General Conference 2008

Bay Area Reporter: Methodists refuse to change anti-gay stance

According to the Bay Area Reporter:

The United Methodist Church decided to keep the anti-gay language in its church laws at its General Conference in Forth Worth, Texas last week.

The decision to reaffirm homophobic language also allows pastors to reject lesbian and gay people who seek membership in the church.

The General Conference, held every four years, is the sole venue for altering rules that guide the church. The conference voted to keep the current law against homosexuality as stated in the Book of Discipline, where laws guiding the Methodist Church are recorded.

"The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching," is the church law that the conference affirmed on April 30.

The amendment to affirm this language passed by only 84 votes. A total of 900 votes were cast.

"I am heartbroken ... by the spiritual violence done to lesbian and gay people by the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which I once pastored, my parents were married, my nieces and nephews baptized, and out of which my beloved grandmother was buried last June," said Harry Knox, director of the Human Rights Campaign's Religion Faith Program, in a press release last week.

Despite the church's anti-gay stance, the church laws, which explicitly support "laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman," does support rights usually granted under domestic partnership laws, including rights of inheritance and pensions for gays and lesbians.

"Certain basic human rights and civil liberties are due all persons. We are committed to supporting those rights and liberties for homosexual persons," the church law reads. It then goes on to endorse rights such as pensions claims and rights of inheritance.

In a separate vote, the General Conference refused to adopt anti-transgender language proposed in another suggested amendment.

The conference also voted to reject "all forms of violence or discrimination based on gender, gender identity, sexual practice or sexual orientation."

Two hundred Methodists, including three dozen ministers, attended a same-sex commitment ceremony in Forth Worth on May 2 to protest the church's failure to revise its position on gay and lesbian relationships, according to the Associated Press.

Despite the protests of individual church members and clergy, and the narrow margin by which the anti-gay language was affirmed, the Methodist Church should not be read as becoming more progressive, according to the Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide United Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco.

"They are not interested in changing the church to meet the times," Williams said, adding that the church could have and should have changed its position on gay and lesbian relationships years ago.

"They don't relate to the margins of society," Williams said, including social segments as varied and broad as the homeless, the Third World, the poor, and political progressives as other groups marginalized by the church.

"They keep losing members on the national and international level," he added.

Williams was careful to distinguish Glide's view of the LGBT community from that of the larger Methodist Church. Glide has a large LGBT membership and offers programs for people living with HIV/AIDS and other issues.

"Glide has a strong commitment to unconditional love. We love people as they are and we encourage people to define themselves," Williams said.

"I believe very strongly in an inclusive, not an exclusive church," he added.

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Methodists refuse to change anti-gay stance
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Dallas Voice: LGBT Methodists reeling after General Conference votes

According to the Dallas Voice:

Gays and their allies struggle with decision on whether to stay and fight or leave UMC after church reaffirms anti-gay policies, ruling

Sandy Long is about as Methodist as they come.

Long’s father is a retired Methodist minister, and when she was just 6, her family served a two-year mission for the church.

Both sets of Long’s grandparents were Methodist. And her great-grandfather was a Methodist evangelist who led revivals on Sundays.

Long, a 44-year-old out lesbian, is a member of Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas, a “reconciling” congregation that’s 30-40 percent gay and lesbian.

But Long said she’s decided to leave the denomination in the wake of last week’s General Conference in Fort Worth.

During General Conference, the UMC lawmaking session held once every four years, delegates voted to strengthen anti-gay language in the UMC’s governing document, the Book of Discipline. They also voted not to overturn a decision by the church’s Judicial Council granting pastors the authority to deny people membership based on their sexual orientation.

Both votes went against majority reports from legislative committees at the conference, and it marked a major setback for LGBT Methodists and their supporters.

After years of fighting, Long said she’s finally given up hope that the only church she’s ever known can change.

“Leaving the Methodist church is a hard thing for me; it’s like leaving the family, leaving a family that doesn’t really want you,” Long said. “I need to do this for my own spiritual health. Even though I go to a reconciling church with the most wonderful people, it is a part of the bigger church — the one that doesn’t want me.”

