General Conference 2008

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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A Soulforce Open Letter to Members of the United Methodist Church

On April 30, 2008, delegates to your General Conference meeting in Ft. Worth, Texas, voted to keep these words in their Book of Discipline: "The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching." Since 1972 United Methodists have used these words to deny lesbian and gay Methodists the rights of ordination and of marriage. As I write clergy can even use these words to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christian the rights of membership in a local church.

For 36 years lesbian and gay United Methodists and their allies have worked tirelessly to replace these words with words of affirmation and acceptance. Once again a UMC General Conference has decided to keep those words in place even though they lead to intolerance, discrimination, suffering and even death. In his book "Why We Can't Wait," Martin Luther King, Jr. describes the 1963 struggle for civil rights that climaxed with legislation that ended segregation in the United States. Dr. King's book might have been titled, "Why We Didn't Wait," for he describes the "disappointments" that drove African-Americans into the streets - "disappointments" that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans know all too well.

We lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are also disappointed in the Congress and the courts; disappointed in both political parties and their leadership; disappointed in the lack of change in the United States when European nations are granting their gay and lesbian citizens the full rights of citizenship; but especially we are disappointed in our churches for ignoring the empirical and biblical data that homosexuality is not a sickness to be cured nor a sin to be forgiven.

We, too, are tired of slow change and token changes, tired of defending ourselves against the claims of moral inferiority, tired of being victims of public laws and private humiliations, tired of intolerance and inequality, tired of suffering and dying just because we are different. The historic civil rights legislation of 1964 came just eight years after Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. It's been almost 40 years since the Stonewall protest in New York City and 36 years since the United Methodists decided that they "...do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching."

With all the changes we can celebrate, the real problem remains the same: the antigay religious teachings and actions that support intolerance and discrimination are still powerfully in place in the United Methodist Church and in most other Protestant and Catholic Churches. These antigay, religion-based teachings and actions have become the primary source of misinformation against sexual and gender minorities.

Most antigay initiatives and antigay court decisions (local, statewide and national) flow out of those same religious teachings. They give license for gay bashers to harass and harm us and motive for God's gay children to kill ourselves. Instead of changing minds and hearts, the 36 year war of words by leaders of the United Methodist Church has seen those antigay religious teachings harden into place. When will we realize that the antigay teachings cannot be "studied" or "debated" away? It will take another civil rights revolution to end them.

In "Why We Can't Wait" Dr. King makes it clear: "The ultimate tragedy of Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people." It is not the Institute for Religion and Democracy who have kept these tragic words in place. We can't condemn the Confessing Movement for this current dilemma. It is the silence of the good people of the United Methodist Church that is to blame.

But there is a way to end that silence without anger, hatred or violence. Guided by Gandhi's soul force principles, the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance, Dr. King led the people of Birmingham on a journey into justice that "stirred the conscience of the nation." We don't have to wait for a consensus at the next general conference. We can stand for justice now in ways that will empower us and change minds and hearts in the process.

We call on the United Methodist Bishops who know the tragic consequences of those words to refuse to enforce them or to resign in protest. Gandhi said "It is as much our obligation not to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good." Every day a Bishop remains a Bishop he or she gives tacit support to the teachings that are killing us.

We call on the United Methodist clergy who know the tragic consequences of those words to take their stand against them. Welcome us. Marry us. Ordain us. Confront and condemn your fellow clergy who dare to use those words to deny membership to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians. We ask you to take steps immediately to join the Reconciling Ministries Network and to make it known to your community that you are an Open and Affirming Congregation.

We call on members of the United Methodist Church to support your local congregation if it is (or is rapidly becoming) a Reconciling Congregation. But we call upon you to leave your church if your pastor continues to enforce the words that "...do not condone." At least refuse to pay your tithes and offerings until your church opens their doors to all people as Christ commands.

We call on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender United Methodists, their families and friends, to refuse to finance your own oppression by giving your tithes and offerings to a church that refuses to see you as fully human. How can we continue to support a local congregation where the pastor insists that our relationships are impure or unholy and thus refuses to marry us or insists that we are not really called by God to serve the church and thus refuses to ordain us? How can we even think of staying in a congregation that denies membership to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender persons? And as you leave, take down that sign or banner that reads "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." Store it until the United Methodist Church earns the right to use it once again.

