Dean's World

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Postlude

Except for jury selection and during the testimony of a member of the board of Good News who formerly served on the Judicial Council (when I left for a time of personal prayer), I was present for the entire trial of Pastor Frank Schaefer. I am trying to analyze what happened but, at the moment, all I can find inside is this random collection of mostly disappointed impressions. So I suppose I am sharing these thoughts and feelings more as a form of therapy for myself than as anything that will be very helpful to others.

A disappointment --actually, I admit, a resentment-- is that the prosecutor was repeatedly referred to by the bishop who served as judge and others as "The Church." I understand that his official title is "counsel for the church," and that he was appointed by the resident bishop to "represent the interests of the church." (Para 2701.2.b) But he was referred to repeatedly as "The Church" as though he were the only one in the room who was church.

The whole trial was about who would be treated as fully included in the church. Then during the trial there is only one person who is actually called "The Church," and his job was to argue that someone who had ministered to his gay son and who refused to say he would not minister to other gay and lesbian folk in the future be removed from the church.

All of us in the room were, of course, the church. But the prosecutor was the only one who was named out loud as "The Church." I understand this this imitates civil courts and is just a technicality, but I wonder if you can understand why this felt uncomfortable and I struggled with feelings of resentment?

Another disappointment concerns the testimony of Professor Thomas Frank who wrote the text book on United Methodist polity. His testimony was clear and honest and true. "We are a big tent," he said. "What results is a book that is itself quite diverse in its points of view."

He argued that the Book of Discipline is not a set of laws that are consistent and coherent but instead laws that sometimes conflict and are not consistent. He suggested that we make a mistake if we pick a verse out of the Book of Discipline and treat it as absolute. We should honor the complexity of the book and not be Disciplinary fundamentalists (my word, not his).

The disappointing part was that you got the sense that his teaching, which made so much sense, was floating right over the heads of some of those in the room and on the jury. The prosecution's argument was that there is a law, Frank broke it and will not promise not to break it again, so the consequence should be self-evident.

The same thing happened with Janet Wolf's testimony concerning the difference between retributive and restorative justice. "In restorative justice we listen to all of the stories, not just a law that has been broken," she said. In answer to a question from the prosecutor, she added: "Repentance is the repentance of all folk who have contributed to the harm in the community."

Professor Wolf showed how the Book of Discipline supports and advocates restorative justice rather than retributive justice over and over again. Obviously what she said flew right over the heads of the majority of the jury.

In short, I am feeling as if the trial was a victory for simplistic thinking. Wesley, if you read him, was a complex and profound thinker. Methodism has not been a movement based on simplistic thinking. The verdict in this trial was based on simplistic thinking.

Let me paraphrase the simplistic argument that won the day:There is a law on the books. We will not consider its context or other conflicting laws. The only question is whether Frank Schaefer broke this particular law and whether he will or will not promise not to do what he did again. If he will not promise not to break this one law again, he is the guilty one and he must be subjected to the maximum consequences.

I like clarity. I do not like pseudo-clarity. I like simplicity. I do not like simplistic thinking.

According to the lingo of the trial, "The Church" won. Really, it is clear to me that the church lost this trial ... but only for a moment.

Pastor Schaefer and Steve Heiss who faces a trial in Upper New York serve Communion following sentencing

Sunday, November 17, 2013

How Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett could help

First some context, then a personal story, and finally a suggestion about how I think Bishop Wallace-Padgett could help.

The Context

Bobby Prince and Joe Openshaw
Photo by Kevin Higgs

When Joe Openshaw and Bobby Prince asked Bishop Melvin Talbert to do a religious ceremony in Center Point, AL, celebrating their marriage (legally done earlier in Washington, DC), Bishop Talbert contacted the resident bishop of the North Alabama Conference Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett.

Bishop Wallace-Padgett asked him not to do the wedding and issued a press release objecting. In her press release she said:

I urged the retired bishop to reconsider as his officiating at this ceremony would be in violation of United Methodist Church law.

.She also expressed concern that such a ceremony would attract public attention and draw it away from the ministries of the North Alabama Conference:

I am also concerned that it would encourage the public to only define The United Methodist Church in North Alabama by one matter and not by the rich range of ministries of North Alabama local churches such as feeding the hungry, ministry with the poor, offering hope for those in addiction, sharing the gospel with our neighbors and welcoming all people to worship together and celebrate the sacrament of holy communion.

