions as “the” spokespersons for their religious communions. When any controversy arises, the media turn to these spokespersons, never adverting to the fact that their testimony is highly politically charged, always in a right-wing direction, and represents only the extreme right wing of the church for which they claim to speak.

Former Lutheran pastor turned Catholic priest, Richard John Neuhaus, who died last week, was influential in the formation of IRD. In fact, he authored its founding document, “Christianity and Democracy” (www.theird.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=215&srcid=213). Through his influence with the Bush administration, IRD and other right-wing Christian groups played a disproportionate role in the Bush administration. Neuhaus is now being remembered in glowing eulogies all over the internet, which speak of the good things he did for the church.

Since I can hear my mother’s voice in the back of my wretched conscience whispering that, if one has nothing good to say of the dead, one should say nothing, I’ll refrain from sharing my reflections on Neuhaus and his legacy. I pray he rests in peace. Meanwhile, I think Andrew Sullivan’s remarks about the need for balance as we remember the legacy of this highly placed Catholic mover and shaker are on target, and deserve careful consideration: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/01/neuhaus-and-gay.html.

Since our media, with its cushy ties to groups like the IRD (several Neuhaus eulogies speak of the wining and dining reporters did with him and do routinely with groups like IRD, as the media’s conscience is bought, piece of silver by piece of silver, by those groups) did almost nothing to address the pope’s Christmas statement adequately—since our media, indeed, chided those foolhardy enough to suggest that the pope had stepped over a line in depicting gay persons as a threat to human ecology akin to threats to the rain forest—I want to give attention to Sophie in ‘t Veld’s reflections on Benedict’s Christmas message to LGBT human beings.

Her letter to Barroso notes that while the European community values free speech, it also deplores and opposes hate speech. in ‘t Veld argues that that the pope’s designation of LGBT persons in his Christmas remarks as “a threat to mankind” is hate speech, pure and simple. She notes that someone occupying a position as a world religious leader has an even stronger responsibility than a private citizen to refrain from such hate speech. She calls on Barroso to speak out, concluding, “The Pope’s statements contribute to a climate in which discrimination, homophobic hate speech and violence become socially acceptable.”

Benedict’s recent attacks on gay human beings are drawing negative press not only in Holland. Clerical Whispers notes in a posting today that a university lecturer in Malta, Patrick Attard, formally excommunicated himself at the office of the Chancellor of the Curia yesterday (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/01/university-lecturer-excommunicates.html). Attard is openly gay, and says he took the step of publicly renouncing his membership in the Catholic church because of the Vatican’s opposition to the UN resolution calling for decriminalization of homosexuality, and because of the pope’s Christmas attack on gays and lesbians.

Oh, and by the way: as all this goes on, the Vatican continues to talk about human rights and the dignity of all human beings. The article immediately preceding the one about Sophie in ‘t Veld on Sunday’s Clerical Whispers notes that Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, recently stated that violating the dignity of other human beings is at the root of all social conflict (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/01/violating-human-dignity-is-root-of-all.html).

Martino is apparently aware of the disconnect between his noble defense of human rights and the actual track record of the Vatican towards gay persons. Addressing the Vatican’s recent opposition to adding gay persons to the human rights statement of the UN, Martino notes that some people choose to use the freedom God gives them to sin . . . . That old canard of the chosen gay lifestyle, the one drenched in sin, about which I blogged yesterday.

One doesn’t know whether to weep or to laugh—at the brutal irony of people denouncing human rights violations while engaging in human rights violations, or the ludicrous expectation that anyone will listen as one preaches about human rights for all while using that same mouth to bash those whose "chosen" lifestyles disqualify them from access to human rights.

The graphic accompanying this posting is from a Clerical Whispers article today, noting that Benedict XVI's personal secretary Georg Gänswein has just received Austria's Great Golden Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria award (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/01/austria-awards-popes-right-hand-man.html). The photo shows Gänswein attending to the pope's sartorial needs.

