"I Will Never Be Silent Again": Pastor Frank Schaefer to United Methodist Church Court

Rev. Frank Schaefer

"I will never be silent again," United Methodist pastor Frank Schaefer told the church court that tried him for officiating at the wedding of his gay son. (And, as an aside that's not really an aside, isn't it amazing that Jesus so decisively excoriated the legalism of the scribes and pharisees, while churches that claim him as their founder have ended up with intricate judicial mechanisms that place people on trial--as if the scribes and pharisees and not Jesus founded the Christian movement?)

The Place of Gay Human Beings as a Church-Dividing Issue: Again

I’m thinking these days about a theme I discussed briefly back on 22 April in my posting entitled “The Church’s One Foundation” (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/04/churchs-one-foundation-homosexuality.html). This is the claim of some church groups that homosexuality should be placed on the back burner of church discussion, since the gay issue is not truly a church-dividing issue.

The Florida United Methodist Conference has just held a “Conference Table” to which anyone in the conference is invited. The headline announcing this conference table noted that this was a table at which everyone was welcome.

The topic of this roundtable public discussion was “In Defense of Creation.” A description of the conference table topic on the website of the Florida UMC Conference notes, “IDOC2, as it is called, is the church's attempt to engage public policy on issues that most affect the human race, according to Florida Conference Bishop Timothy Whitaker, task force chairman. The document addresses three areas: nuclear proliferation, global poverty, and environmental issues” (see http://flsite.brickriver.com/event_detail.asp?PKValue=1845).

Issues that most affect the human race: nuclear proliferation, global poverty, and the environment. From one standpoint, it’s hard to argue with the claim that this configuration of issues covers the terrain admirably well—these are, indeed, among the issues most affecting the human race, the ones churches most need to address in their preaching and ministry today.

From another standpoint, however, there’s something wrong with this picture. In the first place, search as one will through the entire Florida UMC Conference website for any mention at all of homosexuality, and one draws a complete blank. Scrutinize the program for the recent Florida UMC Annual Conference meeting for any mention of the term “gay” or “homosexual/ity,” and you’ll come away with the impression that any issues revolving around those terms must have been resolved.

Because the church is totally silent about them. The church is totally silent about issues relating to homosexuality as issues most affecting the human race today.

The implication of the church’s claim that nuclear proliferation, global poverty, and the environment are the key issues affecting the human race today is that the issue of homosexuality—the place of gay human beings within the human race and the churches—is a non-issue, a side issue, one beneath notice.

But if this is the case, why did the most recent General Conference of the United Methodist Church spend an inordinate amount of time discussing that very issue? Why have state conferences such as the Florida Conference almost come to blows about that issue, such that there are fears the church may split?

If the issue of where LGBT human beings fit into the human race and the churches is a non-issue, why has every UMC General Conference for almost a decade now battled through this issue? Why is the worldwide Anglican Communion in anguish over this issue? Why are almost all the churches in the world groaning through this critically important moment of human history in which, for the first time in history, LGBT human beings are claiming the right to a place at the table, as openly gay people affirming their own God-given identities and refusing to apologize for these identities as they approach the Lord’s table?

If the question of where gay human beings are to be “placed” within the human community and the churches is a non-issue, one about which churches can justifiably be silent while discussing issues of key importance to the human race today, why have some Anglican churches in the United States chosen to break communion with gay-affirming bishops, placing themselves under the episcopal jurisdiction of bishops far from their own dioceses? Why have bishops such as Peter Akinola in Nigeria bitterly resisted inclusion of LGBT people in the churches, while bishops such as Desmond Tutu have spoken out courageously about homophobia as the new apartheid of the human race and the churches?

If the issue of where gay human beings fit is a non-issue, one about which churches may justifiably be silent when discussing the important issues facing the human community today, what is one to make of the recent announcement of the president of Gambia that he wished to see all gay persons in his country sought out and beheaded?

If the question of how to fit LGBT human beings into human society and into churches is not a premier issue causing conflict within the human community today, why did the Human Rights watch send a letter to the president of Gambia—only days before the Florida United Methodist Conference held its discussion of “the” issues that most affect the human race—noting that the president’s violent rhetoric and actions towards gay human beings violates human rights covenants and “abdicates one of the most important responsibilities of political leadership: to respect, protect, and promote the human rights of all” (see http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/06/10/gambia19088.htm)?

If the question of how our gay brothers and sisters are to be included in our human and church families is a non-issue, why did the Pope announce immediately before new year’s day that he considers the issue of protecting the family (read: of resisting gay marriage) to be one of the premier issues confronting the churches today, one to which he intended to devote primary attention in 2008?

I sense more than a bit of flim-flammery in the claim of many church folks today that the question of how to place our gay brothers and sisters is not a significant, crucial, noteworthy issue for discussion—not truly a church-dividing issue. What is really going on with this claim is a dishonorable attempt to keep gay people in the shadows—and to keep in the shadows, as well, the shameful way the churches continue to treat gay human beings.

It goes without saying that nuclear proliferation, poverty, and the environment are among the most significant issues facing the human community today. It goes without saying that churches which wish to be faithful to the example of Jesus and to the gospels should be discussing and trying to deal proactively with these issues.

But these issues do not exist in isolation from issues of gender, from issues of patriarchy. The militarism that is at the root of nuclear proliferation is rooted in male domination and exploitation of women, of anything regarded as feminine. Exploitation and destruction of the environment is intrinsically linked to patriarchal systems of social order that give men unmerited dominance over women.

As feminist theologians have long noted, the social issues demanding the critical attention of churches are all interconnected in a web, all interwoven. One cannot understand and deal with militarism, economic exploitation of minorities, or destruction of the environment without understanding and dealing with patriarchy, misogyny, and homophobia. As feminist theologians have long noted, societies that are racist are also not coincidentally almost always societies that are misogynistic and homophobic.

Nor can one understand and deal with the key issues confronting society today without confronting the unjust domination of the churches by white males who profess to be heterosexual.

Part of the silence—a big part of the self-censorship of bishops and other church leaders today, when it comes to gay issues—is a tactic of keeping at bay critique of the ways in which white males who profess to be heterosexual still control most everything in the world, including in the churches. Or perhaps particularly in the churches.

The issue of how to fit our LGBT brothers and sisters into the churches is neuralgic because it casts a spotlight on church leaders themselves—an unwanted spotlight. It casts a spotlight (an unwanted one) on how the churches treat LGBT people.

The discussion unmasks the claim that everyone is invited to the table as a false claim—a shamefully false, starkly false claim. A lie.

Churches must find ways to keep at bay the discussion of the place of their LGBT brothers and sisters at the table, because that discussion will open too many doors to questions about how the church pursues its ministries, how it deals with money, what kind of alliances with powerful people drive the churches and their rhetoric and actions.

The question of how or whether to provide a place at the table for gay human beings should, of course, never have become a church-dividing issue. No church can justifiably claim to be church, when it excludes any group from the table. Every sinner has a place at the table of the Lord. Period. No questions asked.

That is, every sinner has a place at the Lord’s table if the church setting that table wants to claim to be following in the footsteps of Jesus.

No, the question of the place of LGBT human beings at the table should never have been made a church-dividing issue. We who are gay did not choose to make this an issue. Other forces in church and society have done so, and have done so with a vengeance.

That being the case, no church today can flim-flam around the gay issue, claiming it is not and should not be a church-dividing issue, or an issue of key importance to the human community. Indeed, it might well be argued that this question of how to set a place for gay brothers and sisters is the premier issue facing all churches today—the one with the most potential to test the fidelity of churches to the gospel, the one with the strongest ability to test whether churches intend to be church at the most fundamental level possible, the only level that counts: whether churches intend to set the Lord’s table for all sinners.