Despite her protestations and a similar appeal from the executive committee of the Council of bishops, Bishop Talbot conducted the service on Oct. 26.

When a majority of the Council of Bishops voted Nov. 15 to request that Bishop Rosemarie Wenner, president of the council, and Bishop Wallace-Padgett file a complaint against Bishop Talbot, they actually asked that two charges be made against him.

One charge is "conducting a ceremony to celebrate the marriage of a same gender couple (Paragraph 2702.1b)." This is the same charge being made against Frank Schaefer, Stephen Heiss and Thomas Ogletree.

The second charge is "undermining the ministry of a colleague (Paragraph 2702.1f)." I would assume this charge is based on Bishop Talbert going ahead with the ceremony despite Bishop Wallace-Padgett's urging him not to. Bishop Talbert is being charged with undermining Bishop Wallace-Padgett's ministry.

It is this second charge I'd like to discuss.

A Personal Story

When I was appointed to serve my first church after seminary, I got the sense that my appointment was a disappointment to some of the members. My immediate predecessor had retired at the end of his tenure as the church's pastor. All their pastors before that had been experienced and highly respect clergy in the conference. The congregation had been aging and experiencing some numerical decline. They thought the appointment of someone just graduating from seminary was a sign that the appointment cabinet did not consider them as important a congregation as they had once been. They felt slighted. They worried that I didn't know what I was doing.

In fact, they were not wrong to feel they deserved a more experienced pastor than I was. The appointment was made by a superintendent who was a friend of my family and it probably was made as much to accommodate my personal needs at the time as it was to meet their needs.

One day a couple of months after my appointment I was doing my pastoral calls. In those days we did not make advance appointments. We just showed up. I ran the bell of the home of a woman in the congregation named Marie who had cancer and could no longer attend church. I'd come to bring her communion. Her husband George opened the door, stared at me for a moment, and then invited me in.

Sitting next to Marie's bed was my predecessor.

I conducted myself politely. I chatted. I served communion. I asked my predecessor to say a prayer.

But I was mad.

The rules were very, very clear that former pastors were not to return to provide pastoral care except at my explicit invitation.When I got home I immediately phoned my district superintendent. Fortunately, he was not there.This gave me some time to do some thinking.

I started thinking about Marie. She was dying. I was a novice. Maybe she had reached out to my predecessor because she had needs for support she felt I could not meet. Maybe she was right. Maybe she reached out because she had needs for support that in fact I was too inexperienced and immature to meet.

By the time my district superintendent called me back the next day, I told him to never mind. I told him I had over reacted about something but that it was okay and that I was sorry I bothered him about nothing.

I continued to visit Marie and George. I listened to them, prayed with them, even tried to get a message from them to Oral Roberts when he was speaking in town at a United Methodist Congress on Evangelism.

When Marie went into the hospital for what we knew would be the last time, I was the pastor she wanted at her bedside. I was the one who held her and George's hands as she breathed her last breath.

It took me many years to realize that, as the pastor, I am the most powerful person in the congregation I serve. It often doesn't feel that way, but objectively and practically it is true. In the congregational system that I am part of I have the most power.

As the most powerful person in the system, it does not serve me well to be jealous of my power. It does not serve me well to be defensive about perceived challenges to my power and authority. If I just stay focused on my ministry, listen without becoming reactive, keep a sense of humor, the power automatically drifts back to me. The worst thing I can do is to make my authority the issue.

A Suggestion

My suggestion is that Bishop Wallace-Padgett withdraw the "undermining the ministry of a colleague" charge from the complaint against Bishop Talbert.

Of course, I'd prefer that Bishops Wenner and Wallace-Padgett make no complaint against Bishop Talbert and that the Council of Bishops lead in finding ways other than litigation to work out our differences, as Professor Thomas Frank has suggested.

But, if some bishops are going to file a complaint against Bishop Talbert, I believe it would be better and cleaner to keep the focus on celebrating same-sex marriages rather than to muddy the waters with the "undermining" charge.

