An Open Letter to Senator Stacey Campfield

Note- Stacey Campfield is a Tennessee state senator from the Knoxville area who has sponsored several controversial bills and made a number of inflammatory statements regarding homosexuality.

Dear Senator Campfield,

I am writing to you today as a fellow citizen of the state of Tennessee and, more importantly, as a fellow disciple of Jesus, to encourage you to take a look at some of your recent public actions and ask yourself if they are the kind of witness you want to put out there.

First and foremost, I want to express my thanks to you for serving our state as a legislator. While you and I disagree on a number of issues, I know that you are advocating positions that are informed by your best understanding of the Christian faith and which you believe to be for the betterment of our society.

However, I have to ask if the legislation you are sponsoring is really the best way to advance the causes you care about so deeply.

Your belief that homosexuality is a sin is quite clear. But is forbidding public school teachers from even acknowledging something that children learn at a very early age- that differing sexual orientations exist- really the best way to further a societal conversation about sexual morality?

Furthermore, I have a difficult time reconciling your assertion that public school teachers should not acknowledge that gay people even exist with your proposal that they inform children’s parents if they suspect that their son or daughter is gay. Do you want the reality of differing sexual orientations recognized or not?

While you are not a parent yourself, I know that you care deeply for the well-being of our children, as you have stated on numerous occasions. Requiring teachers to monitor and report evidence of their students’ sexual orientation will only worsen the culture of fear and suspicion that many children experience on a daily basis in school, whether they are gay or not. Bullying is a major problem in our society, and has resulted in many children taking their own lives, which I know you do not want. 

Lastly, I know that you care deeply about serving your constituents, so I am very surprised at your response to a woman who expressed legitimate concerns about how you are representing her. Flippantly suggesting that she has issues with mental health is very hurtful to those who struggle with mental illness.

I struggle with clinical depression and anxiety, for which I go to therapy and take medication. You are right that doctors “are doing some wonderful things with medication these days”. They help people with very real medical conditions live normal lives. In my case, they help me have the courage to speak out against the type of offensive, hurtful behavior that you are engaging in.

In a few weeks, I will be at the legislature for a Clergy Day on the Hill. While I know you are very busy, I hope that you and I can meet face to face to talk about these issues, share our concerns, and pray together as brothers in Christ.

You and your colleagues in the legislature remain in my prayers for your vital work on behalf of our state.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Matthew L. Kelley
Lead Pastor
Arlington United Methodist Church
Nashville TN

Thoughts on the Beginning of General Conference

The United Methodist Church's quadrennial (every four years) General Conference begins today in Tampa, FL. Four years ago I did a daily blog recap, but that was before I had small children, so don't look for anything like that this time. I will probably do some intermittent commentary along the way, though.

My friend Jay Vorhees is coordinating social media coverage at GC, which you can check out over on the Metho-blog.

Before I give some opinions, let me say that I am so happy that our conference's clergy delegation is being led by Rev. Harriet Bryan, who I had the opportunity to get to know when I was serving in the Clarksville district. She has a peaceful and loving spirit that I hope will be shared by every delegate these next ten days. Were I a delegate, my passions on certain issues would not allow me to be terribly objective or as receptive to others' views as Harriet will be able to be.

There seem to be three major issues that will consume much of the time an energy of the delegates: the structure of the global church and the general agencies, the nature of the order of Elder, and, of course, human sexuality.

I don't have too many thoughts on the global structure, other than not wanting to see friends who work for General Agencies lose their jobs, but there is a need for our structures to be more efficient and effective, but I have no idea if any of the plans put forth will actually accomplish that.

Having just been admitted to the order of Elder, I do think there need to be some changes. Our current itinerant system is based on the idea of male clergy whose spouses to not work outside the home, and churches that all have parsonages for their pastor to live in. Neither of these things is the case anymore.

I lived in a parsonage in my last appointment, and my wife commuted 100 miles round-trip every day for four years. Modern, two career families cannot be expected to spend the time and money that requires and remain healthy families.

At issue is ending the appointment security for Elders, which doesn't personally bother me, but I'm a white heterosexual male. I won't be rejected by any church simply based on my race, gender, or sexual orientation. My age has given a few people reservations, but I'll be an old white guy soon enough. I have female and non-caucasian friends and colleagues who would be made much more vulnerable by ending appointment security, and I think we have to take that into serious consideration.

Ending appointment security also opens up the opportunity for a bishop to abuse the power of appointment as it is currently structured. Let's say Joe Pastor has been serving for 30 years, is the sole breadwinner for his family, and has lived in parsonages the entire time, and thus having built up no equity the way homeowners do. What happens if Joe gets on the wrong side of Bishop X and Joe is left without an appointment, effectively putting him and his family out on the street?

That's a worst case scenario, of course, but I don't think it's out of the question.