The church and its bishops don’t pay any price at all, do they—really now—when they take a stand on nuclear proliferation, poverty, and the environment? But the church and its bishops do pay a price, and a steep one, when they resolutely and without qualification announce that their table is open to all, including their gay brothers and sisters, and that their institutions will demonstrate this praxis of discipleship by resolutely and without qualification discarding all forms of discrimination within church institutions against LGBT human beings.

Perhaps Bishop Whitaker and other church leaders who are flim-flamming around discussion of the place of gay brothers and sisters at the table will make the topic of their next roundtable discussion of key issues confronting the churches the following excerpt from a sermon that retired Catholic Bishop of Detroit, Thomas Gumbleton preached recently on what the Catholic liturgical calendar calls the 10^th Sunday in ordinary time. The gospel for the day was Matthew 9:9-13 (see http://ncrcafe.org/node/1907):

There are so many other ways in which we must become a welcoming community, a community that is like Jesus, that is ready to welcome sinners, to be with sinners, to be with those who others would think as not worthy. We have to become a church of great diversity, where we welcome everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation, poverty, wealth. We have to be a church of diversity. We have to share our Eucharist, we have to share our banquet, with all who are out there in the world with us.

When we can reach out as Jesus did and welcome tax collectors and sinners into our midst without making judgment, simply welcoming everyone as God does, God says, "I want mercy more than sacrifice; love more than ritual," this is what is very important and this is what we must try to make happen in our communities, in our church, and in our civil society, so that we really become one beloved community, one family of God where everyone is welcome and everyone gives thanks and gratitude for the God who shows them such love through those who follow his son, Jesus.

This is what is very important and this is what we must try to make happen in our communities, in our church, and in our civil society: to welcome everyone regardless, to share our banquet with all who are out there in the world with us.

Keep the Door Shut!: Churches and the Threat of Gay Energy

Colleen,

Once again, you’ve left a comment that is so rich, I want to lift it from the comments section and reply to it in my blog proper, rather than in the comments box.

Your comment focuses on the creativity, spirituality, and energy for institutional transformation that self-accepting gay folks bring to our vocations in secular and ecclesial institutions. Using transpersonal psychology, you say, I'm talking about a kind of freedom from gender typing, and because of that, a freedom to explore and accept other realms of thought, creativity, and spirituality.

Your analysis notes that, because gay folks have to learn to negotiate complex questions about gender roles in accepting our God-given human natures, we develop the ability to move between various definitions of ourselves demanded by the rules of straight society. In the process, we often develop a balance of male-female principles inside ourselves, which can translate into creativity and spirituality:

This is a case of knowing you have what it takes to be competent and successful in non traditional gender roles. In this sense gays exhibit a kind of both/and rather than either/or. This is very different from the straight world, where gender roles are much more tightly defined. This tight definition manifests sexually as well.

The gay way of being in the world, at its best, involves a both-and rather than either-or. The balance—or, better, creative tension—that gay people can achieve in learning to negotiate conflicting demands of gender roles, a creative tension rooted in the ability to hold together male-female principles inside ourselves, results in a release of creative energy with the potential to transform institutions that welcome self-accepting gay people and our talents.

Key to this release of creative energy is learning to transcend the either-or thinking of hierarchical institutions that want to subordinate one group to another—in particular, female to male:

There's a school of thought currently being developed which explains spiritual, creative, and relational abilities as products of sexual energy. Sexual energy can be really polluted when a person fails to deal with dominance and submission issues.

Social and ecclesial institutions locked into dominance-submission ways of thinking thwart the release of creative energy, because they siphon off a huge amount of energy that could be expended in institutional transformation in the work of maintaining the status quo, and in particular, the dominance of one group over another (often, of males over females):

The problem with this is that if you can't get out of that system you can't experience transcendence in creative expression, spirituality, or sexual relationships. As you say, maintaining takes precedence over mission.

I think you’re absolutely right in these observations. Since our spiritual life calls on us to discern the movement of spirit within our daily lives and the experiences of daily life, I can’t help “processing” your rich reflections through the prism of Steve’s and my most recent experiences at a United Methodist university in Florida.

The Florida United Methodist Conference website has uploaded an article about the recent General Conference’s discussion of LGBT people, and the decision to hold the line against us yet again at this General Conference. This article by reporter Tita Parham focuses on the need for continued dialogue about the place of gay people in the Methodist church in Florida (www.flumc.info/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000047/004774.htm).

A response to this article by a lay leader of First United Methodist Church in Orlando, Robert MacLeish, focuses on the role played by the Florida UMC bishop, Timothy Whitaker, at the 30 April deliberations that resulted in the vote to hold the line. Mr. MacLeish states,

My heart goes out to our good Bishop. He was in a bind with that abominable, counter biblical homosexuality issue. It's a shame it must be dealt with when addressing it as sinful should be so simple a matter. My heart goes out to him also for having to abide by Roberts Rules of Order.

There’s quite a bit to note about this response to the 30 April vote at General Conference. Again, I want to stress that I do so in light of Steve’s and my experience of being actively recruited in 2006 by a Methodist college in Florida under the pastoral jurisdiction of Bishop Whitaker.

I’d like to suggest that our experience is, in some sense, paradigmatic. It’s paradigmatic for gay people in general, insofar as our being self-accepting, open, celebratory of the love and grace in our lives and relationships, threatens the status quo of the very institutions that tell us they need our creativity, energy, and transformative potential.

This is not the first time Steve and I have experienced this invitation-expulsion dynamic. We have learned much about it in our professional lives as openly gay theologians working in church-affiliated colleges.

We have learned that the church and its institutions want (and need) our talents and creative energy. But they do not want our openness. They do not want our honesty. They don’t want our integrity. They don’t want our love.

In other words, they want our talents and creative energy without wanting the very pre-conditions for the release of creative energy in our lives as a gay couple.

This creates a horrible quandary for gay people, vis-à-vis the churches. It creates a terrible quandary for those of us who still feel called by the Spirit to live vocational lives that have some connection to the churches—which are capable of tremendous cruelty and deceit towards us as gay human beings. (And I have to say honestly that it grows harder and harder for me as a gay person to see anything but evil in many churches today, given the extremes to which churches seem willing to go to keep gay people at bay.)

On the one hand, we have inside ourselves—precisely as a result of our willingness to undergo the hard struggle to understand and accept our God-given natures—creative energy that needs to flow somewhere. Somewhere good. It’s creative. It issues forth in our lives and hearts as the desire to do good in the world, by helping to build a better world. We know it's good and creative energy because it has good and creative results in the lives of those around us with whom we interact.

This energy flows forth in our lives and hearts, as well, because, having learned to celebrate our unique natures as God’s gift to us (and to others), we then often form strong loving relationships that endure one assault after another, in a world that wants to reduce who we are and what we do to sex, and not love. Living together in long-standing committed relationships in a world that offers almost no reinforcement for such relationships, and many obstacles to them, takes miracles, on a daily basis.

We bring all of this—this history of struggle to understand ourselves, to accept ourselves, to love—to the church-affiliated institutions that tell us they want and need our talents. These church-affiliated institutions then use the talents gladly, but just as gladly discard us when it is convenient to do so—when powerful monied pressure groups “notice” that there are gay folks working in church institutions and not hiding themselves or lying about who they are; when a leader without guts and courage finds it useful to scapegoat the gays in order to save her own skin; when rewards flow to such spineless leaders from the church itself precisely because they are willing to lie to and about the despised gays and to expel them in vicious rituals of public humiliation.