A bishop is the most powerful person in his or her area of the United Methodist Church. The 66 active bishops in the United Methodist Church are the 66 most powerful individuals in the United Methodist denominational system. The 46 bishops in the United States are especially powerful. Active bishops are much more powerful than retired bishops, not to mention Joe Openshaw and Bobby Prince.

Good News magazine is already trying to turn Bishop Wallace-Padgett into a victim and Bishop Talbert into an ogre. In an editorial Rob Renfroe writes:

Bishop Talbert’s lack of respect for his colleague’s ministry is unparalleled and his willingness to harm the ministries of many faithful pastors and congregations is disgraceful.

Bishop Talbert’s lack of respect for his colleague’s ministry is unparalleled and his willingness to harm the ministries of many faithful pastors and congregations is disgraceful. - See more at: http://goodnewsmag.org/2013/10/bishop-debra-wallace-padgett-deserves-better-and-so-do-we/#sthash.cd2ehWZv.dpuf

Anyone who knows the way the church really works knows this is hysterical exaggeration. There is another agenda here other than protecting the authority and power of a bishop over her area.

I assume, but do not know for sure, that Bishop Wallace-Padgett has reached out in a caring way to Joe Openshaw and Bobby Prince. I hope she has offered to meet with them to listen to them and to pray with them. I hope that she has offered to meet with those angry about a celebration of a same sex marriage having happened in their conference to listen to them and pray with them.

Listening, caring, thinking clearly, and leading in a non-defensive way seems to me to be the key here. A focus on protecting one's power does not move things forward.

If we are going to litigate against pastors who celebrate same-sex marriages, let's keep to that question. It will be hard enough to deal with this without piling on.

How Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett could help

First some context, then a personal story, and finally a suggestion about how I think Bishop Wallace-Padgett could help.

The Context

Bobby Prince and Joe Openshaw
Photo by Kevin Higgs

I urged the retired bishop to reconsider as his officiating at this ceremony would be in violation of United Methodist Church law.

.She also expressed concern that such a ceremony would attract public attention and draw it away from the ministries of the North Alabama Conference:

I am also concerned that it would encourage the public to only define The United Methodist Church in North Alabama by one matter and not by the rich range of ministries of North Alabama local churches such as feeding the hungry, ministry with the poor, offering hope for those in addiction, sharing the gospel with our neighbors and welcoming all people to worship together and celebrate the sacrament of holy communion.

A Personal Story

A Suggestion

Bishop Talbert’s lack of respect for his colleague’s ministry is unparalleled and his willingness to harm the ministries of many faithful pastors and congregations is disgraceful.

Friday, November 15, 2013

The sensitive matter of comparing racial and LGBT civil rights

I've been expressing myself on Facebook rather than this blog for the past months because, frankly, Facebook is less time consuming and less intellectually rigorous. Comments made on Facebook, however, also tend to be much less thoughtful and more susceptible to misunderstanding.

I had a terse exchange on Facebook this week with my friend the Rev. Robert Barnes.

We were having a discussion about Professor Tom Frank's open letter to the Council of Bishops asking the bishops to stop holding trials of pastors performing same sex weddings.

Someone made a comment about the United Methodist Church's history of racial segregation during the time of the Central Jurisdiction. Bob responded with this argument:

Regarding the segregation issue, the United Methodist Church corrected that of it's own accord, because the correction was inherent in our theology and faith. The battle against racism was and is a long fight in which United Methodists have been mostly ahead of the curve.

I responded to Bob this way:

Actually, the Central Jurisdiction was created in 1939 and ended in 1968. To see how American Methodism was not pioneering in integration read Peter Murray "Methodists and the Crucible of Race." As Al Clipp was reminding me today, the Central Jurisdiction may have lasted longer, but the EUBs refused to merge so long as the Methodist Church was structurally segregated. However, it is encouraging to think that maybe 50 years from now someone may be under the impression that the UMC may have been mostly ahead of the curve on LGBTQ justice!

