Bandits No More

UMCOR (United Methodist Committee On Relief) is always ready to jump in when disaster strikes. Hurricane Katrina is no exception. If you’d like to support their relief effort you can check in at their Website.

Update: Here are a couple UM news items on Katrina:
UMCOR Goes Into Action
UMs Begin Response to Katrina

I crossed the narrow narthex from exterior door toward the sanctuary. That there were people other than myself in the narthex registered, but I took no notice. Then my hand made contact with the handle of the door to the sanctuary. At that point I heard a voice say, “You can’t go in there.” With that voice I suddenly became aware that the narthex was, in fact, full of people. All of them besides myself were armed, uniformed police.

I briefly considered entering the sanctuary anyway. Who are the police of Caesar to tell me I cannot enter a Christian house of worship? After all, I am not only an ordained United Methodist Elder, but am also ABD in a PhD in Church-State Studies, so I knew better than that officers of the State ought to restrict admittance to a church.

I very quickly weighed my options and decided making my flight home that afternoon was more important than getting involved in my own First Amendment case. I was escorted through the metal detectors into the hallway to wait with the others who had gotten there early.

The church was The Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. The occasion was a possible visit that Sunday morning by the President and First Lady. It was January 1999.

I understand there are security measures that must be taken before the President goes anywhere. Especially post September 11. But there is no excuse for allowing armed, uniformed agents of the state to control admittance into a place of worship.

I attended a city council meeting tonight. It opened with a public forum time during which interested citizens were invited to voice their opinions about the proposed property tax rate increase. I don’t recall the mayor also inviting questions, though he and the rest of the city council did their best to answer all questions that were asked.

I’d like to share some observations from that public forum session.

1. It was clear that one citizen’s questions were focused on making sure everyone in attendance recognized his intelligence and experience. In doing so, he was also questioning and challenging the experience and intelligence of the city council and mayor. I wouldn’t expect this to be an effective method or persuasion. In his case, it was not.
2. Another citizen repeatedly accused the council of not having made their budget recommendations available to the public. Though he was told repeatedly that he was welcome to a copy of the proposed budget, as was any citizen, he continued to ask questions based on presumptions about the budget he hadn’t seen in direct contradiction to how the council had explained the budget.
3. Among several citizens there was a penchant for questioning the character of the city councilmen because they were not in agreement with those asking the questions. This is common at higher levels of politics, but I would have thought it foreign to small town local politics where we know each other outside the council chambers.

While I have to admit that several on the city council, including the mayor and city manager are personal friends of mine, I believe my assessment is fair. They did answer questions, many times the same question over and over again. The trouble was they didn’t give the answers those asking wanted to hear.

Which is kind of refreshing from elected officeholders.

You can listen to this week’s sermon, Learning From John Wesley: Holiness. I show from Scripture (main text: Colossians 3:1-17) why holiness is good for us and how it fits into the big picture of what God is doing in our lives. I also give some pointers on how to pursue the holy life.

In today’s New York Times columnist David Brooks summarizes Andy Krepinevich’s approach to winning in Iraq. The basic idea is to build up areas of safety for civilians rather than going after the insurgents. Sound an awful lot like Lewis Sorley’s description of Gen. Abram’s strategy in Vietnam. If Sorley is to believed, the strategy worked in Vietnam – in the short term, but fell apart when America neglected its role in the peace (and the North ignored the treaty it had made). If the Vietnam war – which, it is claimed, we lost – was part of a larger war against communism – which we won, then surely when we look at Iraq we must see it in context of a larger war. We still live with the loss in Vietnam (which was more a political loss than a military loss); if Iraq is lost – whether in reality or in the perception of the people – it will be with us a long time also.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit reports on an email from Frank Martin:

The lesson to all small towns across America in regards to the internet is as clear as it was to small towns in the last century in regards to trains and highways, if you want people to come to your town, you need to have high speed internet. If you have it, you are part of the world, if not, your days are numbered.

Pittsburg, Texas is a small town – fewer than 5000 in the city, about 12,000 in the county. We have high speed internet available through CountryNet (radio), DSL (SBC) and Cable (Cox). So if you’re a telecommuter looking for small town life, be sure and check Pittsburg & Camp County.

Bishop Will Willimon waps the self-help movement upside the head with the Gospel, seeing altogether too much SELF in much of it. His final comment:

Hello, my name is Will and I am a preacher, addicted to the need to ask, “This is all well and good, but is it the gospel?”

