As Society struggles with accountability and authority, so does The United Methodist Church.
Paper covers Rock, State overrules City
In the past month, a trio of states have had stories come out which have something in common:
- In North Carolina, in response to Charlotte’s passage of an anti-discrimination law against LGBT persons, a special session of the legislature nullified Charlotte’s law and rendered a statewide ban on any non-discrimination law supporting LGBT persons.
- In Alabama, in response to Birmingham’s passage of a higher minimum-wage law, the legislature nullified Birmingham’s law and rendered a statewide ban on raising the minimum wage. Oklahoma passed a similar law in 2014.
- In Oklahoma, in response to Colorado’s legalization of marijuana, the state’s lawsuit was denied review by the Supreme Court, meaning that Oklahoma and Nebraska cannot sue Colorado to stop their neighbor state from legalizing weed.
In all three of these, you have a conflict between local and regional authorities, in two forms:
- Vertical Accountability: In North Carolina and Alabama, something a city wanted for its citizens ended up being banned for all citizens in that state. A city passes a law, and the state trumps it or nullifies it.
- Horizontal Accountability: The third conflict between Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Colorado was between states, which left the law intact. In fact, the efforts against Colorado’s laws have predominantly come from out-of-state efforts and socially-conservative law firms, which did not succeed.
What we see are the rough boundaries of authority and accountability: cities are accountable to the state, but the states are not always accountable to each another.
Limits of Authority and Accountability
The United Methodist Church also struggles with accountability, and conflicts are often about vertical or horizontal accountability.
The basic unit of United Methodism is the annual (regional) conference (¶32, Article II). Clergy hold their membership in, church property deeds list as owner, and bishops are appointed to serve Annual Conferences. ACs meet for yearly gatherings, but their structures including lay and clergy committees, the Cabinet, active ministries, judicial processes, and others.
Within an Annual Conference, there’s both vertical and horizontal accountability. If a clergyperson is charged with a complaint, it is their peers (the District Superintendents) who decide if it is valid to explore. If a clergyperson’s complaint goes to trial, it is their peers that serve on the jury. A Bishop has appointment power only over their assigned Annual Conference, and lay representatives from local churches only have the right to vote on fiscal changes and judicial representation at Annual Conference.
Adaptive Ministry with Accountability
There’s good news, however. In recent years, despite these intense regulations, Annual Conferences have adapted to address systemic injustice in accountability structures. As a key example, both the Baltimore-Washington Conference and the New York Annual Conference have now declared they accept openly LGBTQ candidates for ministry.
This example brings out how our diverse church is structured to handle these types of actions. Like Colorado not being accountable to neighboring states, the Discipline also limits what impact an Annual Conference decision has on other states:
- Because Annual Conferences are accountable to themselves, other Annual Conferences will not be affected by this action or have to follow suit.
- Because clergy hold credentials at the Annual Conference level, Bishops who do not want partnered LGBT clergy serving in their borders can reject their transfers from pro-LGBTQ conferences.
We see that Accountability is kept at the Annual Conference level, which is the United Methodist way. Thus, decisions like Baltimore-Washington and New York do not have a direct effect outside their boundaries, and diversity does not break the United Methodist connection.
The Power away from the People
All is not well on the horizon, however. While a victimless violation like this has limited scope, those with power in The UMC believe all aspects of lay and clergy life should be accountable to them. This is reflected in recent decisions by three clergypersons to write letters across Annual Conference lines to seek to nullify a lay woman’s church membership, and in the heavily traditionalist support of the CUP plan which seeks to remove local authority.
This flies in the face of our tradition. Wesleyan Accountability was originally between peers: members of a band or class knew each other and lived almost next door to each other. Methodist societies were planted in every town so neighbors could be together, and circuits of horseback preachers would cover these patchwork of churches. If accountability needed to take place, it was with ones’s neighbors…or, well, when John Wesley himself when he would come in and strike the unfaithful from the membership rolls.
Accountability has changed and become more institutionalized since then, but the key is this: accountability has clearly defined boundaries. Boundaries that now anti-gay reactions seek to violate in order to strike down LGBTQ persons from serving The United Methodist Church. And to do it, they are willing to violate the stretch Covenant to which they say they uphold to the point of unviability.
Beware Shiny Object Syndrome
Delegates to General Conference ought be wary of such calls to hyper-extend accountability because they are using a particular infraction in order to make it easier to eliminate minority voices.
One of the problems with American efforts to stigmatize and legislate against LGBT persons is that it is never just about them. When North Carolina legislated against transgender persons, they also eliminated the ability of cities to raise the minimum wage–which was not relevant to the discrimination law under discussion, but it achieved a contentious legislative goal in the shadow of the shiny one.
In the same way, current efforts in the UMC to “fix” accountability systems add in other abilities or open up Pandora’s box several times over. The CUP plan inserts non-Wesleyan actions like minimum sentences, forced arbitration, and removing the wall between clergy and lay accountability, all of which are tools those with power can use against clergy, laity, and bishops they disagree with on any issue.
