Write GC Legislation, no matter what.
There’s an undercurrent right now that I’m hearing in some United Methodist circles: with much of the energy towards unity, division, or dissolution plans, why bother with legislation? Why bother writing various polity and belief changes when all the oxygen in the room is being sucked up by the unity or division plans?
However, the reality could not be further from this narrative. Progressive and Centrist United Methodists should be crowdsourcing, compiling, proofing and testing legislation to be considered for inclusion in the Book of Discipline 2020.
Because otherwise, they’ll be giving away the farm.
Every Voice should be heard
Every four years, 99% of the polity, beliefs, and practices of The United Methodist Church is up for amendment, adaptation, retention, or deletion. The Book of Discipline is (mostly) written by General Conference, held every four years, the next one in May 2020 in Minneapolis.
General Conference is a legislative body, but not quite like the American Congress. Congress has representatives and senators that write legislation together and then vote it up or down. But General Conferences’ delegates start with legislation submitted long beforehand. Legislation written and submitted by any United Methodist institution, clergy, lay member, annual conference, church conference, etc. And then General Conference is where those different proposals are compared, amended, voted on, and ultimately implemented or discarded.
So you can see that the content of the debate at General Conference is written by…well, anyone—including you! And each petition has to be debated: In our polity, added in 2016, it says that every petition will receive a vote in a legislative committee. Now, that can mean that several petitions are bundled together and voted up or down together, but it still means that your petition must be engaged. So progressive ideals in legislative form have to be read and engaged in the polity process.
In conclusion, you can see if only one side has created content to be debated, then the conversation is stilted and radicalized without the counterpoints to reign the conversation back to a Methodist middle ground. Therefore, progressives and centrists must write legislation to keep General Conference from become more radicalized than it already is. Write legislation by September 18!
The Big Ideas are on Hold
2020 has a big hole in the middle of it. Progressive and Centrist ideas are needed more than ever because 2020 was supposed to be a big year of four major revisions…and only one of them has survived.
- We were supposed to consider a Global Book of Discipline, started in 2012, but that has been put on indefinite hold. The Global Book of Discipline was supposed to be discussed for the first two days of General Conference 2020–and it is in our Discipline to use that time in this way, so unsure how we are getting around that.
- We were supposed to vote on a new hymnal from Discipleship Ministries—that project has been canned and adapted to a different style of production.
- We were supposed to add five new bishops to African central conferences in 2020–unsure how that will work out financially and practically now with plans calling for a moratorium on electing new bishops.
- Finally, the Social Principles revision was published and will be considered by the 2020 General Conference, though there is surely to be Traditionalist-heavy revisions to that revision.
- Bonus fifth one: the 2020 General Conference was to be the last in America for a while as the 2024 was to be held in Manila. That was toasted too. So now it is unknown where we will be going in 2024.
Why did all these big ideas die? We had a lot to look forward to, and the Traditional Plan at General Conference 2019 nuked a lot of it. The uncertainty and acrimony that the Traditionalists soaked The UMC in meant that these multi-year and million dollar initiatives were delayed indefinitely.
So with these institutional voids, Traditionalists will certainly take action to fill up the space. Progressives and Centrists cannot abandon the field, and they should write legislation around these conversations too (particularly the social principles question). Write legislation by September 18!
Anti-gay vehicles for other polity changes
Finally, there’s the problem that if all we are focusing on is unity or division, we forget the role that Wedge Issues play in our national and ecclesial politic.
Wedge Issues are ones that are intended to rally one side to vote in their people. Gay marriage referendums were scheduled the same year as President Bush Jr’s reelection campaign in 2004, and it worked to bring out the Republicans, who then used their majorities to effect many other policy reforms that Republicans were not particularly keen on, and were certainly bad for the country.
In the same way, opposing LGBTQ+ inclusion has been baaaaaaaaaaank for the Traditionalists as they made that the one issue for election of delegates. With those delegates firmly in place, the Voter Guides which are created by the caucus groups gave minimal explanation on all the issues being voted on so that people would just vote in lockstep or refer to the guides before voting on the floor. All caucus groups do it, but the Traditionalists have been particularly effective with Central Conference delegates because their radical ideas gain more legitimacy due to that they are seen as correct on one major issue: LGBTQ+ exclusion. If caucus groups are right on kicking out The Gays, then they must be right on turning seminary support into individual vouchers. Right?