I’m looking at these dynamics as a problem for those of us who have to live with them and with their aftermath in our lives. I’d like now to turn the analysis around and to examine how these dynamics affect not us who are the obvious victim of them. I'd like to look at the the churches who employ these dynamics against us and to analyze the increasing cost the churches are paying by victimizing gay human beings.

I’d like to begin by noting that the churches clearly need energy. They need creative energy. The churches of Main Street USA are aging. They are, in fact, dying. Fewer young people take part in church life, and there is every indicator that this trend will continue into this new millennium.

The response of churches to this process of internal decay has often been to engage in ever more glitzy media shows, to commercialize themselves and the gospel message, to pander to the lowest common denominator in their expectations of discipleship, by reducing what they have to say to media sound-bites. This response has been “successful” insofar as it allows the churches of Main Street USA to stay afloat.

It continues, above all, to bring money into the business of church life—and churches are businesses. It allows the churches to congratulate themselves about all those they bring to Christ—that is, to engage in self-congratulation as long as they don’t ask critical questions about what bringing people to Christ actually means. As long as we equate success with how much money comes into the coffers, how many new buildings we throw up, how many heads we count in the pews on Sunday . . . .

At their heart, in the depths of their souls, the churches of Main Street USA experience a certain soulnessness today, I would propose. Many of those hanging on with their fingernails through the happy-clappy media shows recognize that something is wrong, radically wrong, and know in their bones that more glitz and more media and more bearded pretend-macho men leading the shows are not really going to address the soulness at the heart of it all.

For many of us, church is about something else altogether. It’s about engaging in authentic community, community that affirms each of us in our uniqueness, and values and uses the gifts we each bring to the table. Community celebrated when we gather around the Lord’s table, as children of God who all have a place there, as sinners all in need of the medicine of mercy. Community that makes it unthinkable for any of us to kneel beside another brother or sister in the Lord on Sunday and then knife that person in the back economically, professionally, and interpersonally on Monday.

We long for community that embodies the gospel message. We long for authenticity in the message we first live and second proclaim. We long for authentic connection to our spiritual roots, whether they are Franciscan, Wesleyan, Protestant, Catholic, whatever. We long to find our way around commercialized sound-bite distortions of our tradition that translate into mindless acceptance of any nonsense we are told in both the religious and political spheres.

And so enter the gays. The churches of Main Street USA are in a mess. Youth—the brightest and best of this generation—want nothing to do with the happy-clappy media-driven babble about winning souls for Christ. Most youth today in the global North know and love some specific gay folks who put a human face on the stereotype the churches continue to maintain. They cannot understand the cruelty and deceit that are the price the church is willing to pay to keep gay people and gay voices and gay talents outside.

The church needs the gays. The youth of the church know this and are raising their voices. The energy and talent we bring to the institution are attractive. But who we are—our potential to rock the boat—is tremendously frightening to the same institution that recognizes the gifts we bring. And so the cruelty and deceit continue, even as they are increasingly unmasked for what they are by younger church members who recognize the violence being done to people whom they love, insofar as the church adverts to its LGBT brothers and sisters.

I continue to follow discussions about General Conference, in part, to continue trying to understand what happened to Steve and me at a United Methodist college in Florida. In many blog discussions of that fateful 30 April discussion of the place of LGBT brothers and sisters in the Methodist church, I find recurring concerns about several issues:

1. Since Bishop Timothy Whitaker of Florida is known to be one of the leading proponents of holding the line against gays in the Methodist church, how did it happen that he was chosen to preside at the fateful 30 April session on this issue?
2. Doesn’t the choice of a leading proponent of holding the line in itself represent an a priori attempt to skew the process of holy conferencing in an anti-gay direction?
3. Were Roberts Rules of Order misused by those trying to engineer another anti-gay vote in the 30 April session?
4. If so, do Roberts Rules of Order have much at all to do with holy conferencing?

I might add two more questions based on my own experience

I am putting these questions in very personal terms because those personal terms indicate how acute is the crisis the churches of Main Street USA face today, re: gay people and gay energy. The churches want our energy and talent.

They do not want us.

Not us, insofar as we are open, honest, living lives of integrity and love—all of which is the precondition for our having the very energy we bring to church institutions.

This is a serious problem, one the churches can no longer avoid or gloss over, no matter how hard they try, by uploading to their institutional website one more happy-clappy article about "approved” minorities, or by electing to positions of power and authority members of “approved” minorities who do the dirty work to gay brothers and sisters on behalf of the white male power center of the churches.

It is a problem the Spirit will not allow the churches to avoid any longer, because the Spirit is creative energy. The Spirit wills creation, ongoing creation. The Spirit wishes to see the churches alive with profound transformative energy. The Spirit speaks to the churches of Main Street USA today through the voices of young members in whose hands the future of the churches lies.

The Spirit calls gay brothers and sisters to the churches, gives us creative energy for our vocations in the churches, and is grieved when the church slams its doors in our faces.

In conclusion, to return to your analysis, Colleen, I see two wellsprings of this creative energy in gay lives, following your transpersonal psychological analysis. One is the hard struggle we who are gay go through to see ourselves as God’s children, when the churches insist on calling us spawn of the devil or “abominable, counter-biblical” sinners.

You locate the wellspring of that energy, once we accept ourselves, in freedom, “freedom from gender typing, and because of that, a freedom to explore and accept other realms of thought, creativity, and spirituality.” I think this is absolutely right.

A study was done some years ago (and I can’t place my fingers on it now) of the moral development of priests. The study used the Defining Issues Test to identify levels of moral maturity among priests.

The priests studied were asked to identify themselves as gay or straight. The study found an interesting correlation between sexual orientation and moral development. On the whole, gay priests scored higher on scales of moral development than did straight priests.

The author of this study and others who commented on it at the time noted that coming to moral maturity requires that one struggle with issues that test the boundaries of our moral assurances, of our givens about what is “obviously” right and wrong. We develop conscience (and the moral maturity to use conscience correctly) not by being provided all the answers, but by encountering disjuncture between what we take for granted and other worldviews that have different ways of viewing the world.

The author of this study noted that straight priests often do not have to struggle in the same way gay priests do to come to terms with their sexual orientation, with profound questions about gender identity and gender roles, and with the inadequacy of formulaic answers (in bible or church teaching) to all moral dilemmas. This struggle—when one undergoes it with honesty and integrity (and obviously not everyone, gay or straight, is ready to undergo such struggle)—yields higher moral sensitivity, ability to negotiate difficult moral questions in one’s own life and that of others, and compassion for others in their struggles.

You also put your finger on another wellspring of creative energy in the lives of many gay people which demands a whole other blog posting: this is the creative balance of male-female principles within ourselves, which gives us the potential to bring such creative balance to the churches.

And the churches definitely need that balance, along with the wisdom to move beyond paradigms of female subordination that idolize masculinity in its cheapest, rawest forms. Look at the pictures of those sitting at the presiding podium and on the stage, as the churches pass laws to keep gay people and our energies out. They are essays in the problem the churches need to overcome today, if they wish for authentic transformation.

When the rule of white males in the churches must be protected even at the cost of lying, deceit, manipulation of rules for holy conferencing, overt violations of the social principles of the churches, the price begins to seem simply too high. And when the energy being kept at bay demands that we use such devilish tools to keep that energy at bay, then what is the church doing to itself, by refusing the gifts of its gay brothers and sisters?