Delegates to General Conference should look beyond the rhetoric to the legislation to make sure they are not also taken for a ride.
Thoughts?
In Alabama and North Carolina, the states essentially said that a city does not have the authority to care for its citizens in ways that do not harm neighboring citizens. In the United Methodist Church, the Powers want to say that an annual conference does not have the authority to be adaptive and more effective in its context.
My hope is that delegates to General Conference are not as fooled as the people of Alabama and North Carolina, and that they retain the spirit, intent, and letter of Wesleyan accountability as a tool for ministry, and not as a weapon against the marginalized.
Thoughts?
Apples and Oranges. Our system of Federalism cannot be compared to our UMC Connectionalism in any meaningful way. Add to that the fact that our elected representatives are accountable to the voters and are expected to represent the voters viewpoints where UMC delegates are not.
Also, people cannot easily leave the United States and reside in another country. On the other hand, they have left the UMC in droves, and the rate of exodus will increase if our church moves away from orthodoxy on the homosexuality issue.
In Christ,
The enemy hates clarity
Given the number of people who show up at, or tune in to watch, Joel Osteen and his ilk, I hardly think that “orthodoxy” is the item driving people into or out of most churches.
But to take your statement seriously for a moment, in parts of the country it is also true that people will continue to leave, and accelerate that pace, if the church decides to double-down on exclusion without offering a more cogent explanation for why.
Patrick, I disagree. Where is the evidence that churches that adhere to the classic christian consensus on heterosexual marriage are shrinking because of that position?
There is plenty of evidence that the progressive viewpoint on homosexual behavior, if adopted either de jure or de facto, causes massive membership losses in churches (see The Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church, Western Jurisdiction of the UMC). There is also plenty of evidence that the orthodox position on homosexual behavior leads to growth-although it is certainly not the only factor-as it is an offshoot of biblical
fidelity. See Assemblies of God, the African Jurisdictions of the UMC.
You call this a “victimless crime.” I find that definitely wrong. Where I serve I have people unwilling to join our local UM church because they fear belonging to a denomination that could affirm homosexuality. The real concern I have is the unknowable number of people who have turned away from faithful United Methodist Churches due to the vitriol of a small liberal minority that causes doubt for those Christians who seek to live according to Scripture and tradition.
The church has been harmed. So often the progressives have claim to be harmed by those in the church who are traditional in their views of marriage. The challenge is that those who favor keeping the Discipline the same have not changed their stance. We have not moved away from the Biblical foundation that our church was built upon. It is the progressives who have moved. Is the progressives who have caused harm. There are victims, and sadly the victims are those individuals who are distracted from the main focus by this debate on homosexuality. I am glad that with our connection we can hold others accountable.
What amazes me is the complete hypocrisy of Baltimore-Washington and New York Annual Conferences leaders who have pledged to uphold the Book of Discipline and then proudly and brashly break their own vows. How is it right to break a vow? I understand views will change with people, but if you cannot keep the covenant relationship by upholding your vows, it should be acceptable and honorable to leave the denomination and find a place where you can live with your conscience.
Mr. Kirk,
From a cradle Methodist who believes that the greatest commandment and covenant is “love Good with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself,” I have found a place where I can live with my conscience. It is without the UMC. Done and done.
I hope I am realistic without being pessimistic; however, I see no way—baring divine intervention—to keep the UMC from splitting asunder over the LGBTQ issue of full inclusion. As long as the Southeastern and African conferences remain in the UMC, General Conference is unlikely to approve/accommodate full inclusion for LGBTQ members, and UMC will split. If, by some miracle, General Conferences approves full inclusion for LGBTQ persons, the UMC will split because the SE and African conferences will not accept the ruling. In either event, we’ll see which churches not only survive but thrive. People will have the choice, hopefully based upon sound reasoning and prayerful considerations to vote with their feet.
One more thing: Attempts to focus the issue of full inclusion for LGBTQs on clergy keeping their vows rather than focussing on the theological rights of LGBTQs are analogous to how many of my brothers and sisters in the South continue to maintain that the Civil War (aka the War of Northern Aggression, the Southern Insurrection, the Late Unpleasantness) was primarily about States’ Rights and not slavery when the only States’ Rights under discussion was slavery. Dissemblance and obfuscation abound.
If ordained clergy were limited to service within their own annual conference, that would be one thing. If a bad decision by a BOOM, a clergy session and a Bishop could be reversed, that would be one thing.
Instead, once ordained, an elder is eligible to serve anywhere in the connection. Instead, once ordained, an elder is guaranteed appointment. As it is, we are approaching a situation in some annual conferences where there are fewer pulpits than full-time, seminary-trained ordained elders expecting an appointment. Adding more persons who will only be able to serve in a very limited number of pulpits (at best) only makes the situation worse.