Something needs to be done to help ineffective Elders transition into a new career, but the one sided approach on the table right now doesn't seem like it will solve the issue, but simply consolidate more power in the office of the bishop without the protections that make for a mutually beneficial relationship between clergy and conference.

I don't, however, think we should go to a call system the way many other denominations do. Some kind of hybrid model needs to be developed that involves more consultation, and perhaps more open-ended appointments replacing the current year-to-year format.

Regarding human sexuality, I'm on the record saying that I do not believe that same-sex attraction is sinful, nor is acting on that attraction in a committed monogamous relationship. I am for full marriage equality in the eyes of both the church and the government.

With respect to colleagues whose convictions have led them to other conclusions, I do not feel that this injustice requires civil disobedience at this time. In other words, although I want to, I will not perform any same sex weddings at this time because of my covenant to uphold the Discipline. I want the Discipline to change.

Furthermore, I do not believe that being gay disqualifies people from ordained ministry.

(As a quick aside, this has not always been my take on these issues. If anyone is interested, I will happily share how my views have evolved over time)

My ideal scenario would have General Conference removing these barriers to begin to heal much of the harm we have done to our brothers and sisters of sexual orientations other than hetero.

But I know that's not going to happen all at once. So I do hope that, at the very least, the General Conference will add the acknowledgement to the Discipline that people of genuine faith come down on different sides of this question..

Four years ago, such a statement made it out of committee, but was narrowly voted down on the floor of General Conference after several individuals got up and started speaking in ways that came across as both hateful and hurtful. Whether they meant it to sound that way is not for any of us to judge. But I do hope that if similar things happen this time, there will be delegates brave enough to stand up and challenge harmful words spoken in the name of Christ.

For those who made it to the bottom of this post, thank you for listening to me get on my soapbox. If you have different opinions, please feel free to express them in a respectful manner. I believe the only way for us to move forward is to talk with one another, not at one another.

Above all, please pray for the General Conference, the delegates, and the United Methodist Church. We have a lot of big challenges facing us, and the events of the next ten days could help or harm our attempts to face them, or we could simply kick the can down the road four more years. Again.

Let's stay tuned to see what happens.

It's Time for the Bullying to Stop

The news has been filled with reports lately about teenagers who have committed suicide because they were bullied for being gay. Let's be clear: this isn't a new problem. It's just finally getting the attention it deserves. We've also seen news that an Assistant Attorney General in Michigan is being prosecuted for cyber bullying a courageous University of Michigan student, bullying that he tries to hide behind the veil of free speech.

I hope that our society is finally starting to see that we have a serious problem that has gone ignored for far too long.

I am a Christian who does not believe that being gay or having a same sex relationship is a sin. I respect my brothers and sisters who disagree with me, but I believe we can respectfully disagree while still affirming the sacred worth of the persons in question. All persons are of sacred worth and bear God's image, and thus do not deserved to be degraded and bullied simply because they are different.

This is bigger than liberal v. conservative, Republican v. Democrat, or any other of the constructs we use to divide ourselves. This is a choice of love or hate, and we've been turning a blind eye to hate for far too long.

I preached about similar issues last year when the sexual orientation issue was, sadly, successfully used as a smoke screen to get people to vote against a number of proposed amendments to the Constitution of the United Methodist Church.

You can listen to the audio of this sermon on our podcast, or read the text here.

Or you can just listen to Ellen Degeneres, who says it way better than I ever could

Ellen Degeneres/ Important Message from Ryan Glorioso on Vimeo.

or, for that matter, Sarah Silverman (just be aware she drops an F-bomb here)


Life is hard enough as it is when you're a teenager. Let's take a stand and help our young people learn how their actions can have unintended consequences.

Would Jesus bully the gay kids, or would he step between them and the insecure bully who's probably secretly struggling with his own sexuality?

Answer that question and you'll know where to stand.

Big Tent Christianity: Easy to Say, Hard to Do

This post is part of the Big Tent Christianity Synchroblog. All the bloggers involved in this project are answering a very simple prompt: "what is 'big tent' Christianity?"

In a word: hard.

Most of my life I have been called an idealist. Guilty as charged. One of my ideals is that all of God’s children really can find a way to live together in peace. We simply have to choose to do so. Easier said than done, of course. I’m not foolish enough to assume that everyone will actually choose that path, but I believe that they are capable of doing so. That’s the Arminian side of my theological heritage.

It is in the midst this tension between ideals and the tragic reality of human choices that I can’t find anything to say about what “Big Tent Christianity” means to me except “hard”.

It’s hard to make Christianity a big tent when there are so many groups of folks who don’t want to coexist. It’s very hard to keep everybody under the tent when we actively invite our GLBT brothers and sisters to openly claim their sexuality as part of their imago Dei bearing goodness while Fred Phelps and his crew are standing there under the same tent screaming and holding signs proclaiming who is and is not welcome under the tent.