Northhaven UMC is a member of the Reconciling Ministries Network, a national Methodist group that seeks full inclusion for LGBT people.

And a reconciling committee from the 600-member North Dallas congregation spent a whole year lobbying delegates to the General Conference from North Texas.

“We’re very disappointed,” said Kaye Gooch, a Northaven member who chaired the committee. “There was no expectation of giant advances, but there weren’t even incremental advances.”

Gooch said she’s among those who haven’t made up their minds whether to stay in the Methodist church.

Although the General Conference votes won’t change anything at Northaven, an oasis for gay and lesbian Methodists, a portion of members’ financial contributions go to the denomination.

“I think lots of people are really having to regroup and rethink,” Gooch said.

Eric Folkerth, the straight pastor at Northaven, said the congregation held a healing service Sunday, May 4, two days after the General Conference ended.

Folkerth said it was the first of what likely will be many events designed to process the results of the conference and figure out what to do next.

“I think people need time to sort through where they are,” Folkerth said. “It’s going to be a tough time. It’s absolutely going to be a tough time, and I think we’ll have people individually making all kinds of decisions.”

Folkerth said the General Conference was not without positives: a less conservative Judicial Council was elected; actions against a transgender clergyperson were dropped; and family is now defined as “two parents” and not just a “mother and father.”

Delegates also approved a strongly worded statement condemning homophobia and a constitutional amendment that, if ratified by regional conferences over the next year, would essentially overturn decision 1032, which gave pastors the authority to deny membership to openly gay people.

Above all, though, Folkerth said it became clear during this year’s General Conference that a solid majority of U.S. delegates in the church support removing a 36-year-old clause in the Book of Law stating that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The clause has been used as the theological justification for the church’s anti-gay policies, including bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

“It’s hard to claim a victory when the scoreboard says otherwise, but we are hearing from person after person in the American church that they were with us on this and they were ready for change,” Folkerth said.

The problem, Folkerth said, is the growing influence of international delegates, especially those from Africa, who are extremely conservative. During the General Conference, a committee was appointed to study the idea of restructuring the denomination to give the U.S. church more autonomy.

The committee will report back to the 2012 General Conference.

“It’s similar to what the Episcopal Church is struggling with,” Folkerth said. “They have the same exact issues in terms of the struggle between a worldwide church and a culturally appropriate church in every cultural situation. … If we cannot restructure, it’s all over. We’re at a turning point, and I hope it’s not too late.”

In the meantime, Folkerth said it’s likely that Northaven will participate in acts of nonviolent protest and resistance against the church’s anti-gay policies, although it’s unclear what form they will take.

Representatives from the Reconciling Ministries Network and Soulforce, a national LGBT civil rights group, staged demonstrations on each of the last two days of the General Conference, including a same-sex commitment ceremony.

Steven Webster, a longtime Methodist from Wisconsin who helped lead Soulforce’s efforts at the conference, said he believes some congregations will follow the lead of Foundry UMC in Washington, D.C., which has been skirting the Book of Discipline by recognizing same-sex unions.

Webster, who helped start UMC’s first gay group, Affirmation, in 1975, said he doesn’t plan to leave the church, although he called that a “valid” option.

“What’s not valid from the Soulforce point of view is to remain in the church and be silent,” Webster said.

Full story:
LGBT Methodists reeling after General Conference
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Fort Worth Roller Coaster

by Troy Plummer, Executive Director of RMN

I actually love roller coasters -- ups, downs, turns, surprising drops, surprising loops. With a bit of inner ear nausea, I'm still processing what it all means. While I'm not clear yet, I would like to share briefly with you some information. Unlike previous General Conferences (GC), where there was a direct downward spiral legislatively on LGBTQ inclusion, this Fort Worth's Future With Hope was mixed.