The truth is that wedge issues are useful distractions to effect other legislative changes. Remember in 2019 that LGBTQ inclusion was cited as the reason to vote up legislation that had nothing to do with LGBTQ inclusion: the disaffiliation petition? As it was, the only churches who used the disaffiliation petition legislation to get out of United Methodism were ultra-conservative churches in Mississippi. Not progressives: Traditionalists! Thanks Central Conferences for allowing these churches to stop paying apportionments to support the global church!
While we may think that unity and division will be center stage, we cannot let these distractions keep us from keeping the progressive perspective in all other areas of the church’s polity, beliefs, and practices. Write legislation by September 18!
Call to Arms (that are writing legislation): Protect Women
In 2016, one of the travesties was the exit of United Methodism from a women’s health and reproductive care organization. Along with many other failures to affirm women’s health, it was a rough year for affirming women’s role in the largest American denomination that ordains women.
With the Republican zeitgeist against women in state houses across the country and with the Trump administration in full, active war against women’s bodies and autonomy, you can bet Traditionalists in The United Methodist Church will take full aim at women’s health again in 2020.
We cannot let this incredible denomination that affirms women in ministry and in the the workplace lose ground again because of patriarchy and fragile masculinity masked as “orthodoxy.”
Write legislation by September 18!
Pick up a pen, start writing
In short, a void of progressive legislation robs the conversation of the values to which all legislation ought to be compared: the inclusion of all people, equitable relationships, solidifying gains for minority people groups, and theology informed by science and reason. While Progressives do not have a monopoly on such values, they are often missing from actual legislation, so writing these petitions will bring that into the room to be actually voted against or supported.
I’ll personally be penning multiple petitions to correct, augment, or replace sections of United Methodist polity. I don’t care if they are never considered. They are to be included to name what is important, and I hope you join me in that. Write legislation by September 18!
2020 will be different than any other year as there are more progressives and centrists than ever before (though not a firm majority). We need to give those delegates progressive and centrist proposals to consider on the floor, included by the September 18 deadline and properly translated as part of our work together.
Get those proposals in to assist the delegates with their work! Write legislation by September 18!
Your Turn
Progressives: Be Loud. Take up space. Your voice matters. Your legislation is needed.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing on social media.
Many progressive churches are working on leaving the umc. They just haven’t done it yet. One issue is that annual conferences are taking their time in working with us on the details of financial matters.
Scott, do you identify as a progressive, or by “us” are you referring to traditionalists? My understanding is that far more “traditionalist incompatibilist” churches have left than “progressive incompatibilist.” Thanks in advance for any further clarity you can provide.
Do you have an address to which we may send our legislation?
Here’s the link, Gregory:
http://www.umc.org/contact/2020-general-conference-petition
(Jeremy also linked it to “Write legislation” above — look for semi-bold word in his posts, as those are often links, while the full bold words are just…bold. Jeremy, you might think about tweaking the CSS for HackingX so that links are a different color.)
Helpful! I’ll need to see what color would work best. And darken the text
The current WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines for link colors are explained here:
https://webaim.org/blog/wcag-2-0-and-link-colors/
The quick summary is: you need a lot more contrast, and some other signal such as underlining.
IMHO, messing with the standard Web interface tells your readers that you’re more interested in
looking cool than in communicating, which in turn tells your readers to go somewhere else, but
that may just be my minimalist assembly-language background showing through.
I agree with this. And I hope organizations like Mainstream UMC are preparing progressive and centrist proposals structured to keep the church together. Otherwise, none of the other items you mentioned will matter. Dissolution will destroy the General church boards and agencies where most of the best UMC work is done. A divided UMC will have little voice to articulate Social Principles, however they are revised. Women’s reproductive rights have already fallen by the two sided sword of fundamentalism married with conservative politics. There will be no money for central conferences. Young people won’t even consider joining an organization harboring the Traditionalist Plan. Our seminaries will wilt for lack of students. And the pursuit of modern biblical scholarship will be lost to the Methodist church. Our doors will be closed, our hearts broken, our minds lost in an abyss of fundametalism removing 200 years of progress. Progressive legislation is not just needed, it is a lifeline to saving the Methodist church.