I forgot to include a smiley face. :>)

The discussion ended up with Bob asking me this question:

Dean, forgive me if I was wrong. So just let me ask you; Do you agree that
a) those who oppose gay marriage and the ordination of homosexuals are not racist (anymore than anyone else) nor are their arguments and...
b) that arguing that our stance on homosexuality must ultimately change for the same reasons that our stance on segregation ended is a spurious claim - because a) is false.
I am not hostile towards you and respect you where we differ; but I strenuously oppose some of the arguments that are raised against the character of conservatives.

So I want to face these questions and try to respond squarely.

I do not think white people who oppose gay marriage or ordination are any more or less racist as a group than white people who support it. (I will not try to speak for people of other races.) But I also think we should be able to discuss U.S. Methodism's history of racism during the Central Jurisdiction era without those who oppose gay marriage and ordination feeling as though we are calling them racists.

For me, the most important precedents for the discussion of LGBTQ inclusion are the changes Methodism made concerning the role and status of women and divorced people within the denomination. I often ask my friends who oppose change on biblical grounds how they have been able to contextualize what the Bible teaches about women and divorce but are not able to do the same thing concerning same-sex affection. No one has given me an answer that I am able to grasp yet.

The precedent of race is more complicated. Clearly I would not argue that people who oppose LGBTQ marriage and ordination are racists. Neither would I venture to suggest which side of the struggle they would have been on if they had lived from 1939 to 1968 when race was the issue for Methodism. I do not know what side I would have been on. I understand these are not the same struggle.

But I think there is a lot to learn from the Central Jurisdiction struggle that we can apply to the current LGBTQ- inclusion struggle.

We were fortunate that W Astor Kirk was a member here at Foundry until his death in 2011. At the 1964 Genberal Conference, Bill proposed an amendment to end the Central Jurisdiction to the merger plan for the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches. It passed. The motion that ended the Central Jurisdiction became known as the "Kirk Amendment."

Opponents of ending the Central Jurisdiction petitioned the Judicial Council to argue that the Kirk Amendment was only advisory, not mandatory. Bill took a six month leave of absence from work to prepare the argument supporting the end of the Central Jurisdiction. His argument won the 1965 Judicial Decision No. 232 which supported the dismantling of the Central Jurisdiction.

During the last years of his life Bill worked ardently to apply what he had learned in the struggle to end institutional racial segregation in the Methodist Church to the struggle to end institutional discrimination against gay and lesbian people in the United Methodist Church. He was working on a resolution to General Conference the last time I visited him in the hospital the day before his death.

It is fair to study the Central Jurisdiction struggle to gain some perspective on the LGBTQ-inclusion struggle. While they are different struggles there are similarities.

Do I think that those who oppose gay marriage and ordination are racist? No. Do I think opposition to gay marriage and ordination are part of a tradition and heritage of religious homophobia and heterosexism? Well, to be honest, yes. It is a heritage and tradition all of us who are straight have to wrestle with inside ourselves.

So to my friend Bob: a) I do not think opposing gay marriage and ordination makes anyone a racist more than those who favor it. But b) I also do not think that not being more a racist means that those persons are necessarily free from the tradition of religious homophobia and heterosexism which I believe to be hateful, destructive, and anti-Christ.

Not being more or less racist than the rest of us does not give anyone a free pass on the matter of discrimination against people of different sexual identities.

And, finally, I will add this. I do think that discrimination in whatever form it takes tends to share some common dynamics and, as Bill Kirk taught me so often, we certainly can learn lessons from one struggle that we can apply to another.

I think that, because the current struggle is shaping up in such a way as to seem to pit LGBTQ inclusion against the empowerment of African United Methodists, we are in danger of living out our various traditions of prejudice and discrimination in all sorts of harmful ways.

I think we have to be very self-reflective and prayerful because we who are white, straight, affluent, first-world, and male (or any combination of these) have within us an assumption of self-superiority and privilege in regard to many other groups. This will not be easy work and none of us get a free pass.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Glen Beck ... bless him

Walking past the Capitol today, I saw a crowd gathered and wandered over to see what was happening. It was an anti-IRS Tea Party Rally.

I got to hear some of Glen Beck's speech. He said the Tea Party is the current civil rights movement. He said it represents the current day expression of the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr, Gandhi and Bonhoeffer ... and Moses and Jesus.

He said we should stop worrying about the slavery of the past and start doing something about the slavery of today, although I was unsure whether he was referring to sex slaves or being enslaved by the IRS.