Proposition 8 and Black Voters: Engaging the Narratives

In the wake of the proposition 8 vote, a narrative is emerging in very different social locations that focuses on the key role played by black voters in passing the amendment to end gay marriage in California. I have not been eager to engage this argument, for a variety of reasons—chief among them, perhaps, is that I have grown weary of taking arrows from both the gay and the African-American community when I address these issues, given my own social location as the descendant of white slaveholders.

The narrative of black voters’ responsibility for proposition 8’s victory is now becoming inescapable, however. I find it appearing on right-wing Christian and political websites, as well as gay ones. That means that we have to engage it, think about it, comment on it, correct or combat it, if necessary. We have to do so if we do not want it to carry the day.

In addition, this debate threatens to be fractious in the gay community—it already is fractious, with charges and countercharges—and to produce more heat than light. It demands careful analysis. It is important and inescapable because the narrative of black Obama supporters standing against gay rights is a wedge narrative that the religious and political right intend to exploit in coming months. They’re already doing so.

And if the gay community doesn’t find ways to engage it, this divide-and-conquer narrative will gain increasing power in the hands of those who want to use it to undermine the solidarity of those supporting the new president. It is being crafted to create unique misery for the new administration, largely on the backs of the LGBT community.

I’m crafting this posting as more a thinking-through essay than a research report. It won’t be replete with references to every article or blog posting I’ve been reading on these topics in the past two days. If readers have questions or want references, I’ll gladly provide them. Where I do offer documentation, please consider the citation representative of others similar to it.

For a glimpse at how the religious and political right are already spinning the black vote on proposition 8, take a look at George Conger’s blog posting today, “Barack In, Gay Marriage Out” (http://geoconger.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/barack-in-gay-marriage-out-cen-110508). This posting has gotten picked up today by the Clerical Whispers blog, which means it will be spread widely around the Catholic blogworld across the globe. It’s also linked to yesterday’s Religious Intelligence paper, an internationally circulated journal allied to the right-wing “traditionalist” movement in the Anglican Church (www.religiousintelligence.com/news/?NewsID=3240).

Conger, who is an Episcopal priest in the conservative Diocese of Central Florida, has ties, as well, to the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a lavishly funded right-wing activist group that actively seeks to exploit wedge issues in leading American churches (Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian) to offset movements to emphasize the social justice teachings of those churches. During this year’s UMC General Conference, I blogged repeatedly about this group and its attempt to use the argument that Africans (and African-Americans) are anti-gay to divide the Methodist church and attack movements calling for inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church.*

Conger’s “Barack In, Gay Marriage Out” zeroes in on the claim that “. . . Black and Hispanic voters backed Proposition 8 by a 3 to 1 margin, and overwhelmingly backed Obama.” Re: Latino voters, Conger’s statistics are not borne out by exit polls, which show something over 50% of Latino voters supporting the proposition, while the percentage of African-American voters who did so was 69%.

Those statistics are the sticking point. They’re what is now provoking discussion about whether African Americans played a primary role in defeating proposition 8. And they’re undeniable: African Americans did vote in exceptionally high numbers for proposition 8 in California. They were predicted to do the same for amendment 2 in Florida. I have not seen breakdowns of that vote, but I have no reason to doubt that polls showing high black support for that homophobic amendment was equally high.

While I don’t think we can deny these statistics, and the homophobia within the African-American community to which they point, I also do not think they form the basis for a sweeping narrative about how black Americans are uniquely responsible for the rollback of gay marriage in California. There are many ways to slice data pies, and each way reveals a different aspect of the complex question of who votes for what and why.

The funding for the fight against gay marriage in California was provided disproportionately, for instance, by the LDS church—the largely white LDS church that for many years refused to admit black men into its priesthood. The Knights of Columbus dropped a bundle on the state to fight gay marriage. The Catholic bishops of California instructed pastors to read pastoral letters encouraging Catholics to vote for proposition 8.

