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"The UMC is contradictory in its policies
concerning LGBTQ worshippers. While it
states that we have and are of the same
sacred worth as heterosexuals, and that
it is committed to the ministry of all people
regardless of gender identity and sexual
orientation, the church also views
queer sexualities as sinful."
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The United Methodist Church is in the need of prayer. And, one that emphasizes full inclusion of all its parishioners.
At General Conference this month in Portland the struggle to move
the church’s moral compass against its anti-LGBTQ policies was
courageously demonstrated when over 100 United Methodist Church(UMC)
ministers and faith leaders came out to their churches - with Rev. Jay
Williams of Union United Methodist Church in Boston’s South End as one
of them.
While these ministers and faith leaders undoubtedly moved the hearts of many the church’s policies remain unmoved.
In 2016 to still be fighting for LGBTQ full inclusion puts the church in question rather than its LGBTQ parishioners.
And the UMC’s history of struggle on this issue clearly illustrates the defiant will for LGBTQ inclusion.
For example, in 2013, the Reverend Frank Schaefer, pastor at Zion
United Methodist Church of Iona in Pennsylvania, was forced to stand
trial for officiating his son’s 2007 same-sex nuptials.
“I love him so much and didn't want to deny him that joy. I had to follow my heart,” Schaefer told the New York Daily News.
The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the Methodist Church, however,
wanted to drill home to Schaefer and his allies that he — irrespective
of familial love or Christian belief — blatantly and willfully violated
the church's law book, the Book of Discipline, prohibiting same-sex
marriages.
Sadly, little has changed in the UMC on this issue since the
well-publicized trial of Reverend Jimmy Creech in Nebraska. In 1998 the
Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church ruled that Creech, a
heterosexual ally, violated church law by blessing the union of two
lesbians. Following the Judicial Council’s ruling, Creech’s contract as
pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Omaha was terminated.
The following year, Creech was in the hot seat again for blessing the
Holy Union of two gay men.
For these acts of ecclesiastical disobedience, that the jury felt was
of biblical proportions, Creech was defrocked and lost his ministerial
credentials. However many conservative United Methodist clerics felt
Creech got off easy and believed that a harsher decision, banishment
from the church, should have been rendered.
When asked by The Advocate that year why he continued to marry same-sex
couples while knowing the church’s position, Creech rightly stated the
following: “A cultural prejudice... has been institutionalized in the
church. The position of the church is wrong, it’s unjust. It’s
discriminatory. It isolates a part of our population, part of the
brothers and sisters of the human family. It denies their humanity,
considers their own humanity to be somewhat unnatural or immoral or
sinful.”
The UMC is contradictory in its policies concerning LGBTQ worshippers.
While it states that we have and are of the same sacred worth as
heterosexuals, and that it is committed to the ministry of all people
regardless of gender identity and sexual orientation, the church also
views queer sexualities as sinful. The Book of Discipline states that
sexuality is “God’s good gift to all persons” and that people are
“fully human only when their sexuality is acknowledged and affirmed by
themselves, the church and society.”
However, this rule is not applicable to LGBTQs.
Since the church’s conservative and liberal wings merged in 1968 to
become the UMC, it has implemented stricter positions against us. In
1972, for example, UMC delegates inserted in The Book of Discipline
that as a church body, “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality
and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”
In 1984, the delegates barred from its general conference clerics who
were “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” And in 1996, the UMC gave
the ecclesiastical order that prohibited “ceremonies that celebrate
homosexual unions,” which was affirmed by the Methodists’ high court in
1998. The church also maintains its policy requiring heterosexual
clerics to remain faithful in their marriages, and for both unmarried
heterosexual and homosexual clerics to be celibate.
However, the UMC’s exclusionary language and practices toward LGBTQ
people will not stop those of us who feel called to ministry. If
anything, it confirms our calling that much more. And not all churches
allow homophobic churchgoers or ecclesial powers to stand in the way.
While it is clear that the UMC is not in lockstep with the changing
societal tide toward LGBTQ acceptance, it is also not in lockstep with
its own more progressive arm of "reconciling and inclusive"
congregations. Union United Methodist Church (UUMC), a predominately
African American congregation located in Boston’s South End — once the
epicenter of the city's LGBTQ community — is one of them. And it is the
one institution least expected to be lauded among LGBTQ people of
African descent because of the Black Church's notorious history of
homophobia. But UUMC is a movement, and with its pastor’s recently
coming out it’s an example of full inclusion as a welcoming church
body.
Since June 2011 more than 100 Methodist ministers in New England have
pledged to marry LGBTQ couples in defiance of the denomination’s ban on
same-sex unions. Approximately one out of nine Methodist clerics signed
a statement pledging to open their churches to LGBTQ couples that
stated, “We repent that it has taken us so long to act… We realize that
our church’s discriminatory policies tarnish the witness of the church
to the world, and we are [complicit].’’
Knowing where Methodist clerics in New England stand on same-sex
marriages, Schaefer officiated his son’s nuptials here in Massachusetts.
The public trials of Creech and Schaefer, just fifteen
years apart, were disciplinary means of control to evoke fear
among our allies and us. While UMC’s ultimate objective is to reinforce
ecclesiastical heterosexism, it also keeps the church itself trapped in
its sins of both homophobia and inhospitality. This recent public act
of religious intolerance by the General conference not only feeds into
the existing climate of Religious Freedom Restoration Act bigots in
this society, but it also has LGBTQs constantly questioning their
self-worth and relationship with the church and with God.
“We just love him so much it was an honor to be asked. Had I said no to
him, it would have negated all the affirmations we gave him for all
those years... that we believe you are just as worthy and precious in
God’s sight as anybody else," Schaefer told the Patriot-News of Central
Pennsylvania.
As LGBTQ people we must know that this religious intolerance and
spiritual abuse are antithetical to the social gospel of Jesus Christ:
that all people under God have the same sacred worth — even if the
United Methodist Church doesn't practice it.
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BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, The Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A
native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College
and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a
pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity
School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to
MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Contact the Rev. Monroe and BC.
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 is published every Thursday |
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD |
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield, MBA |
Publisher:
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