Go Will!

Many surveys of late have shown that teachers in higher ed tend to be overwhelmingly liberal (a prominent methodology is to compare political registration, which usually seems to run at least 10 to 1 toward the Democrats). K.C. Johnson at Inside Higher Ed examines this phenomenon, identifying three elements of the apologetic strategy offered by those who want to maintain the status quo (I only summarize – check the link for the whole piece).

1. The cultural left is, simply, more intelligent than anyone else.
2. A left-leaning tilt in the faculty is a pedagogical necessity, because professors must expose gender, racial, and class bias while promoting peace, diversity” and cultural competence.
3. A left-leaning professoriate is a structural necessity, because the liberal arts faculty must balance business school faculty and/or the general conservative political culture.

Nice to see humility at work, isn’t it?

All this is old news to any one of a conservative bent who has interacted with academia. What got me thinking was one of the comments under point 3:

“Professional schools reflect the mindset of their professions.”

This may be true when looking at law and business schools (I have no experience with either), but I doubt that it is generally true for seminaries, at least in the United Methodist tradition. From what I’ve seen, teachers at official United Methodist seminaries tend to track not with the overall profession (pastors), but with academia. Surveys come out every General Conference year showing that pastors tend to be more liberal than laity. From what I see there is also a tendency for seminary teachers to be more liberal yet.

Does anyone else see this or am I missing something?

Now it could be that pastors are inherently smarter than lay people, and seminary profs smarter than pastors, but I think that is an ad hominem, not an argument.

Another possibility is that our language is failing us here. We throw the terms “liberal” and “conservative” about as if we always know what they mean, and as if they always mean the same thing. They don’t. Considered theologically, United Methodist leaders tend to be more liberal than conservative (according to popular usage). Considered institutionally, however, our leaders sure look conservative to me – “we’ve always done it this way” is a pretty popular motto. So which is it? Are they liberal or conservative? I’m afraid our language is failing us here.

UPDATE: Here’s The New York Times’ latest on the subject. Also, Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy has a word or two.

The next flight of Igniting Ministry ads are due out any time now. Here is the United Methodist News Service article.

The UMC has paid good money for quality ads to be put together. Serious demographic research was done at the start, and has been done throughout.

Flying in the face of all this research, though, is this statement at the end of the article: “The commercial will have the most airings, 264, on CNN and CNN Headline News, followed by 138 on The Weather Channel.”

Was CNN really the best choice for the largest chunk of our church’s $2 million dollar investment? By all accounts CNN’s ratings have been sliding fast. I am confident the ads could have been more wisely dispersed.

One of the recent controversies in the UMC is over a Virginia pastor who has been removed from ministry for not allowing a homosexual man to become a member of the church. I’m not a member of the Virginia Annual Conference and am not familiar with the details of the case. I have not had the experience of not allowing someone to join the church but I can imagine how such an action might be thought out. Others, including Woody Woodrick of the Mississippi United Methodist Advocate, cannot.

Woodrick begins his piece:

Oh, how my heart hurts. One of my fears for The United Methodist Church appears to have come true. A pastor in the Virginia Conference has been suspended from his pastoral appointment because he would not accept into the membership of his church a man living in a homosexual relationship. Much to my dismay, conservative groups within the denomination have criticized Bishop Charlene Kammerer for her decision to suspend the pastor.
Members of the church quoted in news stories have supported the pastor. The defense for not accepting the man seems to center around his refusal to renounce his sexual orientation. So a group of Christians has turned him away. From the church!

I guess Woodrick knows more than he’s letting on. I was under the impression that the pastor had not turned the man away from the church, but from becoming a member of the church. I realize that contemporary practice in many UM churches takes membership to be a privilege, but on my reading of the Discipline, our liturgy, and even the Bible, membership might better be described as a responsibility.

He continues:

As the debate within the church over homosexuality has raged, my fear has been that someone would draw a line in the dirt and say, “We don’t want homosexuals in our church.” Until now that statement might have been in folks’ minds, but it wasn’t said publicly. Now it has.

Again “in membership” is taken to be the same as “in the church.” I know many UM pastors who support our Discipline’s assertion that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian practice.” I don’t know any who because of that stand refuse to let homosexuals participate in the life of the church.

I am bewildered. How can a church that professes to love God and its neighbors reject anybody? Best as I can determine, no new member is required to state a sexual preference to join a United Methodist church, just profess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. Last time Ilooked, lots of folks who believe that with all their hearts were committing sin and not repentant.