He is a spell-binder, but it is a tad hard to follow his logic.

Here is a portion of the speech I heard. (He seems to dislike John Boehner even more than Obama, by the way.)

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Marsh Chapel choir is way way super cool

Boston University Marsh Chapel choir is an exceptionally skilled group of singers ... mostly music majors from BU.

This summer I will be returning to Marsh Chapel to preach August 11 and 18. Hearing the choir is always a pleasure. (If you live in New England you can hear the choir sing on the Sunday morning broadcasts of the chapel service on WBUR.)

However, the Marsh Chapel choir has now entered a new realm of coolness. Here is a YouTube video of them backing up Mick Jagger during the recent Rolling Stones concert in Boston.

A big fist bump to the Marsh Chapel choir. Way way super cool!

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Tourist traps ... all the stuff

Fake jumping beans

Ash tray in the shape of South Carolina

For many years we lived in the North and my brother Nevin lived in the South. As a preacher I had more vacation time than money, so just about every summer we would travel south to mooch off of Nevin for a week or two. He was a great host.

I don’t know when the signs would begin, maybe in Virginia. Two hundred miles to South of the Border ... 190 miles to South of the Border ... 180 miles to South of the Border ... 175 miles to South of the Border. Until everyone in the car was obsessed with South of the Border, which turned out to be a place to spend money on things you absolutely didn’t need and didn’t really want but, for some reason, at the moment, had to have. You bought Mexican jumping beans and South Carolina state ash trays out of the strange mixture of excitement and boredom that comes with a road trip.

A photo of the original Waffle House, located in Decatur, which opened Labor Day 1955.

On the journey south, starting maybe in southern Virginia, in every town we passed, we would begin to see signs for a Waffle House. There were no Waffle Houses in Philadelphia. In the South there seemed to be more Waffle Houses than Baptist churches. So we would eventually end up eating at a Waffle House during the trip to Nevin’s house.

I hope I don’t offend anyone but I had never eaten a meal at a Waffle House that I did not regret afterwards until two years ago. Jane and I spent a long weekend in Richmond to see a Tiffany glass exhibit at the museum and a live Prairie Home Companion radio show. Next to our hotel was a Waffle House. We went there for lunch one day and the Waffle House had a salad on the menu. I ordered it and they brought me a mountain of raw vegetables and a plastic jar of Kraft Salad Dressing (they had only one flavor) and I had a healthy lunch at a Waffle house. The salad costs 50 cents. This is the only meal at a Waffle House that I remember not regretting afterwards.

Jewelery boxes from the Visitors' Center in Petra, Jordan.

Or perhaps you have the opportunity to travel more broadly in your life. Every tour you take includes a stop at an authentic local handicraft store where you can buy authentic replicas of whatever the region was known for from pottery to rugs to tapestries. In the midst of your vacation, you suddenly find yourself needing a full 16^th century replica set of Roman dishware. Or Turkish rugs. Or Middle Eastern mosaics.

Eventually you find yourself living in a house full of things that you can no longer remember where you got them or why. And it is time to downsize. Your kids have their own stuff and don’t want yours, and you just hope that you are the first one to go so that the other person has to deal somehow with all of the stuff.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Bishop McLee: Advocate for full inclusion

MIND is the group within the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church working to end discrimination against LGBTQ people. (I am a big fan of MIND, by the way.)

Here is part of their report from Day 2 of the annual session of the NY Conference:

The day ended with Bishop McLee’s first episcopal address to the New York Annual Conference. He began by saying “I am going to be myself” and straightforwardly shared his views in a wide-ranging speech. “Let’s talk about the complaint process,” he said, tackling head-on the current prosecution of Tom Ogletree (though not by name). He stood by his position that he has no choice but to refer a case to counsel for the church if the evidence supports the complaint, and noted that he had gotten responses critical of that position, some of them demeaning. But he also proclaimed, “For the last 13 years I have been an advocate for the full inclusion of God’s gay and lesbian children in the life of the church.”

Once again, as in Upper New York, Bishop McLee is a brand new bishop elected just last year.