Whatever you do to take your stand against those words in the UMC Book of Discipline, do something. We cannot wait for the next General Conference. While those words remain in place lives are being ruined, talents are being wasted, families are being divided and whole generations are being lost to the United Methodist Church. Even worse, how many people have given up their faith in Christ because His church has become a primary source of intolerance and discrimination? Don't wait for a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead us out of this wilderness. Whatever you decide to do, your simple act of conscience will make a difference.

One Sunday an African-American pastor was proclaiming those tragic words from the pulpit. "We do not condone..." "...Incompatible with Christian teaching..." "Sick and sinful..." Having heard enough, the gay organist stood up and said loudly, "There will be no more music today." With that he gathered up his music and walked out of the church. After a moment of breathtaking silence, one by one the choir followed. Just seven words and a brief walk down the aisle and a choir was empowered to do justice and a congregation was changed forever.

Rev. Dr. Mel White
President of the Board

Jeff Lutes
Executive Director

Full story:
A Soulforce Open Letter to Members of the United Methodist Church
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Methodist Civil Rights Leaders Address General Conference

Soulforce sponsored a panel of Rev. Gil Caldwell, active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and in the national civil rights movement. The other panelist, Rev. James Lawson, was a student of Ghandi and one that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the leading non-violence theorist in the world.  The panelists wrestled with the connections between the "isms": racism, anti-semitism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, agism, able-ism, etc.  "They all come from the same kind of place," Caldwell reflected, saying that we will not get rid of heterosexism until the root of all the "isms" is unearthed. He wondered "if those who have been placed outside the gate have an even greater responsibility to heal a sick society." Lawson reminded hearers that the old ways of exclusion are still with us; the Central Jurisdiction was dissolved, but the people didn't change--the exclusion just shifted to another "scapegoat": homosexual persons.  People just continued "the old ways of exclusion of some human beings."  He suggested that some are "committed to a domination and control type of religion, a religion about Jesus not a religion of Jesus," and that all of us need to go back to the religion of Jesus. In fact, the underlying spirit of all the isms and the impulse to exclude others is violence, and until we face that we will not be able to right all the things that need "righting."

The speakers were introduced by the Jimmy Creech, a United Methodist pastor who was defrocked for marrying a lesbian and a gay couple. Mel White, the founder of Soulforce, was also in attendance.

Photo Set

Video: Rev. James Lawson

Rev. James Lawson from Reconciling Ministries Network on Vimeo.

Video: Rev. Gilbert Caldwell

Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell from Reconciling Ministries Network on Vimeo.

Additional Coverage:

Flashnet 2/6/2008: Black History Month: Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell
Click here

Flashnet 2/20/2008: Black History Month: Rev. James Lawson
Click here

Flashnet 2/27/2008: Marriage: Jimmy Creech
Click here

A Letter to the Faithful
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Picnic in the Park with Transgender People of Faith

A crowd filled General Worth Park in front of the Fort Worth Convention Center to have lunch and to mix and mingle and listen to transgender people of faith.

Photo Set

Pittsburgh '04: Protest On The Floor

According to the United Methodist News Service:

PITTSBURGH (UMNS) — At 11:10 a.m. May 6, a single drummer slowly beat a rhythm signaling the beginning of a peaceful interruption of the 2004 General Conference.

The demonstration was led by Soulforce, a gay rights advocacy group. More than 500 people circled the floor of the conference for 35 minutes carrying banners and singing hymns of reconciliation.

“The drum signals us that there are guests among us,” said Bishop Janice Huie of Arkansas, who was leading the morning session. “They come in peace as a witness among us. I invite you to embody God’s love to these strangers and friends.”

Leading the group around the room, a single voice issued an invitation to “those who want to reconcile, those who want justice, come out and join us.”

Mark Miller, delegate from Greater New Jersey, took the stage and led the group in singing several songs, beginning with “What Does the Lord Require of You?” and ending with “Marching to Zion.”