If the gay community and its friends intend to address institutionalized homophobia effectively, we have to develop tools of analysis and counter narratives that recognize the complicity of many groups in enshrining discrimination in our institutions and legal documents. We have to avoid simplistic one-answer analysis and finger-pointing.

As Pam Spaulding, an African-American lesbian, has repeatedly noted at her Pam’s House Blend blog, racism runs deep in the white LGBT community, as homophobia does in the African-American community. Unless we find ways to talk across our cultural and religious boundary lines—openly, and with the pain that arises in honest conversation—we will remain prey to the malicious intent of right-wing groups to set us at each other’s throats.

Pam Spaulding states,

I've been blogging for years about the need to discuss race in regards to LGBT issues. I hope that this is now the wakeup call for our "professional gays" out there who represent us to come out of their comfort zones and help bridge this concrete education gap.

The belief that white=gay is big part of the problem, and as long as black LGBTs are invisible in their own communities and there is a dearth of color in the public face of LGBT leadership, the socially conservative black community can remain in denial that I exist as a black lesbian (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8013).

In my view, Pam Spaulding and her blog model the kind of boundary-crossing conversation that has to be built to engage the right-wing spin narrative about Barack being in and gay marriage being out. With equal measure, she reports evenhandedly on ugly manifestations of homophobia in the black community and heinous demonstrations of racism in the white community.

She dares to say what many on both sides of the fence want to make unsayable. And in the process, she creates a rare space in both LBGT and African-American culture for productive conversation across lines of race and sexual orientation.

And that conversation has to take place, for the reasons I have already outlined and for another reason as well. It has to take place because there is considerable pain among many gay Americans regarding what happened in California, and trying to clamp down on conversation about the root causes of what happened won’t staunch the flow of that pain.

Karen Ocamb’s on-the-scene report in Alternet today does a good job of describing the pain (www.alternet.org/sex/106161). She notes that gay supporters at the Music Box in Hollywood on election night were jubilant when the news of Obama’s election broke, and the cheers were even louder when he the president-elect mentioned us in his acceptance speech.

And then the reports began to filter in: rising numbers against proposition 8. The mood at the watch party she was attending grew more somber. “By morning, while the world rejoiced at the prospect of a new beginning, lesbian and gay couples cried in despair at the profound loss of equality.”

There’s the pain as well of African-American members of the LGBT community, who now feel the pain of what happened in California in double measure—at the very moment an African American captures the presidency. As Terrance Heath writes,

It's funny, In twenty-four hours I gained new faith in America. And quickly lost it.
In twenty-four hours, everything changed - and nothing changed.

Last night I went to bed feeling like a "real American." This morning, it turned out nothing had changed.

Last night I went to bed proud to be an American. When I woke up this morning, I wasn't.

Last night I went to bed ready to take on all the problems that face American, even if they don't specifically relate to me or that one concern of mine.

This morning I woke up and though, "Why bother? Nothing changed" (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=FCAB48DC2828C092A44EE345660009A6?diaryId=8034).

This is a particular kind of pain. It’s a particular kind of pain that deserves analysis if it’s going to be addressed adequately. At a symbolic level, the victory of the Barack Obama represents a significant breakthrough for the African-American community. Many, though not all, LGBT Americans rejoice at that breakthrough. Many of us (but not all of us, to our discredit) have worked for that breakthrough.

We would like to celebrate this historic event with undivided hearts. We cannot do so now. And to many of us, it feels as if we have been betrayed by some of the very brothers and sisters beside whom we toiled for the victory of the first African-American president.

There is then, that very particular pain of betrayal, of feeling stabbed in the back, of feeling turned on by those one had considered friends and allies. Such pain runs deep. And it has to be talked about. It has to be talked about even as the LGBT community challenges itself to transcend one-issue analysis of homophobia that lays blame for all homophobia at the feet of the black community.