It’s hard to maintain a tent that’s big enough for everyone when people whose passion outweighs their experience are dismissed by others for being too young and/or inexperienced, or for not having the right education or credentials, and are told that they’re second class citizens, if they’re welcome under the tent at all.

I could go on citing examples all day, but I think you get the point.

It’s not a matter of conservative vs. liberal, evangelical vs. emergent, or whatever other labels we attach to people. The real issue is the tendency we all have to stick with those that are like us, and to justify our own existence by putting down and excluding those that are different, whether we have an honest disagreement with them or not.

Practicing Big Tent Christianity means not only welcoming others that are different than us, others whose beliefs or practices might be offensive to us, but opening ourselves up to the possibility of being converted, in some sense, by our interaction and fellowship with them. It means Fred Phelps might have to learn something from the Gay Street Preacher. It means I might have to learn something from Pat Robertson. (that last sentence made me vomit in my mouth a little bit)

Big Tent Christianity is easy to talk about, but very, very hard to practice. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it happen outside of brief, isolated events. Have you ever seen Christianity truly be a big tent over sustained periods of time? If so, please share!

Hard, yes. But not impossible. There I go being an idealist again.

Thoughts on Ted

I'm a bit of a late-comer when it comes to trends in the blogosphere. I tend to want to sit back and let my thoughts marinate for a bit, because when I speak first and think second I usually end up with my foot in my mouth (anyone who knows me will confirm this). I also enjoy hanging back and watching how the conversation unfolds.

Here's a thought that's been cooking for a while:

A lot of folks have been jumping all over Ted Haggard for starting a new church just a few years of getting booted from his mega-pulpit for trysts with a gay prostitute. I actually felt a bit sorry for Ted. I argued then, as I do now, that he was eaten a live by a monster that he helped create: the cult of personality around a charismatic leader. Living in that place for so long causes anyone to start to believe the hype and become someone else.

Case in point:


(methinks the pastor doth protest too much)

I understand people's reasons for bashing Haggard. His words and actions have been incredibly harmful to people in the GLBTQ community. If someone had constantly been attacking me for who I am I would feel no small amount of shadenfreude when they got a taste of their own medicine. And I understand why people are skeptical of him even now, since he still courts media attention, and since may even do a reality series. I get all of that.

And yet something inside me still thinks that he's changed. You can see it in the way he talks about how people need God's grace. It's no longer "them" language. He includes himself. Nowhere was this more on display when he appeared on Larry King talking about Jennifer Knapp coming out of the closet.

Yes, he was all too happy to be on TV again. I imagine a psychological evaluation would reveal that he still has a pretty large narcissistic streak. But as a mentor once told me, "you don't get humility without a lot of humiliation". Ted Haggard has been humiliated, abandoned by people he thought were his friends, and generally kicked in the rear end. Did he deserve much of it? Sure. But I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and keep watching to see how different he is.

Jennifer Knapp on Larry King

Larry King had Jennifer Knapp on his show recently to talk about the interaction of her faith and her sexuality (I'm imbedding Part 1, there are 3 more parts you should check out)



Here are some of Jennifer's best quotes from the interview:

"I've had experience with denominations that openly accept the rich diversity of the types of believers     within their communities"

"We are somewhat at the handicap of our interpretations of a sacred text"

"Any time we read a book or we read any kind of word that it becomes the interpretation of our life's experience"

"It doesn't make the truth any less truth or love any less love"

"I recognize that love is a choice; my sexuality I'm not so sure about"

"I feel blessed to be able to be fully who I am"

"Do not use my name as a substitute for the word 'homosexuality'"

At one point, when conversing with pastor Bob Botsford, who (not maliciously, but very smugly) condemns Knapp to her face, she asks why, if her being gay is a sin, and no sin is worse than any other, are they sitting there having this conversation? Why is she not in the other chair condemning him for some "equal" sin? (Jennifer was so gracious and respectful, and yet didn't back off in telling him to leave her alone. We could all learn a lot from her reaction.)

Larry ended by having Ted Haggard on, and I was really blown away at how gracious Haggard was toward both Jennifer Knapp and Bob Botsford. Haggard is clearly still steeped in the Evangelical community, but his perspective seems so much broader than when he was the pastor of a mega-church. He seems much more comfortable with the messiness of life while following Jesus.

In the split screen, Botsford seemed extremely uncomfortable with what Haggard said. The depth of God's grace often makes us uncomfortable, and Botsford seems to be very uncomfortable with people who are OK with not knowing the answer to every question because they trust in grace.

Many thanks to Larry King for providing such an engaging and insightful hour of conversation!

Supporting Jennifer Knapp

The way people behave on the internet astounds me sometimes. I read a number of different blogs, and it seems that for every intelligent comment there are at least five that have next to nothing to do with the topic, or are downright ignorant and/or hateful.