• GC kept the original basic membership language that was misinterpreted in JC #1032 (49%-51%), but strengthened open transfers of membership and later by a 2/3rds vote replaced a "list" to include with the words "ministry to all" in the UM Constitution section on Inclusivity.
• GC maintained "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching" (45%-55%) while it added "loving caregivers" and "same-sex couples with children" to the definition of family.
• GC kept a funding ban on "promoting homosexuality" but stressed that it could not be used to "reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends" and further passed anti-homophobia, anti-heterosexism pieces that mandated providing resources to educate and reduce harm.
• Finally, GC gave us two peaks to celebrate: 1) the election of moderates to the Judicial Council who hopefully can tell the difference between "may" and "shall" in the eligibility section for membership and 2) the refusal to discriminate against transgender persons -- lay or clergy.

What smoothed the ride out on this roller coaster was the consistent spirit presence of the One Family Tree witness from the Parent's lunch, Young Adult drumming and rally, Reconciling Worship at First UMC, Good Friday "die in" and "Were You There?" floor witness, to the Easter hope wedding of Sue Laurie and Julie Bruno. We started with family and ended with family. We can't create One Family Tree by human means alone, but God can with and through us. Remembering our long-haul mission, planning for 2012 in Florida has already begun.

Delegate Will Green Addresses Plenary on Human Sexuality Petition

The amendment to the majority report was to strike the letters in red below. Will Green, a Reconciling Ministries Network board member, spoke against the amendment right before the vote. The amendment failed (Y: 48% 418 N: 52% 445). Ultimately this petition failed and the minority report was substituted and the phrase "The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching" was retained.

Human Sexuality (80449-C2-¶161.G)

Delete existing ¶161 G) and substitute the following; and amend other relevant paragraphs to make them consistent with this one:

¶161 G) Human Sexuality. For more than a generation (that is, since the 1972 Book of  Discipline), United Methodists, along with other Christians, have struggled to find principles for applying traditional teachings to contemporary understandings of human sexuality. 
     We recognize that sexuality is part of the larger human mystery, to be received and acknowledged in grateful responsibility. We reject all sexual expressions that damage or destroy the humanity God has given us. We deplore all forms of the commercialization and exploitation of sexual relations, with their consequent cheapening and degradation of human personality. We call for strict global enforcement of laws prohibiting the sexual exploitation or use of children by adults and encourage efforts to hold perpetrators legally and financially responsible. We call for adequate protection, guidance, and counseling for children thus abused. We believe that the Church family should support all families in providing age-appropriate education regarding sexuality to children, youth, and adults.
     We know that all of God’s children are of sacred worth, and yet we have been, and remain, divided regarding homosexual expressions of human sexuality. We have disagreed about Scriptural teachings: some have contended that the specific injunctions of Leviticus and St. Paul have authority over even the more general love commands of Jesus, while others have contended that the complexity of human sexuality, as we see it today, was never envisioned in previous millennia, and therefore could not have been addressed specifically in the Bible. We also realize that our traditions are both hallowed by our present lives and also historically conditioned by the age in which we live, and they are often reinforced by our unexamined psychological and cultural dispositions. We have not had enough experience as a community following Jesus Christ to discern whether life-long committed same-sex relationships can be surrounded and infused by the same grace and blessing God tries to impart to traditional marriages. We have tried to reason together about all of this, and we have prayed together, but the Holy Spirit has not yet brought peace to our community of faith. The fire in our disagreements points to a deeper human mystery than we knew. We believe that the Spirit has brought our collective conscience to acknowledge this mystery more honestly, and to make our claims with greater humility before God and our neighbors. We therefore ask the Church, United Methodist and others, and the world, to refrain from judgment regarding homosexual persons strike: and practices until the Spirit leads us to new insight. In the meantime, let us seek to welcome, know, forgive, and love one another as Christ has accepted us, that God may be glorified through everything in our lives.

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Inspired by Bishop Robinson’s Message of Hope

By Bill Gillis

I did not go to General Conference this year.  But I found myself monitoring obsessively various blogs and newswires throughout the ten days of conference.  I was in regular touch via email with folks who were there and others who, like me, were watching from afar.  And even though I digested as much data as I could, gleaned from various media, it wasn’t until last night that many of those observations sort of fell – serendipitously – into a proper interpretive frame. 