After all, 27% of our own LGBT brothers and sisters voted for McCain-Palin in this election. And something tells me that 27% included very few white gays and lesbians. Talk about betrayal and back-stabbing . . . .

Perhaps in reaction to the one-issue analysis of what happened with proposition 8 and the unacknowledged racism of many members of the LGBT community, some gay political commentators are moving to the opposite extreme in recent days. I am seeing suggestions—sometimes, but not always, from gay people of color—that the gay community needs to drop the rhetoric of the black civil rights movement and develop a story of its own.

In one sense, that’s obviously correct: every marginalized community needs to tell its own story. Every kind of marginalization is different, and no single narrative can speak for all kinds of marginalization.

I think, however, that there is considerable danger in this attempt to slap at what some commentators think is hidden racism in the analysis of members of the gay community alarmed at the statistics re: proposition 8. To undercut the connections of the gay struggle for civil rights with the African-American struggle for civil rights plays directly into the hands of those who want to put the two communities at each others’ throats.

One of the most insidious achievements of right-wing political operatives has been to convince the African-American community (and Africans, as well) that all gays are privileged white people who feel nothing but disdain for black people. To drive the knife deeper, the right-wing narrative has also sought to convince African Americans that African-American discrimination is a unique form of discrimination that LGBT Americans do not and cannot ever share, since we choose our orientation, while skin color is inescapable.

To be sure, some African Americans have been eager to accept this analysis, and many black ministers have shored the analysis up with fiery sermons about the chosen sin of homosexuality and the appeal for illicit “special rights” by those engaged in this sin. And the obtuseness of many white LGBT persons to the deep, abiding scars of racism for generations, and the unique experience of enslavement endured by black Americans, has not made things any better.

If we allow the religious and political right to treat gay rights as a separate category of civil rights, and if we use a misplaced rhetoric of political correctness in the gay community to justify that separation of the LGBT civil rights struggle from the ongoing struggle for civil rights of all marginalized groups in American society, we do the work of our enemies for them. Separating the gay struggle from the African-American struggle plays into the hands of those who want to convince mainstream society and the African-American community that the struggle for gay rights is somehow apart from, cut off from, that powerful current of freedom and justice that flows through our foundational documents and the rhetoric of our faith communities from the beginnings of the nation.

We have to find ways around this impasse. We have to do better. We can do better. If we do not do so, we will allow the religious and political right to make the miracle of the election we have just undergone a pyrrhic victory with bitterness spread all around.

*For anyone interested in reading those postings, I suggest searching for IRD in the search engine for this blog.

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”

An Open Letter to Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker (#3)

Dear Bishop Whitaker,

Having given you my testimony, and, in particular, having sketched the ways in which Methodism informs my religious commitments and value judgments, today I would like to offer a response to your essay of 13 July 2006 entitled “The Church and Homosexuality.”

Thank you for having placed this essay on the website of the Florida UMC Conference at www.flumc2.org/page.asp?PKValue=967, and for having invited responses to it. I understand that the essay arises, in part, out of what occurred at the 2006 Florida statewide UMC conference assembly.

Interestingly enough, that conference ended the very day Dr. Schafer and I arrived in Florida to take positions at a United Methodist college under your pastoral jurisdiction, and on whose board of trustees you serve. Though the fact that we are openly gay and living in a longstanding committed relationship was discussed by your college’s board prior to our coming to this college, and though the board approved our hire, we were not told of the bitter conflict that emerged in the Florida UMC just at the time of our arrival to serve at your college.

If I understand correctly, this conflict centered around a controversy in Virginia, in which an openly gay man asked to join a United Methodist church and was turned away by its pastor. He was told he was not welcome. Interestingly enough, I happen to have a personal connection to this story, in that a cousin of mine is married to a close relative of the person around whom this controversy centered, and I know of the man’s experiences from that context.