Many of the marchers carried signs with messages such as “There Are Homosexuals Already in Heaven” and “God Loves You and Me.”

Full story:
Gay rights group stages ‘peaceful interruption’ at General Conference
Click here

Here is a YouTube video of the witness:

Commentary at UMC.org: Avoiding issue is not true peace

Steven E. Webster wrote this excellent commentary at UMC.org. He is attending the General Conference with Soulforce.

Many voices from across The United Methodist Church are suggesting there is no way forward in the 36-year-long dialogue about the role and status of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the church. Declaring an impasse, these voices call for an end to this dialogue in the name of peace and unity.

Forty-five years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a now-famous letter from a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala., to a group of white clergy (including two Methodist bishops) who––in the name of "unity" and "peace"––had publicly called on King and his allies to cease their disturbing nonviolent protests against racial segregation.

King wrote that the "great stumbling block" in the African-American struggle for equality was not blatant bigotry, "but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

I embrace our Wesleyan Christian vision of "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world" and applaud the General Conference for seeking to build unity around four focus areas: 1) developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world; 2) reaching new people in new places by starting new congregations and renewing existing ones; 3) engaging in ministry with the poor; and 4) stamping out killer diseases by improving health globally.

Yet we undercut these same goals when we continue to: 1) reject the gifts and graces of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons and their allies; 2) turn off a younger generation that views the Christian faith as "anti-homosexual;" 3) push LGBT youth into poverty and homelessness as families reject them because church and society stigmatizes LGBT persons; and 4) fail to address the role that ignorance and stigmatization of homosexuality (and other sexualities) play in the global AIDS epidemic.

Biblical peace

The United Methodist Church cannot enjoy true peace and unity while it engages in injustice and spiritual violence against some of its members. Biblical peace does not refer to the apparent absence of conflict, and still less to the suppression of dialogue. In the Bible, "peace" ("shalom" in Hebrew) is a holistic concept that includes justice and total well-being.

To fail to address the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the church now would leave in place the status quo in church law that includes Judicial Council Decision 1032, which normalizes the exclusion of LGBT persons from membership in the church. Decision 1032 has never yet been the subject of discussion at a General Conference and runs counter to a (non-binding) plea in our Social Principles that "we implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends."

Even if lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are allowed to attend or join the membership of The United Methodist Church, Decision 1032 further legitimates the widespread practice of "shunning" such persons as unworthy to serve in any of the ministries of the local church. This is spiritual violence, the misuse of religious authority to demean and diminish LGBT Christians.

I know LGBT persons who have been denied the opportunity to serve in the church as leaders of adult education classes, choir members, committee members, or readers of Scripture in worship. It is not unheard of for committed same-gender couples to be denied baptism for their babies and gay youth to be shunned from youth groups in The United Methodist Church.

These acts, justified by labeling LGBT people as "unrepentant sinners" inferior to all the "repentant sinners" in the church, are acts of spiritual violence, harming the souls of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. It is tragic that being from a devout Christian family has been identified as a risk factor for suicide among LGBT youths.
A thorn in the flesh

Some have described the church’s long dialogue over these issues as "a thorn in the flesh." Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 that he endured a painful "thorn in the flesh" that would not leave him even though he pleaded with God to remove it. God’s answer to Paul applies to us: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

We feel weary and weakened by this long dialogue over homosexuality, a dialogue in which I have actively participated in many ways these past 36 years. The faith that sustains me is that God intends to perfect us through these trials, and we, the people of The United Methodist Church, look forward to a real peace which is, in King’s words, the presence of justice and not merely the absence of tension.

*Webster is chair of the church council of University United Methodist Church in Madison, Wis., and has attended the 2000 and 2004 General Conferences as a volunteer with Soulforce, an organization that describes itself as working for freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from religious and political oppression. He legally married Jim Dietrich, his partner of 27 years, in a civil ceremony in Toronto in 2006.

Full story:
Commentary: Avoiding issue is not true peace
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Another Perspective:
Commentary: It’s time for a new set of priorities
Click here