I think perhaps it's a combination of the instant nature of online communication and the anonymity that the internet provides that take away the usual filters that most people have in almost every other form of communication. If you sat down and hand wrote a letter, you'd probably not say every single thing that comes to your mind, because your hand travels at a much slower speed than your brain. Not so with a computer keyboard. And if you were face to face with someone expressing an opinion, there would be some kind of filter between your brain and your mouth. But on the internet you may only know someone's screen name, and having no idea who they are, normal restraints fly out the window. (I've only had a few instances of this kind of thing happening on my blog, thankfully)

I have to confess that I'm often tempted to do these kinds of things, especially when I see posts or replies that drive me up the wall. At least once a day I'm about to post a reply telling "ignorantcommenter666" (I really hope that's not anyone's actual handle) where they can stick their ill-informed, hateful opinions. I am usually able to stop myself, because I don't want to stoop down to their level, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't written a couple "anonymous" replies saying things I would never say or write under any other circumstance. I think many of you can identify with this.

The reason I bring it up today is that I'm nervously awaiting the blowback from the "Christian" blogosphere regarding Jennifer Knapp's admission in an interview with Christianity Today that she is gay. Thus far the only things I've seen have been supportive posts from progressive thinkers like Tony Jones, and admittedly I haven't gone trolling for the hateful stuff yet because it only tempts my judgmental spirit and increases the likelihood that I will post a mean "anonymous" comment.

But I know it will come, and it's probably already out there. There is plenty of indiscriminate hatred out there toward people with different sexual orientations: witness the Westboro Baptist Church phenomenon. And the Christian-media-industrial-complex has a track-record of being ruthless in enforcing their standard of morality. One only needs to remember how CCM magazine invented an apology from Amy Grant  to her fans following her divorce (you can read about it in Matthew Paul Turner's excellent book, Hear No Evil) to know what levels these corporate entities will often stoop to.

Regarding the interview with Christianity Today, I admire Jennifer Knapp for being willing to discuss the issue when she knows full well what kind of treatment she will receive. I especially admire her for rejecting the premise of some of the interviewer's questions (on pg. 3, if you're reading it online). When the interviewer asked if she was "struggling with these issues" at certain points, she refuses to characterize her sexual orientation as a sin or some kind of fundamental defect. Her only struggle was to be fully who God created her to be, regardless of how some allegedly Christian people might respond.

Here's my pledge: when I see negative reactions to Jennifer Knapp, I'm going to respond with positive, thoughtful, loving words. I'm not going to stoop down to the level of the haters. I'm going to keep the conversation civil and invite others to do so, too.

Witnessing to Love Tonight

Tonight (Wednesday, February 3), Judy Shepard will be speaking at Austin Peay at 7pm. Judy's son, Matthew, was murdered in 1998 by a gang of young men who hated him for one reason: he was gay. Recent legislation signed by President Obama extending hate crimes protection to cover sexual orientation bares Matthew Shepard's name, and his mother now speaks all over the country sharing Matthew's story spreading awareness of hate crimes.

Sadly, hate will be present on campus as she speaks. Fred Phelps and members of Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting on campus. My dear friend, Rev. Jodi McCullah, the director of the Wesley Foundation at Austin Peay, has informed me that numerous student groups, religious and secular, will be present as well to witness to the love of Jesus Christ against the hatred spread by Phelps and his followers.

I will be joining the APSU students in their witness, and I invite anyone else in the Clarksville area who wishes to do so to join us. If you choose to bring signs, please keep them respectful, affirming God's love and grace, and not attacking anybody else. Please also refrain from verbally engaging Phelps or his followers, as they have a history of being extremely aggressive and attempting to create physical conflict.

If you plan to join us, please email me or leave a comment on the blog so I know to look for you.

update- A friend of mine on Facebook made a great suggestion. For every minute that Phelps and his followers are out there protesting, I'm going to donate $1 to PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Tomorrow I'll post the total number of minutes for anyone else to wants to participate.

A Call for Change

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and in recognition of the many ways that equal rights for all people are being fought for all over the world today, I am sharing the text of a sermon I preached two Sundays ago. 

The text being referenced is Acts 8:26-40, where Philip meets the Ethiopian eunuch on the road.

For the audio of this sermon, see Episode 7 of The Truth As Best I Know It Podcast.

Annual Conference begins today in Brentwood, and we have a lot of work to do over the next few days. The 2008 General Conference approved a number of amendments to our Constitution, and kind of like amending the US Constitution, these amendments have to be ratified by a majority of the Annual Conferences to take affect.

One of the amendments that is being voted on changes some of the language about inclusiveness in our denomination. The change would state that all people are eligible to become members of the United Methodist Church. Sounds like a no brainer, right? All people are welcome in the church! The thing is, though, that there are a lot of people who are opposed to this amendment, but their argument is a bit hard to understand. The folks who oppose the inclusiveness amendment say that stating that all people are eligible to become members of the church would change the church’s stand on homosexuality. That’s not even remotely true, but that’s what they’re arguing. The amendment saying nothing about sexual orientation, and our social principles remain the same. They’re doing this not because they actually think that the amendment has anything to do with issues of sexual orientation; they’re doing it because they know by brining up the gay issue people will get very emotional and they’ll be able to trick them into voting the way they want.