From what I learned after it became evident to Dr. Schafer and me that

, your 2006 statewide conference ended with bitter divisions in the Florida UMC church. If I am informed correctly, those divisions were over the question of whether openly gay and lesbian believers can be welcomed by Methodist churches.

Your essay responds to this question by providing an overview and defense of the current position of the UMC that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian faith. At the same time, your essay makes a plausible and thoughtful argument for reasoned, inclusive dialogue about the church’s response to gay and lesbian human beings. Your essay ends with a warning about what might happen if the United Methodist Church revised its current prohibition against the “practice” of homosexuality or the ordination of (openly) gay and lesbian persons or blessing of gay unions. You state,

If The United Methodist Church changes its basic position on homosexuality, then it will be making a move toward modern Western culture, but against a historic and global ecumenical consensus. Some would justify this move as the prophetic action of a church in the vanguard of enlightenment. However, the fact is that such a move would change the way The United Methodist Church would be viewed by the rest of the ecumenical Christian community, which, by a vast majority, adheres to the traditional teaching of Christianity. It is not far-fetched to envision the rest of the Christian community viewing The United Methodist Church as a “culture church” that would have some historic connection to the Christian faith and community, but that had wandered away from the substance of the Christian tradition in order to offer a Christian interpretation of the ideas and values of its culture. One could even imagine a future ecumenical council to which United Methodists might be allowed to send official observers, but in which we would not be allowed to participate with vote because of our status as “culture Christians.”

Finally, what is needed now is an environment in the church for a calm consideration of all of the complex issues in this debate, civil discourse, responsible theological reflection, and above all, prayer for discernment of the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Your argument regarding the dangers of becoming a “culture church” is provocative. As you may be aware, since you participated in the process by which I was hired at your college, my doctoral dissertation was a study of a social gospel theologian, Shailer Mathews, who was accused by neo-orthodox theologians such as the Niebuhrs of having been a culture-Protestant.

My reading of Mathews’s theology convinces me that this charge is inaccurate. In my view, in Matthews’s work, the social gospel exhibits far more critical acumen about culture than its neo-orthodox critics gave it credit for having. I wrote a dissertation that was published as a book entitled Shailer Mathews’s Lives of Jesus to study Mathews’s social gospel theology. The dissertation concludes that the charge that Mathews was a culture-Protestant is not accurate.

My work on this topic was preceded and informed by a master’s thesis that studied the early roots of Methodism. Given my family’s historic ties to Methodism and the way these informed my own religious upbringing, I wanted to research and understand how Methodism dealt with questions of social justice from its inception among the working classes of the British Isles.

That research flowed naturally into my study of the social gospel. In my Christian journey, the Methodist strand in my family’s background has led to a constant concern to see the churches do justice. I see Jesus as one who always reached beyond barriers in his society that defined some human beings as less human than others, that defined some human beings as more deserving of power and privilege than others. In my reading of the gospels, Jesus constantly transgresses social and religious lines that define one group as the righteous and the other as the unrighteous.

My concern to see the churches challenge social norms permitting some people to be treated as less human than others led me out of my childhood church, the Southern Baptist church of my paternal grandmother, and into the Catholic church when I was a teen. My decision to join the Catholic church had everything to do with the fact that my family’s church was deeply entrenched in the system of segregation. Our church found itself unable to speak a prophetic word against racism during the Civil Rights struggle, because to do so would require costly grace. The Catholic church in my south Arkansas town attracted me because it was the sole “white” church in our town in which black and white Christians were worshiping together in the mid-1960s.

Watching the feeble foot-dragging responses of almost all white churches in Arkansas to the historic Civil Rights movement led me as an adolescent to conclude that churches often take their cue from culture, particularly when there is a price to be paid for speaking courageously against injustice. This experience, coupled with the strands in my family history that pointed to different possibilities in which churches move against and not with currents of injustice in their social context, led me to my calling as a theologian.