When Doing the Right Thing Means Not Playing It Safe: Christians of the Radical Middle and LGBT Human Beings

I continue to read blog discussions dissecting what happened at the United Methodist Church General Conference. I find the “voice” of these discussions much more compelling than the news accounts (and essays) about General Conference appearing on UMC websites, both at the international level and at the level of various regional conferences.

These official news accounts are glitzy. They skim the surface—of what happened, of thought itself. They bruise gospel meaning with lots of breezy (and ultimately vapid) rhetoric about global connections, concern for women and people of color.

On many UMC websites, side-by-side with the gut-wrenching announcement of the 30 April decision to hold the line on homosexuality—that is, against our LGBT brothers and sisters—are happy-clappy news releases showing beaming natives smiling and singing.

I use the term “natives” deliberately. I know it’s condescending. The approach of the UMC to people of color and women is itself condescending. The approach of all churches of Main Street USA to the peoples of the global South and to women is condescending. People of color and women are being used today in disreputable games, in which the white male power structures that still determine the conversation in the churches of Main Street USA play preferred outcasts against disdained outcasts.

This is despicable. It is hurtful. How can our LGBT brothers and sisters not feel pain, when they read these self-congratulatory news stories about how the UMC is full of such compassion towards the suffering, the outcast, the poor and despised: except, “No gays need apply”?

How can our LGBT brothers and sisters look at the pictures of smiling and singing people of the global South and not remember what happened on 30 April with gnawing hurt in the pit of the stomach? How can the church itself—its white male leaders—not see that the game they are playing with talk of globalization and of promoting the rights of women and people of color is transparent and ugly? It is a game that will bring shame on the heads of these leaders of the churches of Main Street USA down the road, when society at large eventually recognizes how cruel is the accepted treatment of LGBT people in much of our culture at present.

Better to admit, frankly, that there’s no strong intent to bring anyone to the table except white men and representatives of approved minorities who have been vetted to assure that they’ll play the white-male power game and not upset the apple cart.

There is, in other words, not just a tiny bit, but a large helping, of prevarication in what the churches of Main Street USA say and do today to our LGBT brothers and sisters, and what they say and do to other sanitized minority groups. To get the real picture beyond prevarication, one has to set aside the glitzy self-congratulatory news stories, the official Comintern-like rhetoric of essays on local UMC conference websites (the two that have appeared on the Florida Conference website, authored by

are especially illuminating), and listen to authentic testimony on blogs.

To get the real picture, one has to delve into first-hand accounts, particularly reflections by those who were actually there and whose lives were yet again determined, without their input, by what one blog has characterized as acts of hate and deceit on the floor of General Conference.

Strong words, hate and deceit. But words I’m inclined to believe. I’m inclined to give credence to these words because I know some of the key players in the 30 April actions that told our LGBT brothers and sisters they aren’t welcome in UMC churches (yes, that’s what the action meant; that’s what it said, beyond the glitzy rhetoric about happy-clappy inclusion). And I know these players are capable of all kinds of deceit, in the name of Christ, to keep our LGBT brothers outside, to hold the line.

I also know this deceit is a manifestation of hate, even when the face speaking the official Comintern words to an LGBT believer is the face of a smiling white man who vaunts his achievements at bringing women and people of color to the table of power and privilege. Hate is hate, and those who feel its cutting edge know what it feels like, even when it’s enshrouded in rhetoric and hidden inside chatter about the power of the Holy Spirit and conversion and campaigns to revive the church.

An interesting recurring theme in the blog accounts of some General Conference delegates who voted to hold the line against our LGBT brothers and sisters is how “tough” the decision was, how “anguished” they felt in making it.

I don’t doubt this testimony in the least. But I’d like to expose it to some analysis, to ask some critical questions about what it really means, about what it means at the level of fundamental reality to say that decisions to keep our LGBT brothers and sisters away from the table are tough and anguishing.

The first critical questions I'd like to ask are, Really? Why? If we know that what we are doing is right, then why anguish? If we have listened for the voice of the Spirit in holy conferencing and have discerned that it is the Spirit Herself who moves us to exclude brothers and sisters, then why do we find the decision tough?

I’d like to propose that these admissions of how tough and anguishing the decision to exclude our LGBT brothers and sisters was contain a revelatory nugget of truth about just what really is at stake in the continued shoving of LGBT people away from the Lord’s table in the churches of Main Street USA.

What’s really at stake is not, as many delegates want to propose, a tough, anguishing decision to hold the line of doctrinal and moral purity, of orthodoxy, of biblical inerrancy. What’s really at stake is exclusion, pure and simple: stark, hate-fueled, fear-filled, Spirit-denying decisions to keep LGBT brothers and sisters outside, to define LGBT human beings as people whose humanity doesn’t count—at least, not the way my own humanity counts.

One blogger (again, someone I know, in that I grew up in the same town as did this General Conference delegate: flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood) who speaks of the tough, anguishing decision she had to make on 30 April actually notes that the focus of concern has shifted in recent years in the UMC from excluding openly gay people from ordination, to excluding openly gay people. Period.

That's quite an admission. I find it a refreshing admission, an honest one, all the more so because it is coming from a theologically trained United Methodist who proclaims herself to be a feminist theologian, but who represents what she clearly sees as the radical middle of the church. This admission has the ring of authenticity about it.

I can appreciate, then, that this delegate’s decision to hold the line was tough and anguishing, because she knew precisely what she was doing in holding the line: she was holding the line against LGBT brothers and sisters, not against doctrinal error or heterodoxy. She was telling these brothers and sisters that, sorry, the door is closed just for now. Come back later. Perhaps we’ll have a crumb or two for you then, when we've fed everyone else and assessed our resources. Only one table—can't feed everybody, you know.

In fact, how about coming back four years from now? Perhaps by then, we delegates will pay a less taxing price if we rethink the tough, anguishing decision to exclude you. Maybe then our fellow church members will no longer punish us so severely if we finally decide to stand up for inclusion.

Because the churches of Main Street USA are, at heart, culture churches, this is really the underlying logic of what is going on in the exclusion of LGBT persons, isn’t it? It’s too risky right now to stand against the radical middle. Many of us have careers to make, after all. We don’t get to one of the big “first” churches of urban areas—the power pulpits where our voice is beamed out across an entire state as "the" Methodist voice of the area—except by playing it safe.

We don't get the power pulpit unless we become skilled at calculating the next step in the radical middle and assuring that we're in line with that step. That's what the radical middle means, for goodness' sake! It means walking lockstep and never stepping out of line, baptizing our conformity as a holy tactic for holding the church together.

We don’t get those coveted episcopal appointments if we step out of line. We would have headaches to deal with if we came back to Main Street USA and told the folks of the radical middle that we had let the gays inside: battles to fight, letter-writing campaigns to combat, dwindling donations, threats of power mongers to make our lives miserable.

Now that the Supreme Court of California has knocked down that state’s ban on gay marriage, it’s interesting to compare the underlying logic of this civil rights decision with the logic underlying the choice of churches of the radical middle to continue excluding our LGBT brothers and sisters.

Yesterday, Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times published an interview with California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George (www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gay18-2008may18,0,4272300.story). George, a Republican who voted with the majority in the recent gay-marriage decision, speaks about how tough and anguishing the decision was for him to make.

Dolan notes that, as George pondered the decision, he kept returning in his memory to a trip he and his parents made to the segregated South years ago:

As he read the legal arguments, the 68-year-old moderate Republican was drawn by memory to a long ago trip he made with his European immigrant parents through the American South. There, the signs warning "No Negro" or "No colored" left "quite an indelible impression on me," he recalled in a wide-ranging interview Friday.