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, speak at the Equality Forum at the HRC building in Washington, DC.  He read a passage from his new book, In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God, spoke of his travels and ministry, and entertained questions.  It was while listening to Bishop Robinson speak about the state of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the struggles of the worldwide Anglican Communion that my own views of the United Methodist Church – in light of the recent General Conference and the legislative and judicial advances and setbacks experienced by the Reconciling community – were brought into focus.  Bishop Robinson made an important distinction between optimism and hope, a distinction that I found apt in light of this year’s conference theme: A Future with Hope.  He pointed out that optimism, a state or attitude distinguished by a positive approach or disposition, can all too quickly give way to pessimism.  Whereas hope – the positivity of which is associated with the outcome, rather than the outlook – is something more sustaining.  With hope, the assumption is that we know how this is going to end.  We know what the eventual outcome will be.  Therefore we must hope in that future – the future we know full well is coming.  The distinction is subtle; the challenge very real.  We don’t know when it will come, and we don’t know whether or not we will be around to see it. 

Robinson invoked the image of a sculpture outside the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, where there are African Americans standing one on top of the other in a continuous spiral moving up to heaven.  He remarked that he has always understood the people on the bottom of that sculpture to be just as remarkably happy to be there as the ones on the top – because without someone else’s shoulders to stand on, where would they be?  The struggle depicted in the sculpture is one resonant with a sustaining hope that encouraged each new generation to continue working for justice, advocating full inclusion, demanding equal rights and protections, and dreaming that each and every tomorrow might be the day it would all come to pass.  As full of hope as it is, however, it is also a cautionary tale. 

As Bishop Robinson pointed out last night, remember the Israelites.  The Israelites, having escaped Egypt at last, expected the Promised Land to await them just on the other side of the Red Sea.  And yet, what greeted them instead was not the Promised Land, but 40 years of wandering in the desert.  Similarly, Emancipation did not squelch theological justification of slavery; the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and ‘60s did not eradicate racism.  And neither will a change in the language of the Discipline expunge homophobia from the United Methodist Church.  It may wipe it off its face, but these are seeds that will take years – generations maybe – to cull from the institutional church. 

The practices witnessed at General Conference may have been impolitic, and the results less than heartening, but the message of Gene Robinson as he spoke last night was one that resonated with me: we cannot take our toys and go home.  That is precisely what the Oppressor wants.  Faced with the challenges of returning home, getting back to work, going back to church even, and continuing the movement toward peace and justice in the United Methodist Church, Bishop Robinson reminds us that when we remain at the table, the opportunity for relationship endures.  When we insist on conversation, our stories can be told.  When we are present with each other, everyone has the opportunity to listen and learn.  The voice of the fringe community is vital to the sort of prolonged, intentional, and deliberate dialogue that will bring change.

The work must continue; the hope endure.

A Prayer

O God of unfathomable depths and mysterious ways, when we think about it, there is really so little that we understand. Whether it's a storm that passes one house and destroys another, a war that seemingly has no end, or a church that sanctions exclusion, we are left shaking our heads and wondering what it all means. Wondering how we can possibly find you in the midst of the mess. How long must we wander in this wilderness, O God? How long must we ask to serve you and be told NO? God who moved over the face of the waters and who hovers still over the chaos of our lives, we are weary of the noise. We are tired of the cacophony of rattling sabers, the endless distractions that shift our gaze to lines drawn in the sand, to distinctions of mine and yours, and to legal language of right and wrong instead of words of love and grace and justice and mercy. God who breathed life into fashioned clay, breathe into us now that we may be formed into your people once again. Quiet the storm within our denomination that the wave of your grace may roll over us. Heal us and all those who suffer from oppressive measures that we may find hope in this despair, pride in the shame of it all, courage in our fear, and resolution in defeat. Shift our eyes from a downward glance to stars outshining the darkest nights. Let us find water in the rock and life in dry bones. Raise us once more to new life and make of us something strong and full of grace. Free within us the courage to be vulnerable enough to offer a hand to clasp. Heal us that we may be bread to eat, wine to share, and mortal fools for your kin-dom. Fill us that we might be bold enough to take a stand, or speak a word, or shed a tear, or to make again the decision to follow you and, in so doing, that we will, by grace, come to life abundant and come to dare, and come to hope and love your future in.
Amen.