Recently I received a letter from the Clarksville Ministerial Association inviting me to a meeting where a speaker would be informing of how a hate crimes bill that is now before Congress would supposedly make preaching about homosexuality a hate crime. In case you’re wondering, I didn’t go to the meeting. But once again we see someone bringing up the gay issue as smoke screen to scare people into agreeing with their position. These are just two examples of the way we see dialogue in Christian circles devolving from actually talking about issues into misinformation and fear mongering. And as a pastor I’m forced to ask myself why this is.

Now, before I go on, let me say that I’m not here today to tell you what you should believe about issues of sexual orientation. Good, faithful people who love God and consider the Bible to be authoritative come down on all different sides on these issues. There are those who read certain passages in the Old Testament and believe that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin. And there are those, myself included, who read those same passages, and looking in light of the historical and cultural circumstances in which they were written, conclude that the Bible doesn’t really say anything about what we currently understand as same gender attraction. Like I said, my goal today is not to tell you what to believe, so I bring this up only to say that there are good and faithful people on all sides of these issues.

Since there is genuine disagreement among Christians about these issues, we should have honest and open dialogue about them. What we can’t do is keep things going the way they are now, because it’s absolutely killing us. We’ve retreated into our mutual camps and lob rhetorical bombs and hollow soundbytes at one another, and a lot of people are getting hurt in the process. People who are gay have suffered tremendous emotional abuse at the hands of the church, and many people who see this kind of stuff go on want to have nothing to do with Christianity.

There was a book that came out two years ago called un-Christian, and it talked about the results of a massive study that the George Barna group conducted about people’s perceptions of Christianity. They found that 91% of non-church-goers and 80% of church goers under 40 perceived Christianity as hateful towards gays and lesbians. The perception wasn’t that Christians had a respectful disagreement, it was that they hated gay people. Of course, there have been a lot of people who have been quick to point the finger at the media, saying that the media is liberal and anti-Christian, but you remember what grandma used to say when you pointed the finger at someone else? You’ve got three more fingers pointing back at you. We can’t blame our image problems on anybody but ourselves.

Now I realize it’s a bit strange for me to say “we” and “us” in this conversation, because I’m largely preaching to the choir here. In the two years I’ve been your pastor I’ve never heard anyone engage in any bigoted or hateful speech against any group, and I proudly tell my colleagues that. Not participating in the evils of bigoted and hateful speech is certainly a good start, but we can’t stop there. Again, I can’t tell you what to believe about these issues. What I can say is that the way we as Christians talk about these issues has to change. We have to take a stand against hatred, because hated has no place in the church that bears the name of Jesus Christ.

Since the very beginning, the church has, in its best moments, been able to transcend the differences and misunderstandings that divide us and show us that our common unity as children of God is what really matters. That’s what is happening in the passage we just read from the book of Acts. Here we see Philip being led by the Holy Spirit to a place where he will encounter someone who needs him. This man is a eunuch from Ethiopia, and he’s a very important administrator for the royal family. A eunuch is somebody, probably a slave, who was castrated at a very young age so that he could have this administrative position. In many ancient societies it was believed that a eunuch was able to be trusted around women unsupervised because they wouldn’t have any, let’s say, “improper” motives. The thing about being a eunuch, though, is that while that status enables him to have such a powerful position, it also makes him an outcast to everyone else. In ancient societies that placed a lot of emphasis on male virility, a man who couldn’t reproduce was something less than human. And according to the Laws of Moses, someone who was less than a whole person, someone like a eunuch, couldn’t be fully included in the covenant community of Israel. So even though this Ethiopian man is passionately searching for God, even though he’s deeply immersed himself in the scriptures, even though he’s taken the time and expense to come to Jerusalem to worship, he’s not allowed in. Because of his sexuality, or lack thereof, in the eyes of others, he can at best stand on the sidelines and hope that God’s grace is much bigger than what he has been told.

That hope is answered in his encounter with Philip. Philip explains the scriptures to him, tells him about Jesus, and he believes. So the question the eunuch puts to Philip is a very important one. “Look, here is some water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He knows that the answer is probably “because you’re a eunuch, and if I did that I’d be violating the commands of scripture”. But Philip knows that the grace of God made known to us in Jesus Christ is a whole lot bigger than all of these divisions and misunderstandings that keep us apart, even divisions that end up getting codified in religious purity laws.