George’s conclusion about his decision to grant gay Americans civil rights, just as African Americans have been granted civil rights, is fascinating: "I think there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe."

“I think there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe.”

Churchmen (and churchwomen formed in the churchman's image) of the radical middle, do you hear what the California Supreme Court Chief Justice is saying? When African Americans were told that they were unwelcome at your table in the Jim Crow South, what did you do then?

Did you provide prophetic witness about how the church of Jesus Christ always welcomes everyone to the table, and most of all those who are excluded, demeaned, outcast?

Or did you play it safe? Did you play it safe while talking about the power of the Holy Spirit and conversion and bringing new life to the church?

Now that you have another opportunity to provide prophetic witness, how will you behave? How will you behave now, when you have confessed to the world the sin of your previous racism and misogyny?

Will you continue talking about the power of the Holy Spirit and conversion and bringing new life to the church, while belying that rhetoric with your ugly treatment of your LGBT brothers and sisters? Will you reverse the discrimination you currently practice only when society itself makes such discrimination unthinkable?

Or will you demonstrate the power of the Holy Spirit, conversion, and how new life is brought to the church by welcoming everyone to the table, and most of all those who are excluded, demeaned, outcast? Will you demonstrate this now when it still not entirely safe to make such courageous (Spirit-inspired) decisions?

Or will you once again repent only when it’s safe to do so?

What would Jesus do?

To Talk of Many Things

And now time to catch up on this and that.

I mentioned some time ago (I think) that my nephew Luke had completed his master’s degree in South Asian Studies. Recently, I read his thesis, and doing that reminds me once again to congratulate him on his accomplishment.

The thesis is a study of how India and the Indian media have viewed ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka in the past decade. It’s well-written, cogently argued, and thoughtful. I’m proud of my nephew and hope this degree will be a starting point for jobs that fulfill his dreams, and/or more education.

I also mentioned in a previous posting that my nephew Kate had applied for the job of her dreams in the big city. Kate was offered the job she wanted and began a few weeks ago. She seems very happy in her new life. I’m proud of her, too, and wish her very well.

Perhaps because I’ll always be an educator at heart, I think often these days of the world we’ll leave to the next generation. I’m frightened. I’m sad. I’m not confident we who have “made” the world that’s being handed on have done a very good job of it.

I read discussions of the recent UMC General Conference on the official UMC website and elsewhere. One recurrent theme is that the conversation about homosexuality—which is to say, about our LGBT brothers and sisters—should be over.

We’ve had our say. We’ve told them they’re sinners. If they don’t like it, they should look for another church. We have better things to do, real needs to attend to. Let’s stop talking about an issue that we’ve resolved in favor of biblical truth.

I’m appalled at such discourse. It’s everywhere. As E.J. Dionne’s book Souled Out notes, the lines created by the intersection of political and religious concerns in the U.S. have created alliances across religious communions. The same rhetoric of exclusion that I’m reading on UMC websites exists in my own Catholic church, where brothers and sisters concerned to maintain the purity of their church routinely invite brothers and sisters with less access to The Truth to leave and join the Episcopalians.

I’m appalled. How can anyone who understands what church is all about, at its core level, invite others to leave? What is it about the very presence, the faces, the existence of gay brothers and sisters, that elicits such savagery among many followers of Christ?

How can anyone read the gospels and think that they’re about our becoming comfortable, about excluding anyone who makes us think about the world in surprising new ways that cause extreme discomfort? How can anyone who reads the gospels (or has even a passing knowledge of Christian history) not see the ugly insincerity of the choice of the contemporary church to choose one “sin” alone as The Sin for which one should forever be excluded from communion?

And as this happens, young folks—those to whom we’re bequeathing the sorry mess we have made of the world—have almost no interest, on the whole, in maintaining these structures of exclusion. If the churches of Main Street USA are really concerned about transmitting the gospel to a new generation, they’d be doing all they can to end the exclusion of LGBT brothers and sisters, if only to build bridges to the new generation.

The fact that churches want to keep on clinging to these structures of exclusion has everything to do, I believe, with the need of some of us to remain comfortable and to remain empowered. We’ll do anything we can to hold onto the seats of power, even if that “anything” includes lying about and savaging a marginalized group of people. We will mortgage the future of the coming generation to maintain our power and privilege in the present.

On the lying front, I see articles on various blogs today about how the religious right wishes to take credit for supporting interracial marriage, in the wake of the death of Mildred Loving. As a number of blogs are noting, those in the religious right now taking credit for having advanced the cause of interracial marriage are, quite simply, lying about the roots of the religious right—about its roots in a reflex reaction in the Southern U.S. against integration.

As I have noted, I know these folks, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. Their attempt to celebrate civil rights today is tinny and insincere, coming as it does from the same quarters that, a half century ago, fought tooth and nail to keep segregation in place, including in the church. The strategy of division in the religious right—of pitting African Americans against LGBT Americans, and of implying that the civil rights aspirations of the former are legitimate and of the latter illegitimate—rests on a whopper of a lie about the commitment of the religious right to racial equity.

As the blog commentaries are also noting, Mildred Loving herself noted the parallels between her struggle as an African-American woman to be free to marry the man she loved, and the struggle of LGBT Americans for equality. Mildred Loving was among the many African Americans who see the important connections between the fight for civil rights among African Americans and the parallel fight of LGBT Americans for equality.

I say much of this as well against the backdrop of the current U.S. presidential election, where recent articles note that the rise of Barack Obama to the position of Democratic front runner has everything to do with the need of younger people to have a future full of hope. Hope. Change. Those wedded to the politics of the past miscalculated, in this election cycle. In ridiculing the emphasis of Barack Obama and his supporters on hope and change, the defenders of the status quo have failed to understand the dynamics driving the millennial generation.

As with the churches and those defending the status quo in church life . . . .

Finally, I write against the backdrop of conversations with my co-religionists about issues like giving communion to politicians who have made statements supporting abortion. I find it very difficult to believe that we are undergoing that stupid conversation once again.

Polls indicate that the large majority of U.S. Catholics do not want to see the Eucharist used as a political weapon. Catholic tradition at its best maintains that the decision of someone to receive communion is a decision of conscience made by the person herself, in consultation with her spiritual director.

The Eucharist should not be politicized. If American Catholics cannot move beyond the politics of stalemate produced by the religious right, we will end up having nothing to say to contemporary culture. We won’t be part of the coalition trying to forge a new political consensus around the hope for constructive change for the future.

It is such a tragic waste of time and energy, to be involved in these stale old battles that are merely symbolic—attempts of a group of religious purists to assert their symbolic control over the rest of us. I am growing not merely weary of these attempts, but impatient of them.

Each time we have an election cycle, I notice the vultures hovering over the inter-religious conversations of churches in the U.S., doing all they can to pick at the bones of discontent in the conversation, so that the conversations do not move forward, so that people continue fighting over this and that scrap. These are carefully engineered and well-funded attempts to thwart the possibility that progressive groups within the mainstream churches might make common cause and move the political discussion in a new direction.

Those engaged in this sabotage process are seldom honest about what they are doing, about the groups for which they shill, about who is funding them, about the unsavory groups with which they are allied. And yet, one of their choice tactics is to try to manipulate the words of those they’re seeking to stalemate, to imply that their progressive opponents are dishonest and corrupt.

Enough. Anyone filled with belief is filled with hope. And hope builds. Hope is about giving ourselves over to a love that moves us outside ourselves and beyond ourselves. The ravenous need to control—to destroy in the process of controlling—is about some other kind of energy, not an energy fed by hope and love.