Sent to Brandon Wollerson from a fellow reconciler

Striving for Normalness, but never normality

I am numb - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Returning home after General Conference has been rather surreal - I am comforted by my friends, my apartment, my City, even by returning today to work, and I am striving to get back to the normalness of life.  Slowly, I will get back to my regular routine - catch up on my sleep, and be able to get through a day without thinking about General Conference, maybe even get through a whole day without thinking about the United Methodist church.

Yet, I know that I am changed by General Conference - just as I was changed by General Conference in 2004.  I have lived through a harsh rejection, by the church that I have loved since I was young.  I have said often in the last week that it is not for me that I am in pain, but for the many others who have been so deeply hurt by the Church.  My numerous friends who have been denied their call to ministry, my friends whose love is not recognized by our church, my friends who seek a place where they can be themselves wholly and fully.  Today, for the first time, I was able to admit to a friend that I too have been hurt deeply by this church, a denial that I had not faced up to this last week.  For some reason, I felt like I was being naive and foolish to open myself up to be hurt yet again, but I was and continue to be stung by the words and actions of our church.

In 2004, I experienced a very powerful movement of the Holy Spirit - it happend on the prayer line outside of teh Pittsburgh convention center.  I have described it to some friends as being like a phoenix rising up inside me, calling me to action.  I have felt the same spirit within me this last week - beginning with the powerful witness on the floor of General Conference, and continuing as I speak with friends around the country, both who attended and did not attend GC. 

There is no normality to be had, we cannot let up on our work - for it is not our work, but God's work.  There is no returning to a time when I was oblivious to the words of the church, to the time before I had learned about the deep sin the church has committed to its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender sons and daughters, to a time when I was content to sit back and let others do the work of justice.

I do need to take some time.  I have wounds that must heal, and a weary body which must rest.  We as a community need to gather ourselves together to support each other during this valley, but we cannot step away from this work.  It is our calling and we have been put here for such a time as this.  As we get back to our daily lives, I hope that we do not fall into the normality of complacency, but are able to find the deeper, truer, call to justice.

Miami Herald: Reject intolerance cloaked in faith

On Sunday, April 27, the Rev. James Lawson addressed the general conference about the ongoing struggle against racism and heterosexism in The United Methodist Church.  During the 1960s, Rev. James Lawson was a leading figure in organizing civil rights campaigns using the principles of nonviolence he had studied under Gandhi. He also worked as a deputy and adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who dubbed Lawson "the leading nonviolence theorist in the world." Here is a Miami Herald article on Rev. Lawson followed by a YouTube about his work in the area of non-violence.

The Miami Herald Reports:

James Lawson is out of step with modern Christianity.

Take gay marriage. Speaking in support of a proposed state constitutional ban on same sex unions, one Rev. Hayes Wicker of First Baptist Church in Naples, Fla., was recently quoted by The Naples Daily News as saying, ``This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery.''

As asinine as that remark is, it is perfectly in step with much of modern Christianity, which has spent years demonizing gay men and lesbians. And then there's Rev. Lawson, who is scheduled to speak this weekend at the 10th anniversary conference of Soulforce, a group that fights church-based homophobia. Few things could be more out of step.

Lawson, you may know, is an icon of the civil rights movement; it was he who invited Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers. He sees his longtime involvement with Soulforce as part of the same struggle. ''The human rights issue is not a single issue,'' he told me recently. ``It is about all human kind. And all human kind has been endowed with certain inalienable rights.''