Evidently, this progressivism, hasn’t been so good for the church? Numbers say, across the nation, the big “P” movement is more like 25%, not NEAR what has been reported
Lloyd, permit me to acquaint you, sir, with an alternative reality of the UMC, and why it has bled membership for decades.
“Dissolution will destroy the General church boards and agencies where most of the best UMC work is done.” Not accurate, sir. Most of the best UMC work is, and always has been, done at the local church level. The denizens of the halls of those churches have no clue what the boards and agencies do with their apportionment monies. Frankly, nor do most of their clergy.
“A divided UMC will have little voice to articulate Social Principles, however they are revised.” The Social Principles are, also, little known among the UMC laity – nor considered for guidance in their everyday lives. They represent the bureaucracy talking to itself.
“Women’s reproductive rights [a euphemism for abortion on demand] have already fallen by the two sided sword of fundamentalism married with conservative politics.” The coda to the tune of open abortion rights is a warning that, in the wake of millions of premature deaths of children, God is not mocked.
“There will be no money for central conferences.” Since they tend to be more conservative than the progressive liberals in the UMC, I doubt the One Church Plan folks care about the uneducated, fundamentalists children in Africa.
“Young people won’t even consider joining an organization harboring the Traditionalist Plan.” You generalize without factual evidence, sir.
“Our seminaries will wilt for lack of students. And the pursuit of modern biblical scholarship will be lost to the Methodist church.” Those seminaries already crank out students in a declining job market, and, since I hold the most advanced degree in biblical scholarship granted by a UM seminary (STD), I feel able to declare that serious and intense UMC “modern biblical scholarship” passed away long ago in that venue.
There’s more, but that’s enough for now.
“Our seminaries will wilt for lack of students. And the pursuit of modern biblical scholarship will be lost to the Methodist church.”
“Those seminaries already crank out students in a declining job market, and, since I hold the most advanced degree in biblical scholarship granted by a UM seminary (STD), I feel able to declare that serious and intense UMC “modern biblical scholarship” passed away long ago in that venue.”
That’s an amazing ‘self-own’. Well played. 🙂
I am always bumfuzzled on two accounts:
1. Why, in the eyes of the progressives, is this mess always the traditionalists’ fault simply because we have a different perspective than you do? Become truly inclusive and learn to live with those who think differently than you, even if we are white. We too bear the faint image of God.
2. Given General Conference’s consistent history on responding to the never ending, do or die progressive question about sexuality coupled with conservative Africa’s rise, it should have been no surprise what the outcome of GC2019 would very likely be. Why weren’t progressives prepared for such an outcome?
1. Progressives are not in power and we do not have a majority vote. If the American Congress failed to pass reasonable legislation, that would be the Republicans problem at the moment. Politics matter.
2. Progressives were not surprised. Silent moderates and mega church pastors were. Gc2019 woke up the Centrist beast, but progressives have been in this a long time and knew what was coming.
Joan Wesley, by excluding our queer siblings from equity in all matters, you are doing harm. And our admonition is to do no harm.
Ms. Clewell:
I had no surviving siblings. Had I one, and if that sibling was “queer” and aspired to be a UM clergyperson, I’d tell hir this:
The denomination’s current official stance is to neither marry same-sex couples nor ordain and appoint “queer” clergy. The way to change policy is not to violate it, often flagrantly, but to work through the system as a UM layperson to make changes.
Once a organization’s rules of conduct and belief – any serious organization – are violated, they are rendered irreparably useless. And the fate of the organization is not far behind.
Myself and other progressives I know have always been willing to worship with those who don’t agree with us. We are not the ones who have tried, and in many instances succeeded, to expel those who disagree with us from local churches. We also over the course of some decades have not tried to cause a split in the denomination by forcing out traditionalist churches. But those actions have been taken against progressives by the traditionalists. I am perfectly willing to worship besides those who disagree eith me in a church thst is fully accepting and loving. Are the traditionalists?
Ms. Farley:
You write: “I am perfectly willing to worship besides those who disagree either me in a church that is fully accepting and loving. Are the traditionalists?”