Philip baptizes the eunuch- an act that would be unthinkable to most Jews, and probably most followers of Jesus at the time. And in doing so Philip proclaims that all of God’s children are welcome in this family. He doesn’t resolve the questions about what he might need to do differently as part of his new life in Christ. Those are questions we see dealt with in great detail later on in Acts. But in this moment, Philip encountered a man who has been told all his life that because of his sexuality he was unacceptable and something less than fully human. So by baptizing this man, Philip says to him, “you are a child of God. You are acceptable. You are loved. You are welcome in this family.”

Today, just like two thousand years ago, we don’t all agree about what constitutes right and wrong actions in many areas of life, sexuality and sexual preference among them. We can and should talk about these issues, but the way we do it has to change. Instead of dialogue full of fear and hatred, half-truths and outright lies, we need to remember that no matter what our differences, each and every person on this earth is a beloved child of God, created in God’s image and that absolutely nothing can change that. I pray that this church will continue to be a place where everyone feels welcome, and that we will have the courage to take a stand against hatred and fear. For when we do that we are truly being the body of Christ in this world.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Podcast Episode 7- All God's Children

In this episode, Matt presents a sermon he recently preached, "All God's Children", on a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United Methodist Church, which leads into a discussion of how the Christian community dialogues about issues of sexuality and sexual orientation, and a plea for civility in this dialogue. The sermon is based on Acts 8:26-40.

You can listen online through Podbean, who is kind enough to host us.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Any and all comments are encouraged. Enjoy!

Podcast- Episode 3

A new episode of The Truth As Best I Know It Podcast is now online.

In Episode 3, Matt responds to Maxie Dunnam’s objections to proposed changes in the Constitution of the United Methodist Church dealing with issues of inclusivity.

You can also find the podcast on iTunes.

Links

The full version of the video excerpted in the podcast

The General Conference record of the amendment legislation in question.

A list of the amendments being voted on at this year's Annual Conferences.

More info on un-Christian

Constitutional Changes

At the 2008 General Conference, about which I blogged quite a bit (hit the archives from April 2008 for my commentary), there were a number of changes to the Constitution of the UMC (found in our Book of Discipline) debated and adopted. Just like changing the Constitution of the United States, one entity can't make the changes on its own. The changes must be ratified by a majority (I can't remember if it's a simple majority or two-thirds) of Annual Conferences and the Council of Bishops.

Most of these changes have to do with altering terminology to put the Conferences outside of the US on par with the US Conferences, eliminating "jurisdictional" and "central" conferences, and making them all into "regional conferences". These are basically clusters of Annual Conferences in a given region, in which bishops are elected and itinerate. These seem to be a good idea because it gets rid of the notion that the conferences outside the US are somehow of lesser importance. We are a global church and this seems like the right move.

The Constitutional change I'm not so sure about, however, is the first one listed in the PDF linked above. The amendment would alter the language in paragraph 4, which concerns the inclusiveness in the church. The language of "without regard to race, color, national origin, status, or economic condition" has been removed and replaced with simply "all persons".

I am of two minds on this one. On the one hand this could be a good thing, since a number of rather intolerant individuals have used the aforementioned paragraph's lack of the phrase "sexual orientation" as an excuse to deny membership to persons of differing sexual orientation. I believe sexual orientation to be covered by "status", but that has never been tested in a case before the Judicial Council, to my knowledge. So the new phrase, "all persons", could make it harder for those who want to pick and choose who they want to let in to do so.

However, some other language in the new paragraph could possibly be used to exclude people based on a pastor or a congregation's particular beliefs. The sentence in question is "all persons, upon taking vows declaring the Christian faith and relationship in Jesus Christ, shall be eligible to become professing members in any local church in the connection."

What does it mean for a person to "take vows declaring the Christian faith and relationship in Jesus Christ"? For me it would be sufficient for a person to answer "yes" to the questions put forth in the liturgy of welcoming in our Book of Worship. But other pastors might say that if one does not repent of certain sins (as defined by the pastor, of course), that they are not truly able to "take vows declaring the Christian faith", and thus exclude them from membership in the church. This is exactly what happened in the case in Virginia where the pastor wouldn't admit a person because they were gay, because the pastor claimed they hadn't repented of their sin.

Hence my confusion. What should we make of this proposed change to our Constitution? Will greater inclusiveness be achieved, or will this new language end up being another weapon in the hands of those who do not want our church to be inclusive?

Discuss...

The Hermenutics of Newsweek

There's an interesting and unexpected new voice in the gay marriage debate: Newsweek magazine. While most mainstream media coverage of religious issues demonstrates a pathetically weak understanding of the complexities of the issues at hand (one would expect a business reporter to understand something about business, so why not religion?), this Newsweek article is surprisingly articulate.

The cover story (which you can read here) correctly points out that nowhere in the Bible is marriage explicitly defined as only between a man and a woman. It also rightly points out that many biblical marriages included multiples wives, children conceived with slaves, women stolen from guys you had murdered, and enough other scandalous things to fill several seasons worth of prime time soap operas.