My interview with Lawson was set before Wicker's remark, but I leapt at the chance to ask him about it. ''Obviously,'' said Lawson, ``he does not know anything about the 250 years of slavery or the 143 years since slavery as the nation has largely failed to deal with the issue of slavery and its consequences. . . . And he knows even less about the gospel of Jesus. . . . Jesus broke all the social etiquette in terms of relating to people and bringing people into relationship with himself. He acknowledged no barriers or human divisions . . . no category of sinners from who he would isolate himself.''

Sadly, Wicker's brand of intolerance cloaked in faith has lately made inroads in black America. King's daughter, Bernice, has marched against gay rights. Others have peevishly rejected the idea that there are parallels between the black struggle and the gay one.

`We ought to know better'

Lawson finds the antipathy appalling. ``To unite with white Christian fundamentalism like Pat Robertson is an absolute disgrace. For black people to pretend that kind of Christian fundamentalism, which justified slavery and justifies racism, is a colleague in anything is to be blind to the realities that we're facing. We who have suffered and do suffer should be the most sensitive to the suffering of others. We don't want this undeserved suffering put on us, and we should therefore, clearly, not participate in putting such suffering on others. We ought to know better.''

Lawson knows his brand of Christianity is not the kind that nowadays dominates political discourse. Does it trouble him to be out of step?

''No. A part of the religion of Jesus is to be on the right side of history and the right side of God, especially when others are on the wrong side.'' Those who preach intolerance ``are the ones out of step. You have to be patient, and they'll catch up. Many of the black pastors were outraged when King, in '67, declared against the Vietnam war. Well, now, great numbers of the clergy are aware that war is a violation of the gospel of Jesus, and they are opposed to the Iraq war. They caught up.''

Some did, at least. Ours is still an era wherein war, hatred and intolerance often wear a clerical collar. As Lawson puts it, ``Much of Christianity in the United States has been more influenced by violence and sexism and racism and greed than by the teachings of Jesus.''

If that seems a radical thing to say, well, Lawson has no apologies. ''I am a follower of Jesus.'' he explains. ``That's what I've called myself for decades. And that is a radical faith that refuses to define any human being or group of human beings as being outside God's grace.''

James Lawson is out of step with modern Christianity.

Thank God someone is.

Full story:
Reject intolerance cloaked in faith
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Too Soon? Too Late?

Is it too soon?

The Reconciling Committee of the Board of Church and Society of the New England Conference sponsors an annual essay contest for young people ages 16-21. The winning essay is awarded a modest scholarship and is invited to read the essay at a session of Annual Conference. I want to celebrate that this year, the committee received two very good entries, although we were not of one mind concerning the "winner". Our disagreement was due primarily to concerns that many expressed over how one of the essays would be received by the body. The arguments go something like this:
It's too soon for some of our supporters to hear something so forceful. This sounds angry, and anger is divisive. We will lose support...

It is never too soon!

It is never too soon to tell the truth, to open our hearts to the grief of members of the body of Christ, to demand that the whole body at least become aware that others are suffering because we have failed to be the church for all of God's children.

Sometimes the truth hurts...
and when voices are silenced, the truth tends to hurt some more than others. 

What a privilege many of us have to be able to decide when we will hear the truth and experience the pain it represents! Queer people in churches everywhere will tell you that as soon as the church harms them publicly or they begin to voice their pain, people flock to them full of sorrow and guilt. When this happens, queer people – the ones who are MOST hurt by the exclusion of LGBTQ people in the United Methodist Church – end up providing pastoral care to their allies, their pseudo allies, the fence-sitters, and even the unrepentant persecutors of queer people.

Pain is pain, and I do not wish to minimize the pain of any person, but is it possible for non-queer people who experience grief over this almost ritual abuse of queer people in the church find another way to express their grief? Must queer people continue to serve the body as both scapegoat and pastor?

General Conference is over. The policies of the church are settled for another four years. It is easy to conclude that it's too late to do anything now...

Is it too late?

Steven Dry, a young man from the New England Conference who is finishing his Freshman year at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia as I type this post, wrote the "controversial" essay that I mentioned above. When you read it, you may be surprised to know that he wrote it at least a month before General Conference began. When I arrived at General Conference on April 23rd, I emailed Steven to thank him for his powerful offering to the New England Reconciling Committee (and as the incoming co-chair of the committee for the next quadrennium, to apologize for our collective fearfulness and continued willingness to play by the unspoken rules of hollow civility that mistake the absence of conflict for the well-being of the entire body).