This calling has framed my entire approach to academic life. I have brought the concern to do justice, to critique injustice, and to form communities of solidarity resisting injustice to all of my academic work, including my work as an academic dean at one United Methodist college and then as an academic vice-president at another United Methodist college—your Florida college (now a university).

Given this academic, theological, and faith commitment running through my life as a teacher, scholar, and administrator, I read the history of the United Methodist church and its relationship to gay and lesbian human beings quite differently than you do in your 2006 essay. It is, of course, crucial to acknowledge that I read this history differently as well because I am gay, and have paid a price for being gay and honest about my life. I have paid that price particularly in Christian institutions. Since you are a heterosexual male, I would suggest that you may read Methodist history and teachings through a different optic, even if you share my commitment to social justice.

I would like respectfully to ask you to consider what happens when one takes the paragraph I cite above from your essay “The Church and Homosexuality,” and substitutes the word “slavery” for “homosexuality” in the first sentence. The sentence reads, “If The United Methodist Church changes its basic position on homosexuality, then it will be making a move toward modern Western culture, but against a historic and global ecumenical consensus.”

You are aware, are you not, that there was a time in Christian history—and a time not so very long ago, in terms of history—in which the Methodist church and the vast majority of churches taught that slavery is not only compatible with Christian practice and with scripture, but is mandated by scripture? When some Christians began to challenge that deeply entrenched cultural presupposition and the use of the bible to justify cultural norms supporting slavery, most white Christians in the American South—including most Methodists—bitterly resisted the critique of their traditional support of slavery as a distortion of the scripture.

In fact, many white Southern theologians prior to the Civil War charged churches in the North with having succumbed to culture, in challenging the longstanding practice of slavery within Christianity and the use of the bible to legitimate slavery. These theologians saw the churches of the American South as the sole bastions of orthodoxy in a world determined to alter the historic faith.

And they were right, insofar as their argument was based on the fact that slavery had always been taken for granted in Christianity, for some 1800 years, and had been approved by the churches. These theologians and churchmen resisting the historic shift to abolition of slavery were right insofar as they noted that the scriptures had been used throughout Christian history to justify slavery.

The churches of the American South have had a strange penchant, have they not, for defending the “historic faith” even when that faith includes practices that society, acting under impulses of justice, has gradually begun to recognize as unjust? We white Christians of the South defended slavery to the bitter end. When slavery was abolished, we then made a mighty noise about women’s suffrage and women’s rights.

Substitute those terms for “homosexuality” in your paragraph above, and again, I think you will see that the case you are making is precisely the wrong way around: rather than capitulating to culture in its defense of slavery, and then misogyny, and then segregation, and now heterosexist patriarchy, the churches have been captive to culture in defending these insupportable social practices. They have had to revise their support of unjust practices, to whose injustice they have been blind, insofar as prophetic movements within the churches themselves, acting in solidarity with secular movements for justice, have pushed and prodded the churches to reconsider their defense of the indefensible.

I am sorry to have to tell you this, but mainstream American churches already are—to a great extent—“culture churches.” It is captivity to culture that they must combat in ceasing to discriminate against gay and lesbian persons. Our churches often have a lamentable tendency to follow culture in justice-oriented directions only after culture has moved to accord civil rights to disenfranchised groups. Rather than leading the way, our churches all too often echo and support culture—and, in particular, cultural injustice—until necessary, justice-oriented cultural changes force the churches to take a belated look at their unjust practices and presuppositions.

To say that, in according full human status to gay and lesbian persons, the United Methodist Church would be in danger of becoming a “culture church” is to fracture logic, to twist sociological data so that they say precisely they opposite of what they actually say. The sordid reality is, Bishop Whitaker, that in a culture in which prejudice against gay and lesbian persons is still normative (though this is gradually shifting), the church pays no price at all in refusing to defend gay and lesbian persons against injustice. It is the path of cheap grace, rather than costly grace, to continue to discriminate against gay and lesbian persons in the name of the gospel.