This article has, of course, made a lot of conservatives angry. Politico has a pretty good article surveying the reactions of several leading conservative voices.

While I thought the Newsweek article was pretty insightful, I do take issue with one of their conclusions. In the middle of the article the writer says that "religious objections to gay marriage are not rooted in the Bible at all, but in custom and tradition". The writer has very ably demonstrated that the subject of marriage between two people of the same gender is never specifically brought up in the Bible, and that homosexuality as an orientation is not, either. But just because a specific issue is not mentioned in the Bible does not mean that one cannot turn to the biblical text for guidance on it.

Let me pause for a moment and "out" myself, so to speak. Those who know me and/or read this blog can probably guess that I'm for marriage equality. I disagree with the official position of my denomination, even though I uphold the Discipline as part of my covenant as a pastor. The fact that I fall on the side of this particular issue that is usually labeled as liberal or progressive does not mean, however, that I don't see the merits in the other side's position.

The biblical texts are ancient documents written by ancient people and concern the issues of the ancient world. The modern/postmodern world is very different, and thus has very different issues and conflicts, yet many of the same human tendencies remain, so these ancient texts still have something to teach us. We have to understand the context in which they were written to understand what they might have to say to us today.

For example, I care greatly about the issue of climate change, which is also not specifically mentioned in the Bible, nor are any environmental issues, but that does not mean that the Bible cannot provide guidance for people of faith when dealing with the environment. In Genesis 2 God tells Adam that he is responsible for the earth. Some versions translate this as "fill the earth and subdue it", others say "care for it". The Hebrew words can legitimately be translated a number of ways, so an interpretive choice is involved. I choose the latter translation not just for the heck of it, but because I see in the broad scope of the biblical witness that God cares greatly about how we treat all the things God has created: people, plants, etc. So I take the "care for the earth" command as a kind of biblical support (but not a proof text) for the idea that we should be aware of and actively minimize our negative impact on the long term health of the planet.

All this is to say that those who oppose same sex marriage can certainly cite the Bible in their arguments even though the issue is never explicitly mentioned in the biblical text. Most people in this camp would disagree and say that it is explicitly mentioned, of course, and they certainly have the right to make that interpretive choice.

And that's really the point. We're all making certain interpretive choices when we read and apply the Bible. Let's be honest about that and say which choices we're making. That way we can discuss these issues on a level playing field instead of retreating into our trenches and lobbing rhetorical bombs at one another. We'll make a lot more progress if we will.

Looking into a crystal ball?

The Episcopal Church is facing a split. This is not news to anybody, of course, since disagreements over doctrinal issues have been wreaking havoc in the Church for quite some time now. But it looks as though the split may be formalized in a matter of weeks. An article in the New York Times today reported how the bishops of breakaway dioceses are formally organizing a competing province in North America. The strange irony of this is that the formal announcement was made at an evangelical church in Wheaton, Illinois- hardly the place one expects to find a bunch of high church prelates. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Since Anglicanism is the mother church of Methodism, I'm curious what this latest development has to say about my own church's future. The United Methodist Church also has a number of theological conflicts that, while they involve a plethora of issues, tend to separate into camps based on views concerning sexual orientation. Unlike the Episcopal Church, we have not yet consecrated an openly gay bishop, and our official stance on sexual orientation in ordained ministry is more clearly defined, but the disagreements are the same.

So what does the formal split along ideological lines in the Episcopal Church mean for the United Methodist Church? Will we, too, eventually have a small but significant minority split off from the connection and form a group that considers themselves to be an ideologically pure remnant? Or will we learn from the struggles of holy mother church and recommit ourselves to ongoing dialogue?

What do you out in the blogosphere think? Discuss...

Not of One Mind

Some interesting news from the recent Jurisdictional Conferences of the United Methodist Church, which meet every four years to elect and assign bishops for the coming quadrennium: 

The Northeastern Jurisdiction voted to affirm the actions of California pastors who choose to bless same sex marriages, even though they are prohibited to do so by the Book of Discipline (you can read the UMNS story here). The delegates also encouraged leniency on those who choose to practice this kind of civil disobedience as a prophetic witness against what they believe to be an injustice.

In the Western Jurisdiction, Rev. Frank Wulf took the very courageous step of being the church's first openly gay candidate for bishop (UMNS story here). Although he was not elected, Rev. Wulf showed both tremendous personal integrity by being honest about his sexuality and tremendous pastoral sensitivity by his concerns over the backlash from people filled with hate should he be elected.

Also in the Western Jurisdiction, Bishop Beverly Shamana of the California-Nevada Conference issued a "ruling of law" declaring same sex marriages performed by UMC clergy to be "null and void" according to the Discipline, even though they are legal under California state law (UMNS story here). Any ruling of law issued by a Bishop is automatically reviewed by the Judicial Council (our denomination's Supreme Court), guaranteeing a very interesting a controversial meeting of the JC this fall.