I also asked Steven if I could post his essay on the General Conference blog. He graciously agreed to offer this powerful witness to a much larger audience than he had in mind when he wrote the essay.

I was so busy with the work of the Common Witness coalition at General Conference that I never posted Steven's essay. When I got home, I wondered if it was too late.

It is never too late!

It is never too late to enter into the work of reconciliation in the church and the world. The Spirit constantly calls us back to this work – calls us to begin again – to rebuild the church from the ashes of its own making. The essay that will be delivered at Annual Conference is an excellent essay on the assigned topic: "My vision of a fully inclusive United Methodist Church". The winning essay is also a blessing and a gift. It too will create some space for a new beginning following a General Conference in which some strides were made toward full inclusion, some positions were held, and some ground was lost.

And it is never too late for us to heed the call of one who has opened himself to us with an offering of grief and joy, regret and hope.

Now a note for those who are always calling us back to strategy – who worry that we will alienate somebody who isn't quite sure if queer people should be accepted:
Don't worry... I hear you. I have been hearing you for many years now. While I appreciate your commitment to follow the Spirit as you experience Her leading you, more often than I would like to admit, I have heeded your counsel. You are not invisible to me, and I do not disregard your convictions. You've argued that it's too soon to ask "ordinary people" to listen to an essay that unmasks the pain of so many and calls the church to live up to its promises and potential.

Today I say to you that it is never too soon to take people's pain seriously - yours, mine, and others'.  Nor is it ever too late to acknowledge publicly those who have been rendered invisible, who have been hurt and excluded and ejected by the policies and practices of this church and its people, who embody such compassion and joy and grace that they have continued to minister to and love and serve the rest of us anyway.

While the New England Annual Conference will not hear him in 2008, maybe you could try to hear Steven Dry by reading his essay. I encourage you to read it as it was meant to be read: It is a verbal address, not a static piece of writing on a page. It is a sermon and an offering of great love, deep pain, and fervent hope.

Steven will be reading your comments. While we have no other honor to offer him for this gift, it is never too soon – or too late – to express our gratitude.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Our Manifesto
an essay by Steven Dry, New England Conference

Christians, we are the children of whispered centuries, of fearful times and worried minds. Our minds have been molded in the womb of Christian authority. We were born into a rigid architecture, baptized by unquestioned lies and confirmed by poisonous precedents, all teaching us the consequences of being different. Restrictive doctrines have shattered our love with shame and have taken our pride with pleasure. The worst part is, the church has done so with no mercy and not a touch of regret within its airy buildings, buildings that are no longer places to worship, but places to worry. Light saturates the pews with fearful luminescence and stabbing shadows, while parishioners quiver behind a silent tradition, afraid that they might be the next to go. And so those mute mouths, once able to speak, have become a second Tower of Babel, collapsing to build borders, not made of language, but of fear.

White steeples loom high with condemnation as they seeks out difference and paint over it with white, using an amalgam of scriptural texts and a particular religious understanding of those texts in order to create an artificial unity, or, more appropriately, uniformity. These scriptures became a means of maintaining purity and absoluteness, a purity that heretics threaten to undermine. This tradition began with early Christian leaders who fought against the Marcions and Gnostics as a means of maintaining order in the church. Even today, despite all the supposed tolerance and liberalism in the United Methodist Church, influential leaders continue to read the Bible strictly. Rather than using it as a narrative of Christ enacting Christian compassion, leaders handle the Bible as if it were a book of answers and a means of condemning those who fall outside of the status quo. Ironically, it is within the very texts that Christian leaders use to condemn the marginalized that Jesus sought out the social outcasts, the lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and foreigners, and showed them compassion.