Discourse Rules for Holy Conferencing: God Hears the Cries of the Poor

Discourse Rule Three:

Effective holy conferencing that aims at the practice of faithful Christian discipleship will give a privileged place at the table to those whose voices are least powerful in mainstream culture.

As I have noted, among the reasons I am offering critical reflections on the Wesleyan tradition of holy conferencing as currently practiced in the United Methodist Church is that this tradition offers a valuable model for other churches. Other churches already practice what the United Church of Christ calls “sacred conversation.” For churches that interact with the public sphere in a pluralistic democratic society to bring gospel values to the public sphere, holy conferencing provides a sound foundation for the interchange of church and culture.

Holy conferencing brings democratic procedures to the internal life of the people of God. The democratic model is a point of intersection with the pluralistic democratic societies with which the church interacts.

Democracy is a praiseworthy form of government, one perhaps particularly suited to the gospel viewpoint that every human being is of equal value in the sight of God, since we all originate from the hand of the same Creator God. However, democratic polity contains a hidden flaw that we must tease out and address, if democracy is to move in the direction of justice and not of the rule of the powerful over the less powerful.

This hidden flaw is that when human beings meet in the public sphere or in the context of holy conferencing, they do not meet as equals. God may see us as equals. We see ourselves otherwise. We are socially constructed such that some of us have power and privilege that transcends our shared origin in the hands of the Creator God.

Some of us have power and privilege because of the color of our skin, others because of our national origin, many because of our age, some because of our gender, others because of our economic and social status and educational background. Our sexual orientations make us not merely radically different from each other (so long as social and ecclesial structures continue to notice this difference and construct insider-outside lines on its basis): sexual orientation provides a demarcation point for entry to or exclusion from public conversations, power, and privilege, as well as holy conferencing. We do not meet as equals either in the public sphere or in holy conferencing.

Holy conferencing does not deserve to be called holy, if it continues the unequal power relationships of the public sphere within the church context. As a democratic process, holy conferencing is meant to provide a countercultural witness to pluralistic democratic societies—a model of what democracy at its best might be, when it seeks to empower all, bring all to the table, be truly inclusive and truly participatory.

There is a very strong strand in the thought of Main Street USA which assumes that, in our interaction in the public sphere, we are all on equal footing. This atomistic individualistic understanding of democratic society implicitly accepts the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. We assume that those who make it to the top have gotten there through their wits, hard work, and righteous living. Conversely, we assume that those who have fallen to the bottom are somehow flawed—that they are ill-educated or unintelligent, lazy, and unrighteous.

This understanding of our connection to each other in the webs of power and privilege that run all through democratic society overlooks the various ways in which power and privilege give many of us a head start on the rest of us. Some of our voices will never be heard, because the social networks of power and privilege are so constituted that our voices simply cannot emerge, cannot have a hearing.

Many of us spend so much of our time and energy simply surviving, that participating in public conversation or holy conferencing is well-nigh impossible. It is a luxury to discourse about holy things when getting one’s daily bread is an overweening concern.

The Main Street USA myth that we all interact on equal footing implicitly protects the status quo. That is, it protects the power and privilege of those who already have power and privilege. The myth that, in a society in which power and privilege are unequally distributed, we can remain aloof, “objective,” neutral, serves to bless and excuse the power and privilege of those already empowered, already privileged.

When the balance is strongly in one direction, the only way to change the balance is to place weight on the side that has very little heft. If the church wishes its holy conferencing to be holy—which is to say, truly inclusive—the church has to norm its discourse rules with considerations about justice. The church has to commit itself to an ongoing process of social analysis, which seeks to understand how power and privilege are distributed in any given society, how they operate in that society, and above all, how they function to suppress the voices and contributions of those without power and privilege.

I am making some theological assumptions in saying this. One assumption is that God is always on the side of the poor. God has a special preferential concern for the marginal, the outcast, those pushed to the verges of society. When Jesus announces the inauguration of his ministry in Luke’s gospel, he equates his ministry with the jubilee of Israel: he speaks of his ushering in of the reign of God as a kairotic moment in which slaves will be set free, the hungry fed, the poor brought to the table.

Another theological assumption implicit in what I am saying about the need for justice as a critical norm in the discourse rules of holy conferencing is that we cannot be merciful without doing justice. We Christians of Main Street USA like to believe in ourselves as the good, the merciful, the fair-minded.

We are not merciful, however. We are not merciful because we are not just. We do not look at our social (and ecclesial) structures from the vantage point of justice, to ask who is savagely excluded, who cannot even reach the table, who is asked to sit at the lesser table and be thankful for crumbs.

We are expert at binding up social wounds. We all too seldom ask how to heal and staunch the wound that causes the injuries we bind up. Our gospel message falls on deaf ears because the discrepancy between who we profess to be and who we actually are is too stark, too acute, for many people to support.

We claim to be merciful, while we practice savage injustice.

Holy conferencing will not be either truly countercultural or truly holy, unless and until it devises ways to bring to the table those most often discounted, ignored, and shunned in the various societies in which the church has taken root. The United Methodist Church has given outstanding witness in recent years as it seeks to bring people of color and women to the table.

The United Methodist Church—as with most churches of Main Street USA—has behaved, on the whole, with shocking cruelty towards and contempt for its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered brothers and sisters. This is all the more shocking when one considers that many of those who wish to continue the exclusion of gay believers from the table speak of their action as countercultural witness! It is all the more shocking when those continuing this savage exclusion willingly play some marginal groups—e.g., people of color and women—against LGBT persons, as they try to engineer the conversation so that it does not reveal the real power centers of the church (the white male heterosexist power centers) whose control is threatened by anyone trying to craft a truly inclusive, truly participatory conversation.

There is perhaps no injustice greater than to define others without permitting the Other a voice in being defined. This is what the United Methodist Church does when, over and over, it passes legislation defining gay believers as sinful and non-normative, while holding gay voices, gay witness, at bay. This continued injustice in the very heart of the church—in its sacred conversation—so radically undercuts the church’s claim to be merciful, that many people repudiate the church’s invitation, and find it impossible to believe that the church is an open-door church comprised of those with open hearts and minds.

If what I am reading in many places about the most recent General Conference is correct, the church paid a very high price at General Conference this year, for continuing its engineered conversation about LGBT brothers and sisters. I am reading of parliamentary tricks, of managed “debates” in which alternative viewpoints were not truly given any voice.

If these reports are true—if the price the church paid to continue its exclusion of LGBT brothers and sisters at this General Conference was the deliberate manipulation of the conversation by a few powerful church leaders acting in unison with political interest groups for whom it is intolerable that the United Methodist Church become gay-inclusive—then one has to ask what it is about the unfettered witness of LGBT believers that the church finds so frightening. What is it about the stories, the lives, the faith-journeys of gay believers, that the church cannot hear, will not permit to be spoken?

The discourse rules for holy conferencing must work against the attempts of those with power and privilege to engineer the conversation. There must be mechanisms in place to name and expose crafty underhanded attempts to subvert authentic conversation. There must also be mechanisms in place to permit the voices of gay believers to be heard.

God is found among the marginal. Churches seeking to hear God’s voice in democratic public conversations and to discern the will of the Spirit for the church on that basis will fail to hear all that God might say and will fail to engage in authentic discernment, if they do not find ways to listen to the voices speaking from the margins.

As it is currently constructed, the public sphere of most societies is hardly a safe space for LGBT persons and our voices. There is much misplaced talk of the wealth of gay persons. One of the malicious lies peddled among the churches of the global South to work up resentment against gay believers in the global North is the lie that all LGBT people are wealthy and privileged.