Costly grace, the kind of grace that would motivate the churches to stand up and to speak out at all cost, would (and we all know this, do we not?) threaten the pocketbook of mainstream churches. As during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, when I saw wealthy churchgoers with power in the business community and local government threaten pastors who condemned racism, today, any church speaking out against oppression of gay and lesbian persons is likely to risk loss of donations.

As an example, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, lavishly funded by foundations headed by several extremely wealthy neo-conservative Americans, has specifically targeted the United Methodist Church and several other mainstream churches, to try to prevent those churches from highlighting the social principles in their historic faith statements. It is no secret that the IRD has adroitly used prejudice against gay and lesbian persons—which is to say, it has used gay and lesbian human beings—to drive political wedges into the hearts of mainstream churches, to pit Methodist against Methodist, Presbyterian against Presbyterian, and Episcopalian against Episcopalian.

When these churches and their leaders speak out against unjust, discriminatory treatment of gay and lesbian persons, they pay a high price. They lose funding from wealthy interest groups. They also court highly-funded media attacks sponsored by these groups. You yourself may know this well, since the IRD has frequently reprinted some of your articles and sermons on its websites and other websites that it funds.

Much is at stake here, Bishop Whitaker, and I respectfully ask that you and other United Methodists listen more carefully to the voices of gay and lesbian believers who ask to talk with you about precisely what is at stake. To know the mechanisms of injustice in society at large (and in your own institutions), you must first and foremost ask to hear the voices of those who experience injustice. Only then will your deliberations about issues such as homosexuality be fully informed, and only then will your voice be credible.

Your essay ends with a call for calm consideration, civil discourse, responsible theological reflection, and prayer for discernment regarding the churches and their stance towards gay and lesbian persons. I second this call.

But how is it to happen when you do not even permit openly gay persons to address your assemblies? How can any discourse really be civil, when those being defined by a Christian group are not even brought to the table, but are treated as objects to be talked about while they are given no voice in the discussion?

Does your “responsible theological reflection” in the United Methodist churches include openly gay and lesbian theologians? Are these theologians invited to your General Conferences? If not, how can your words be anything more than rhetoric?

Above all, how can your conversations be inclusive (and thus fully representative of the richness of your tradition and fully open to God’s voice in all the people of God) when your institutions still sometimes make it impossible for openly gay and lesbian persons to have job security, to do productive work, to use their gifts while being forthright about their lives?

It was an experience of harsh exclusion, of punitive behavior that continues to the present.

As you prepare for General Conference, please refamiliarize yourself with what happened to Dr. Schafer and me when we responded to the invitation of the president

We did so at great cost to ourselves, because we believed that we could make a difference. Your president told us that we would be welcome and were needed, and that we would have secure jobs up to our retirement. Though we are in our late fifties and had to make sacrifices to come to your college, we stepped forth in faith and accepted the invitation. We were repaid for our sacrifice with brutally unjust and deeply hurtful treatment that was entirely premised on prejudice.

To my knowledge, neither you nor any other minister on the board of this United Methodist University

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/03/open-letter-to-united-methodist-church.html.

Can the United Methodist Church maintain that it is a prophetic church standing for historic Christian values when it participates in and covers over such atrocious injustice? Can the United Methodist Church stand against any injustice in society, when it permits any of its institutions and their leaders to behave this way towards any marginalized group?

Much hinges on the church’s willingness to give careful consideration to the testimony of gay and lesbian believers, even when we must tell painful stories of discrimination against us by church institutions. You live in a state in which violence against gay and lesbian persons has begun, in some areas, to reach epidemic proportions.

Can the United Methodist churches of Florida stand against this violence, can they offer healing and redemption to their communities, if they engage in homophobic discrimination that is intimately related to homophobic violence? I cannot imagine John Wesley encouraging the church to ignore these social needs. Nor can I imagine him standing on the side of discrimination within the institutions of his own church.