In order to return to Jesus’ calling, we must transform Christianity from a condemning, absolute orthodoxy into a welcoming, compassionate orthopraxi. Only then can the marginalized find room in its rigid infrastructure. The Bible must become a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. It must be valued as a repository of wisdom and an aid to living a Christian life, rather than simply a moral answer book. Instead of venerating the texts of Christ and using them to degrade others, we must use those texts as guides for showing Christian compassion to the entire World. By doing this, the concrete walls of the Church loosen, opening a space for all Christians, not just those who fit into the mold. Only then, can the sun can break through the foggy windows and shine a new, accepting light into the shadows where the marginalized hide. This reconciling glow will travel mystically throughout the sanctuary, seeking out the least and the lost, finally arriving at the altar. There, as the bread and the cup collide, sweet, reassuring drops of future will touch mouths once burdened with the bitter taste of tradition.

Unfortunately, this is but a distant vision. Nevertheless, in a world where hate has fettered hope and love has gone into hiding, we must arise from the shadows of this oppressive church and shine our own colorful reflections, staining the silence of this sterile, oppressive church and showing it our beautiful palette of diversity. This is the first step, and we must not be afraid. We can bear this crown of silence and cross of injustice no longer. We must have our own Easter Sunday.

Human Rights Campaign Responds to Discriminatory Measure Affirmed by Methodists

Colleagues in Christ,

You have all been in my heart and in my prayers (and in the prayers of my staff colleagues at HRC) over the last several weeks. Thank you for the powerful witness you have made for the expansive, inclusive, unconditional, extravagant welcome of Jesus Christ. Your work - from handing out pamphlets to making major strategic dicisions - has been a continuous prayer of both petition and praise to our Creator.

I am heartbroken, as are my colleagues at HRC, by the spiritual violence done this week to lesbian and gay people by the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which I once pastored, my parents were married, my nieces and nephews baptized, and out of which my beloved grandmother was buried last June.

Nevertheless, because of your hard work, the church has committed itself to working for civil rights protections for LGBT people and has explicitly rejected discrimination against transgender people. 

Therefore we expect and call on the Bishops of the United Methodist Church and local UMC pastors to speak out publicly in support of a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Mathew Shepard Hate Crimes Protection Act and we will be offering them many opportunities to do so, especially at Clergy Call 2009.

We will work with you to call the church to live into its commitment in tangible ways and thus to continue your work to make justice a reality with which the policies of the denomination will someday be reconciled.

You all are heroes to me and to my colleagues Sharon Groves and Kyla Bollens-Lund of the HRC Religion and Faith Program. We pray for your personal peace and health in gratitude for your witness on all our behalf.

Harry Knox, Director
Religion and Faith Program
Human Rights Campaign Foundation

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Press Release:

WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, today responded to the United Methodist Church’s decision to reaffirm homophobic language which says homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching and its failure to reverse a decision by the church’s Judicial Council to allow pastors to reject lesbian and gay people who seek membership in the church.  The vote, which passed by a margin of only 84 votes out of more than 900 cast, reaffirmed discriminatory language in the Discipline of the United Methodist Church and failed to counteract an earlier decision by the denominations judicial body.  The vote was taken on Wednesday, April 30, at the United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.  Separately, the church voted against anti-transgender legislation and voted to oppose "all forms of violence or discrimination based on gender, gender identity, sexual practice or sexual orientation."

The following statement is by Harry Knox, director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion & Faith Program:

"I am heartbroken, as are my colleagues at HRC, by the spiritual violence done to lesbian and gay people by the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which I once pastored, my parents were married, my nieces and nephews baptized, and out of which my beloved grandmother was buried last June.

Nevertheless, the church has committed itself to working for civil rights protections for LGBT people and has explicitly rejected discrimination against transgender people.  Therefore we expect and call on the Bishops of the United Methodists Church and local UMC pastors to speak out publicly in support of a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Mathew Shepard Hate Crimes Protection Act and we will be offering them many opportunities to do so, especially at Clergy Call 2009."

To learn more about the HRC Religion & Faith Program, visit: www.hrc.org/religion.

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Human Rights Campaign Responds to Discriminatory Measure Affirmed by Methodist Church
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