Careful social analysis does not bear out such an analysis of the economic status of all LGBT persons in the societies of the global North. In the United States, even when gay persons have economic resources, we are still subject to manifold forms of discrimination, including lack of protection against being fired solely because of our sexual orientation, lack of the right to visit a partner in the hospital, lack of parental rights and privileges in many states, lack of protection against being verbally or physically assaulted as we walk down the street or go to school.

Life is not simple in such a society. Life is not safe in such a society. If the churches ever wished to hear voices such as mine, I could tell stories—and I know others who could tell stories—that the churches sorely need to hear, if they really want to be known as places of healing, mercy, justice, and inclusion.

Church should always and everywhere be a safe space for those who are subject to painful exclusion and savage treatment in society at large. Churches cannot call themselves countercultural when they do not seek intentionally to become such safe spaces in every society. To be such safe spaces, churches must turn from either ignoring or demonizing LGBT persons, to welcoming us.

In order to be welcoming, churches must break silence about issues of sexual orientation (saying no over and over again is hardly breaking silence), and build conversations in which Christians of Main Street USA get to know and hear the stories of their LGBT brothers and sisters. To be welcoming, churches must abolish the lesser table and invite LGBT persons to the one table of the Lord. Such welcome will be meaningful only when the same rules that apply to the lives and relationships of all believers apply equally to LGBT persons and our relationships.

It goes without saying that the church will convince no one it is truly welcoming, as long as the institutions it sponsors—e.g., its colleges and universities—are permitted to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Church-sponsored institutions must have non-discrimination statements and policies in place. Gay employees should never be dismissed without the same right to an evaluation (to which they are permitted to respond) accorded to a non-gay employee.

Gay employees should not be demoted and then terminated after bogus “evaluations” by hired “consultants” who do not even know the person they are “evaluating,” and who have no qualifications to “evaluate” the person whom they are evaluating. Gay employees should not be demoted and terminated on the basis of such an “evaluation” when they are never shown this evaluation and given a right to respond to it, but the “evaluation” is distributed to others.

There is a connection between such crafty and unjust procedures within church institutions, and the engineering of the sacred conversation of holy conferencing to keep openly gay voices out of the conversation. Firing people unjustly results in exclusion of that person from the participatory structures of economic and social life: it robs that person of a voice. When the people subjecting LGBT persons to such injustice in church institutions are the same people calling on the church to remain countercultural in opposing full inclusion of LGBT persons, and are the same people engineering the conversation to exclude the voices of LGBT persons, holy conferencing is radically subverted.

The world in which we live does all it can to make gay people victims, and then to blame gay people for exhibiting traits of victimization. The church must not continue this unjust victimization and re-victimization process, if it wishes to engage in holy conferencing. The conferencing of the church will not be holy until the church itself becomes (along with its institutions) a safe space in which to be openly gay.

Discourse Rules for Holy Conferencing: Being Honest about M-O-N-E-Y

Discourse Rule Two

Effective holy conferencing requires policies and procedures to create transparency and accountability among all participants about organizations other than the church that they may be representing in holy conferencing. In particular, effective holy conferencing requires policies and procedures that create transparency and accountability about funding sources for delegates who represent organizations other than the church, as they engage in holy conferencing.

One would like to think that ecclesial sacred conversations occur in a hermetically sealed holy environment where politics, power, and money hold no sway. Alas, that is not the case. Nor has it been the case at any point in Christian history. Politics has always been part and parcel of church assemblies and their discernment process.

Human nature being what it is, and human communities what we are—prone to bow to those with wealth and power—those gathering groups of people for holy conferences would be well advised to think about the way in which power and money may sway, or even determine, the outcome of a church’s discernment process. In my view, there have to be clear discourse rules that take into account these human tendencies and provide checks and balances against them, if holy conferencing is to remain holy.

I don’t by any means wish to suggest that participants in holy conferencing don’t or shouldn’t have manifold interests and commitments beyond their commitment to the church. We are all of us affiliated to various organizations, both within the churches and outside them. In holy conferencing, we bring to the table the weight of our life histories, our cultural formation, our class status, our political and intellectual commitments, our personal likes and dislikes and optic on the world.

And this is all to the good—that is, it’s to the good, when we acknowledge the biases and commitments that grow out of our particular interests and affiliations as starting points in a dialogic process where we open ourselves to the possibility of seeing things from other standpoints, as we pursue the truth together. This acknowledgment of our diversity and of the ways in which we are shaped by different histories and influences makes holy conferencing all the richer. It assures that a multiplicity of viewpoints—ideally, as many as the parish of God’s world contains—are represented at the table of holy conferencing.

What I’m addressing with this discourse rule are not the manifold interests, commitments, and affiliations we all bring to the table of holy conferencing. What I’m addressing is the real possibility that some of the groups with which we are affiliated would like to do all they might to influence the outcome of holy conferencing, even when those groups are not at their core first and foremost organizations formed to listen carefully to the gospel and to ask what the gospel has to say to contemporary culture.

In the American context, the persistent and strong influence of such political interest groups can never be discounted when church folks meet for holy conferencing. In a nation with the soul of a church, what churches say and do has influence far beyond the boundaries of the church itself. Political activists, corporate leaders, people of power and influence, care about what the churches say and teach—if only because what the churches say and teach affects the direction of our culture, and thus affects the political and economic spheres.

This being the case, it seems to me critically important that churches aiming at holy conferencing do all they can to identify the various interest groups represented by delegates to holy conferences, and, above all, call for accountability and transparency about how funds from those groups have flowed to members of the church conference. Questions that can justifiably be asked in this regard would be the following:

1. Is anyone at the table of holy conferencing primarily a representative of a particular interest group, and only secondarily a representative of the church seeking the Spirit’s voice for the whole church?
2. Is anyone representing a particular interest group at the table of holy conferencing being funded or paid by that interest group?
3. Is anyone representing a particular interest group at the table of holy conferencing using tactics (e.g., handing out gifts with strings attached, circulating printed materials containing misinformation designed to malign or harm some children of God, threatening or black-mailing) that have no place at the table of holy conferencing?

In my view, churches cannot be too intentional about pursuing answers to such questions as they meet for holy conferencing. That is, they cannot be too intentional about pursuing such answers if they want their conferencing to be what it claims to be about: holy, a shared dialogic quest to listen to the voice of the Spirit without undue influence of any interest group, no matter how powerful or well-connected.

And it goes without saying that the intent to transcend such control is an ongoing battle in a capitalistic society. Shut the door to one attempt to buy delegates at the sacred conversation, and interest groups will inevitably find another way to try to buy influence. Money talks. Money has power. And it is always on the move.

Dirty money moves beneath the radar screen. Dirty money does not want people to see where and how it is flowing. For those concerned to safeguard the “holy” in the phrase "holy conferencing," resisting the influence of dirty money takes a strong commitment to truth-telling, justice-seeking, and authentic discernment. But even more, it takes those same strong commitments to determine that one will seek in every way possible to track and rule out the influence of such money, when it flows in hidden channels.

What appears on the face of it to be a benign gift to a church or to members of a church gathering can, on closer inspection, have ethically dubious strings attached. What appears to be money coming from a group with clean hands can, on closer inspection, turn out to be money disseminated by another group for which the seemingly praiseworthy group is merely a front.

