Further Insight into "English Only"

According to a story in today's Tennessean, the recent attempt to make English the only allowable language for official government business in Nashville was almost entirely funded by an outside group: ProEnglish of Arlington, Virginia.

For those that didn't follow the story, when the deadline came to report fundraising for and against the amendments in the special election, the side in favor failed to file their report. It now seems that we know why.

Furthermore, the fact that the English Only effort was almost entirely funded by sources outside the state helps explain why Eric Crafton, the Nashville Councilman who sponsored the amendment, was so nonchalant when it failed. 

According to the Tennessean story, Crafton was contacted by this nativist special interest group who wanted to use Nashville as a test case and were willing to fund the campaign in favor of the effort. He put the wishes of this special interest group ahead of the needs of the people of Nashville who elected him. 

Some estimates have put the cost of the special election on these amendments at over a quarter of a million dollars. This money could have been better spent improving Nashville's schools or funding efforts to help immigrants better assimilate into the community.  How many ESL classes could that money have funded? And yet Councilman Crafton thought it would be better to spend Nashville-taxpayers' money on a test case for a special interest group.

The effort against "English Only" helped motivate compassionate, progressively minded people to get involved in local government. I hope that they will stay involved and that people who actually have the best interests of Nashville's residents, especially the immigrant population, in mind will run for seats on the Metro Council so that abuses like the one Mr. Crafton was all too happy to enable do not happen again.

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.