I have much sympathy for leaders like Bishop McLee who are responsible to oversee a system that seeks to punish people for doing things they know are right and good. I am especially sympathetic to brand new bishops who are just learning the ropes.

Still, as I said the other day, none of us gets to choose the justice issues of the time in which we are called to lead. The wind blows where it will. (John 3:8) The question of whether God's gay and lesbian children will be fully included and honored in the United Methodist Church is an issue no bishop in our time will be able to avoid.

It may not be the only issue but it is an unavoidable one.

I have a great respect for the office of bishop. I believe in the episcopacy because I believe in leadership. Actually, I have a great hope that the bishops will help us make it through this test of history.

If I read history correctly, the racist Central Jurisdiction ended when a group of bishops decided it was an embarrassment to the church and they determined they needed to make sure it ended. They worked behind the scenes to support the work of activists and legislators like W. Astor Kirk to end it.

I am grateful to Bishop McLee for having the courage to announce to his annual conference that he supports the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life of our church.

I am also grateful to our own Bishop Marcus Matthews for his advocacy on behalf of a fully inclusive church.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

The holy temple of hardware

One of the Washington Post reporters who covered the fire that destroyed Frager's Hardware store on Capitol Hill last night is Michelle Boorstein.

Michelle Boorstein

I immediately recognized her name because she is the religion reporter for the Post. How appropriate, I thought, sending the religion reporter to cover the fire at Frager's.

For those of us who live in the weird old houses of Capitol Hill, Frager's was a temple where we went at least weekly to ask the priest what the mysterious thing was that just broke under the sink and what sin we committed to cause it to break. The priest would search deeply within the secret and hidden places within the temple, produce a mysterious replacement and and sent us home with instructions on what we had to do with it to live a better and happier life. We paid our tithe at the counter.We paid gladly.

It turns out that Michelle Boorstein helped cover the story because she happens to live in the neighborhood as she explains in this poignant personal essay.

Still, it was totally fitting to have the religion reporter cover the fire at Frager's.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Prayers for Rev. Heiss and Bishop Webb

Rev. Stephen Heiss

The Rev. Stephen Heiss, pastor of Tabernacle United Methodist Church in Binghamton, N.Y., has written an open letter to his bishop saying that he has officiated at several weddings for same-gender couples over the past several years -- including his daughter's wedding to her partner.

The letter is posted on the Reconciling Ministries Network blog here.

The Upper New York Conference has a brand new bishop just elected to be a bishop last year. I knew Bishop Mark Webb as an outstanding pastor when he was a much younger person years ago in another conference. I respected him for his commitment to reach people and his caring, balanced ministry.

It is hard to see brand new bishops who hardly have their feet on the ground yet having to deal with what they surely must feel to be a tension between their oath to uphold the Book of Discipline and a basic human rights issue like marriage.

Bishop Mark Webb

New bishops are just learning to exercise the authority of their office, so I suspect some of them can sometimes be a bit defensive when they sense their authority challenged. I remember Bishop Webb as an unusually open, non-defensive pastor.

We are in the midst of a season of rethinking prejudices that are centuries old, that may have been assumed (like slavery and patriarchy) by some of the biblical writers, and that are deeply engraved in the psyches of some United Methodists.

So we should keep both Pastor Heiss and Bishop Webb in our prayers.

Stephen Heiss has taken a courageous and honorable position. Bishops need to remember that this is what they signed up for -- being a bishop in a time when our society is experiencing dramatic change in understanding issues of sexual identity. None of us, including bishops, get to pick the issues of the age in which we serve.

I remember hearing someone say once that they wished they had lived in the time of the movement to abolish slavery when the issue was so clearly one of right and wrong and the biblical evidence was so clear. The issue of marriage equality is equally one of right and wrong and the Bible says little if anything opposing same-gender love as compared to many passages that seem to support slavery, but it may take a few decades for everyone to see this clearly.

We can not live in any other era. We need to live through the movement of the Spirit in our time. We cannot pick our issues. We can only choose whether we will stand with old understandings and the old law or with the grace of God trying to break through.

I still believe that rules in the Book of Discipline that discriminate against LGBTQ persons violate the United Methodist constitution, as the late W. Astor Kirk argued, if only there were a way to test it.

May God guide both Pastor Heiss and Bishop Webb.