I once pastored one of the three most liberal congregations in Methodism (and now a Reconciling Ministry Network affiliated one). The other congregations where I served were, in today’s language, traditionalists.
All laity were fully accepting and loving, regardless of the sexual preference of those in the pews with whom they sat. I witnessed no exceptions. None, Ms. Farley.
This issue is not about the laity – it is about a group within the clergy.
Ms. Wesley, you ask clear and relevant questions. Permit me to suggest possible answers:
1. It has long been a characteristic of the American Progressive Movement, which began in the 1880’s, to be intolerant of other images of reality. In short, progressives tend to be intellectual snobs who, in their own minds, always know what’s best.
2. It took them time to “prepare for such an outcome”. The requisite critical mass of progressive influence in the UMC has built over time. Seeing the growth edge of the UMC off-shore, the progressives realized it was now or never to exert their influence to shape the future of the denomination, even at the risk of destroying it.
I’m a candidate in a somewhat precarious position. If I write and submit petitions, will my name be attached to them? Would it be wiser to write with fellow seminarians and submit under a group name? Sorry if the answer is obvious.
Not obvious at all. Correct that your name would be attached to them. They each are assigned to an individual. Best bet would be to connect with colleagues in another conference that could submit it. I did that in 2008 when I was a young vulnerable clergyperson.
KY Candidate: Whatever your convictions, I suggest you not fear repercussions if you submit under your own name, and not hide in a group. Cowards are among the hidden, though not all are so.
Biased appointments in the UMC can be based on the theological/ideological concerns of the presiding bishop. That is nothing new.
If your petition is seriously out of alignment with the KY Conference’s presiding elder, you best stand up for your beliefs with eyes wide open.
Jeremy, you said, “The uncertainty and acrimony that the Traditionalists soaked The UMC in meant that these multi-year and million dollar initiatives were delayed indefinitely.” The uncertainty and acrimony was caused by the progressives, I am afraid. They were the ones contending for a change in the position that has been held for decades.
https://canadafreepress.com/article/lgbtq-activists-use-leftist-tactics-to-split-a-church
In order to get their way, the LGBTQAI+ UM clergy are willing to sacrifice the UMC on the altar of their human-sexuality beliefs.
So be it.
Jeremy, I confess that I feel a strong sense of PTSD when I consider writing legislation for the next GC. We write our visions and dreams into legislation, and then we watch them get wadded into balls and thrown in the trash, again and again. I get the motivation to write legislation to have these dreams and visions in the room with those who are waiting to hear a word of hope, but it feels like a futile exercise. Do I hear you saying – it’s worth it?
Jeremy, I shouldn’t be surprised with the biases you fully display, with a blog named “Hacking Christianity.” Those who have to cheat (Hack) rather than coming in the front door, have already lost their license to be heard, especially when the invitation into Christianity is “for all mankind.” I don’t think it’s cute, nor is it funny.
I only bother to respond because of one glaring mis-statement made in over-arching judgement. You are also, just plain wrong.* You are an excellent writer, but your empowered freedom with your biases, is a glaring discredit! “Peace-mongering” could use a lot of help.
*We have finally developed a long needed system for helping with “feeding the poor” in this country. We don’t have the “final answer,” but Food Bank protocol was fostered greatly by George Walker Bush, whether you liked him or not. Today, there’s not another country in the world that compares to this country’s food bank programs, sponsored by GWB.
This should help to clear up your confusion:
“Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it.”
http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html
“We have finally developed a long needed system for helping with “feeding the poor” in this country. We don’t have the “final answer,” but Food Bank protocol was fostered greatly by George Walker Bush, whether you liked him or not. Today, there’s not another country in the world that compares to this country’s food bank programs, sponsored by GWB.”
This seems to be in response to:
“Wedge Issues are ones that are intended to rally one side to vote in their people. Gay marriage referendums were scheduled the same year as President Bush Jr’s reelection campaign in 2004, and it worked to bring out the Republicans, who then used their majorities to effect many other policy reforms that Republicans were not particularly keen on, and were certainly bad for the country.”
I think even a couple of positive policy effects fit into “…many other policy reforms that… were certainly bad for the country.”
[I’m glad David addressed the ‘Hacking’ side of the comment]