I bring this up because earlier this summer at General Conference a legislative committee recommended adding some additional language to the Book of Discipline regarding our official stance on homosexuality. While this language did not change our official position, it did acknowledge that the church is "not of one mind" on the issue and that "good and faithful Christians" are on both sides. This majority report went to the floor of GC and was narrowly voted down. The debate over this language was described by many in attendance as one of the most divisive and hate filled exchanges they had ever seen.

But whether the Book of Discipline says so or not, we are clearly not of one mind on the issue of sexual orientation. Perhaps it's time we laid aside our rhetoric and sound-bytes, came out of our armed camps, and actually had some dialogue with one another. We're not of one mind, and the sooner we admit that, the sooner we can deal with it.

General Conference- May 1

I'm disappointed, although not really surprised at the way many things have turned out at the 2008 General Conference. Perhaps no issue encapsulates the stalemate we find ourselves in as the issue of sexual orientation.

I saw one report that said there were more petitions submitted to General Conference on the issue of sexual orientation than on any other single issue. They ranged from one petition that wanted to make it unconstitutional for any person to try to change the denomination's stance on sexual orientation (thus making it necessary to change the Constitution before any changes could be made), to petitions allowing homosexual persons to serve as clergy and allowing for clergy to perform same sex unions. We have seen at this General Conference, and at many previous ones, that some of the strongest lobbying has gone into this issue by all sides.

So I am not surprised that no real progress was made on this issue at this General Conference. I am disappointed, however, that the delegates chose not to take a step that might at least relieve some of the tension. A majority report from one of the legislative committees recommended adding a clause to the Social Principles that said, “faithful and thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness.” It would not have struck the clause that said that the UMC "considers homosexual practice incompatible with Christian teaching", nor would it have changed the fact that we exclude people from ordination and marriage based on their sexual orientation.

I don't see what would have been wrong with at least acknowledging that we're not all on the same page when it comes to this issue. The United Methodist Church prides itself (sometimes too much so) on that fact that we are a diverse, global church. Would it not have been in the spirit of "Holy Conferencing" to officially admit that we may not all agree but that we acknowledge that people with differing opinions are still good and faithful followers of Jesus?

It's even more unfortunate that when the issue came to the entire assembly that such hateful language was used in the debate. I received an email from one person who was present at the session in question who said that the tone of the debate was even more hurtful than the outcome of the vote. Again, how is this practicing "Holy Conferencing"?

This is especially sad in light of the sermon that Bishop Violet Fischer preached on the same day as this vote was taken (I think the video is available online). While the primary subject of the sermon was on the sin of racism, Bishop Fisher's text was the incident in the gospels where Jesus overturns the moneychangers tables in the Temple courts. She preached very powerfully that for the church to truly be living out the reign of God in the world, some unpopular actions will have to be taken and a number of people made uncomfortable if all of God's children are to be equally welcomed. 

It is unfortunate that such a prophetic message was preached in the same space on the same day that a sad social status quo was upheld by a slim majority who feel we're not yet ready to fully include all of God's image bearers in the life of the church. Hopefully one day we will truly hear this message and act on it accordingly.

General Conference- April 27

Sunday at General Conference a couple of important issues were discussed.

The body voted to create a task force to examine the issue of global climate change and to prepare recommendations on how local churches can reduce their negative impact on the environment. I hope that in four years when these recommendations are presented that local churches will take them seriously. Even if the problem is not as bad as Al Gore and others say it is, it's clear that humans do have a negative impact on our climate, and these will help us be better stewards of God's creation.

Bishop Minerva Carcano of the Desert Southwest Conference (Phoenix Area) gave a sermon at one of the worship services in which she reminded us that the call of the church to serve the poor and marginalized included undocumented workers here in the United States (others prefer the more pejorative term "illegal immigrants").  We may disagree on how the current immigration problem needs to be handled, but I hope we can all agree that those that are here illegally are still human beings and deserve to have enough food to eat, shelter, and adequate medical care. Hopefully we can see those as human rights and not just privileges enjoyed by citizens of this country.

Finally, a number of prominent figures from the Civil Rights Movement, including James Lawson (who is an absolute legend at Vanderbilt Divinity School), spoke out on the issue of full inclusion in the United Methodist Church. Currently people whose sexual orientation (something we do not choose) is not hetero are prohibited from serving as clergy, and in many churches are even denied membership. Lawson and other leaders said that this practice constituted heterosexism and was as grave a sin as the racist practices that used to be legal. The rally marked the fortieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Central Jurisdiction, which kept black and white churches and clergy separate from one another regardless of geographic proximity.

I hope that the fact that people are speaking out on these important issues fosters a healthy dialogue amongst the delegates instead of causing them to retreat into their partisan camps to only trade soundbites with one another. We've already seen some evidence of the latter with the free cell phone incident. Let's hope that's the last of it and that we can all speak openly and honestly with one another.