I know I have a lot of sinners in my congregation. I even have a few that are unrepentant. I don’t know of any who declare that they are unrepentant. Again, I don’t know the details of the Virginia situation, but I can imagine that perhaps this person who wanted to join thought his practice of homosexuality was perfectly compatible with Christian practice and thus in no need of repentance. I suppose one might argue that something can be “incompatible with Christian practice” and not be a sin – after all, the Discipline doesn’t come right out and say that it’s a sin. If someone comes to join my congregation and says, “I confess Jesus as my lord and savior, but I intend to keep practicing adultery/gossip/malice/etc. ” I would have to think membership to be inappropriate and that they don’t understand what the means by confessing Jesus as lord.

How can a church minister to alcoholics, drug addicts or the imprisoned but reject homosexuals? How can a church justify accepting one group of sins as acceptable,
or at least redeemable, but not another? How can we turn our backs on someone who seeks fellowship with other Christians?
I was taught that the church is the exact place where sinners should be; the church was the one place where we are accepted. When the church turns away sinners,
they find solace where ever they can. Where does that leave them? Where does that leave us?

So does Woodrick agree with the Discipline that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian practice”? He certainly seems to take the position that it’s sinful. I suppose Woodrick’s practice of taking in members contains something like, “Today we welcome X into church membership. He/She is a practicing drunkard/liar/usurer/homosexual and is currently unrepentant. We will therefore do all in our power to help him/her discover the destructiveness of this practice and lead him/her to repentance.”
My take on the main fault lines in the church are that they are different than what Woodrick identifies. On one side are those who think homosexual practice is sinful and to be repented of. On the other are those who think homosexual practice is perfectly acceptable, needing no repentance. Although, as I’ve said, I know many who take each position, I don’t know anyone (till now) who thinks the best way to pursue the first position is to treat the second as perfectly acceptable. I teach that one of the signs of a healthy church is to have obvious sinners in attendance. I also teach, however, that the transition to membership is a change that indicates repentance and faith. Perfection? By no means. That comes later. I also teach my people that we need to be in ministry with all people – whether thy’re easy or hard to work with, whether their sins are social acceptable (each community seems to have its pet sins that it rationalizes) or not. But I also tell people that we will love them and minister grace to them even if they never become members.
I suppose it’s possible this Virginia pastor had been teaching that membership in his church was necessary either for salvation or to be a recipient of ministry, leading the rejected man to think he could receive either no other way. In such a case I can understand why he was relieved from duty, though the issue should have been heresy, not mere insubordination.

Understand, I’m not condoning this man’s lifestyle. However, I know I’m not worthy of Christ’s saving grace. I’ve seen the evil in my soul. I wrestle with it every, single
day. I rationalize my behavior every, single day. I’m sure there are things in my life I don’t consider sin, but God does. I dread the day when the section in the Book
of Life devoted to me stands open. I am dropping my rock and silently slipping away.
Yet, despite how sorry I am, Christ accepts me. He longs for me, and He never rejects me. If Christ accepts my sorry soul, how can He not accept this man in
Virginia? How can I not accept him? If God can accept this man as he is, with all his imperfections and shortcomings, how can we not accept him? He’s good enough
for God, but not good enough for us?

If membership were coterminous with salvation or grace, I might side with Woodrick here, but I don’t imagine that people have to be members of the church to receive or experience grace or to be saved. Whether Christ “accepts” the man in Virginia, I don’t know. Since I’m not a universalist, I don’t believe everyone will be saved. Some people – even church members (even pastors!) – may persist in sin in such a way that it constitutes a rejection of Christ.
Why does Woodrick need to “drop his rock?” Why is he even carrying a rock? Or does he assume that the identification of sin as sin – and that in a particular life – is an evil to be repented of? Are all membership standards to be rejected? Are United Methodists no longer a disciplined people? (Or does being “disciplined” simply mean we have a large book full of instructions and rules for the way we do things?)

Not long ago, our Sunday school class discussed the
“worst” sin. Have we just committed it?

Which sin is that? Having standards for membership? Being disciplined? Identifying sin as sin? Thinking that church membership is necessary for receiving God’s grace and being saved? Though there are likely some out there, I don’t know any UM pastors who think homosexual practice is the worst sin. I have heard of some who think saying – and acting on the belief – that it is might be the worst sin.