Tracking the ways in which money flows behind the scenes to influence what church groups do and say today and how their decisions appear in the media is a full-time job, one that requires the commitment of a people covenanted to seek the truth in love together. This is an imperative need—and a serious challenge—in a culture in which the ultimate source of money given to an organization may be light-years removed from the various front organizations through which the money is advanced.

A corollary of all that I am saying is that church-sponsored institutions also need always to be looking carefully at the sources of money provided to these institutions. Does money offered to a church institution come from a source that consistently violates key gospel principles and key theological commitments of the church? If so, what does it say about our principles that we are willing to take this money in our church-affiliated institution?

Is this money given with strings attached? Does it require us to engage in behavior that undercuts our commitment to gospel principles? As an example, is the money given to a particular church institution tied to expectations that this institution not hire openly gay employees, or that it refuse to adopt non-discrimination policies regarding sexual orientation? If so, should we accept this money?

If we are a United Methodist institution, can we do so, and claim fidelity to the church’s Social Principles and to resolutions of General Conference that call upon the church to oppose discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation? What does it say about our commitment to the Social Principles and to our resolutions, if any of our UMC institutions do not have policies in place to prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, or if our governing boards permit gay or lesbian employees to be discriminated against, and do nothing to investigate such discrimination and see that justice is done when injustice has taken place?

I suggest that these corollary considerations have to be kept in mind by those concerned to keep holy conferencing holy, because delegates come from and represent church-affiliated institutions. One cannot discount the effect of the commitments (or the trade-offs or sell-outs) members of a church-affiliated institution have made for money, when it comes to what is said and done at the table of holy conferencing.

When institutions throughout a church have accepted funds from organizations seeking to control the church’s sacred conversation and what the church says and does in the public sphere, it would be naïve to assume that these influences do not permeate the table of holy conferencing. Delegates bring their commitments to the table. Some of those commitments include commitments to represent the interests of groups funding their home church-affiliated institutions.

The commitments in which church institutions are enmeshed through financial dealings affect the tenor of holy conferencing. If churches want to safeguard their sacred conversations, they have to be clear-eyed about the kinds of commitments—including commitments to funders—that they permit their church-sponsored organizations to undertake. These commitments must constantly be scrutinized in light of the church’s key theological teachings and of the gospels.

Otherwise, there will be such a disparity between what the church and its institutions say and what they actually do (for the sake of money), that people will not be impressed with the rhetoric as they watch the reality undercut the rhetoric. Much ink has been spilled in the past decade in the media about the purported need to safeguard the religious affiliation of church-affiliated institutions, particularly institutions of higher learning.

This conversation has centered largely on determining how the leaders of churches are to assert or keep control over institutions in their jurisdiction. It has often masqueraded as a conversation about the soul and identity of church-affiliated institutions.

In my view, the conversation has usually been misplaced, because the crucial question it has not asked is the question of whether the commitments church-affiliated institutions make, especially to funders, undercut the core principles of the gospel and of a church’s teaching. This question—the elephant in the living room—is one that most church-affiliated institutions will not permit at the table. If it were answered honestly, church-sponsored institutions might have to ask questions not about the loss of religious identity, but about the loss of their soul—about their captivity to leaders who are soulless, even when they employ religious rhetoric or tout their strong ties to the church sponsoring the institution they lead.

I speak out of my own experience working within the administrative structures of two United Methodist institutions of higher learning. I have no doubt that, had I worked at a similar level in colleges affiliated with other churches including my own Catholic church, I would have seen something of the same picture I saw within the Methodist colleges/universities for which I worked. Soullessness is a pervasive problem in many religiously affiliated institutions of higher learning today, and it is evident right at the top of those institutions, in their key leaders and governing boards, many of whom value fiscal soundness more than social transformation or fidelity to religious principles.

What I saw in these institutions troubled me. I heard key leaders say things like, “The color of money is green. It spends the same, no matter who it comes from.” I was rarely in a position to protest, and I did not offer my own opinion except when asked to do so, since the governing structure of both institutions was exceptionally autocratic and did not entertain the input of those “serving” (a word often used by the top leader of both institutions) the college/university president.

Nonetheless, I was and remain troubled by the assertion that the color of money is green. I am troubled by the assumption that a church-affiliated institution can take money from a source whose goals and ideals are clearly at odds with those of the church. I am troubled by the assumption that a church-affiliated institution can take dirty money and not be corrupted in the process—not sell its soul.

When money comes with strings attached, back-room deals are often cut. Midnight calls ensue. Decisions that should be made in independence of the influence of funders are made with full complicity of funders, and often with funders ultimately controlling the decisions made. When these funders have deep-pocket ties to members of governing boards (and they usually do), their influence is compounded.

As an example, I know from my own administrative work in two church-sponsored institutions of higher learning that how both institutions have dealt with the church’s counsel that workplaces must not discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation has been driven by financial considerations, by concerns about keeping the loyalty of key funders. One of these institutions still lacks a statement published in its official policy handbook—its university catalogue—prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

Since this university is in a right-to-work state in which an employee has no ground for contesting unfair dismissal, I would be very hesitant to recommend that any openly gay or lesbian person take a job at this institution. The president of the institution has a peculiar history of hiring gay and lesbian persons out of proportion to our numbers in the population, and then dismissing us in grossly unfair ways when it seems expedient to do so.

The other church-affiliated institution at which I have worked as an administrator just brought (I am told on good authority by a faculty member) an outspoken anti-gay speaker to address its graduating class. I am told (and have no reason to doubt) that this speaker made explicit and ugly statements about the evil ways of gay and lesbian persons to graduating seniors.

This happened in a United Methodist college immediately after General Conference passed resolutions condemning homophobic violence and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Where will students take their core values, when they are presented with such parting words by their United Methodist alma maters: from the church and what it teaches? Or from the homophobic speaker brought in by the leader of the United Methodist institution? When boards of such United Methodist institutions stand by in silence as such behavior contradicts the sponsoring church’s core teaching and gospel principles, will people be convinced that these teachings and principles mean anything at all?

What I hope to emphasize in recounting all these experiences is that no one comes to the table of holy conferencing free from outside influences. When money is attached to those influences, the discourse rules for the sacred conversation need to be realistic and honest about the possibility that money—including dirty money—can determine the course of the sacred conversation.

Delegates for holy conferencing who represent church-affiliated institutions that have made deals with the devil based on accepting dirty money—for instance, money attached to continued homophobic discrimination—are not likely to call their institution’s practices into question, when they sit at the table of the holy conference. To do so would require that their own institution behave differently, and with transparency and accountability about the funds it receives.

I speak here as well out of the experience of having been involved in theological conversations in my own Catholic church about the horrific problem of clerical abuse of minors. This deep-seated problem has everything to do with abuse of power. It is first and foremost a crisis of abuse of power, and secondarily a crisis of abuse of youth.

And that abuse of clerical power and privilege is deeply rooted in and compounded by abuse of money. There are very weak structures within the American Catholic church to require fiscal accountability and transparency on the part of dioceses and bishops. Until such structures are in place, we cannot expect the crisis of clerical sexual abuse of minors to be addressed forthrightly.

The United Methodist Church, by contrast, has a rather admirable history of financial transparency and accountability. The United Methodist emphasis on sound stewardship sets a standard other churches—including the Catholic church—would be well-advised to emulate.

But if this tradition of fiscal responsibility and sound stewardship is to mean much in the context of holy conferencing, then it is incumbent on the United Methodist Church to be clear-eyed about both how money is used to influence the outcome of holy conferencing, as well as how money is used within church-affiliated institutions, which send large numbers of delegates to church conferences. People will listen to what the church proclaims when that proclamation is lived first, and spoken only following the lived witness.