THE AMY DELONG TRIAL: TIME FOR LEADERSHIP IN THE CHURCH

By Dr. Riley Case

Well, United Methodists are in the news again.  It is not because of the good UMs are doing in flood-ravaged areas, or for the numbers of mission teams serving in various places, or for spectacular evangelistic efforts, but for internal conflicts over issues related to marriage and homosexuality. 

Major articles have appeared in Time magazine, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, with many more to come.  This because of the Amy Delong trial in Wisconsin, and because more than 400 pastors in Illinois, Minnesota, New England, and New York have pledged to defy church law and perform gay unions.   In addition the bloggers are carrying on non-stop. 

Articles from the secular press generally favor the gay agenda but the articles on the UMs do carry some helpful information.  In three areas, however, they give some wrong impressions.    

1. The secular media make it sound as though there is strong support for changing the church’s historic stand on celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage.   According to the media, there is “growing pressure” for the UM Church to join other mainline churches in ordaining practicing gays;   “hundreds” of clergy are willing to defy church law; a major battle is looming at the 2012 General Conference.   Despite the publicity, despite the equivocating on the part of the bishops, despite manipulated trials, despite statements from retired bishops and seminary faculty and boards and agencies, the United Methodist Church is not about to change its Biblical stance.   The overwhelming numbers of church members would oppose it.   We need to assure our troubled church members that this is so. 
2. The secular media speak of General Conference 2012 and suggest that the General Conference, the only body in the church that can change the Discipline, will settle the issue of homosexuality for United Methodists.   This is the same mantra that was touted in 1976, in 1980, in 1984, in 1988, in 1992, in 1996, in 2000, in 2004, and in 2008.   It is time to face the reality that whatever happens at General Conference, there will not be peace in the denomination.  There will be talk about civility; but civility will not take place.  There will be talk about some compromise that will make everyone happy, but there is no conceivable compromise that will make everyone happy.   There will be talk about unity around core values, but we seem not to agree what those core values might be.  Does anyone see a hopeful future for United Methodism over this issue?  It needs to be pointed out, and written boldly, that it is not evangelicals who are creating the controversy and the disunity and the lack of civility in the church.  It is not evangelicals who are talking about demonstrations, undermining the Discipline, pledging themselves to ecclesiastical disobedience, and going to extraordinary lengths to obstruct justice.  It is not evangelicals who are breaking covenant and making mockery of church law.   It is not evangelicals at General Conference who break chalices and cover the altar with black and disrupt the conference with demonstrations and rants from bishops. What evangelicals are asking is that since the Church has officially approved and (supposedly) operates with written doctrines, social principles, and covenant relationships, the church therefore should honor and obey these doctrines and principles and relationships. 
3. Some of the press releases give a wrong impression when they speak of those pledging to perform same-sex unions as primarily defying “church authorities,” as if it is the “authorities” (whoever they are) who are the block to loosening standards in regard to sexuality.   The defiance is more serious that simply “defying authorities.”   What is being defied and undermined is the connection itself, including covenant relationships, ordination vows, and our commitment to one another as United Methodists.   The progressive strategy, at least on the part of some, is to wage civil war. The war is not against some outside imposed authority being foisted upon us, but against the very church to which these persons vowed faithfulness.    In other words, some desire to overturn the understandings, the promises,  the ordination vows, and the Discipline, that have made us who we are as United Methodists and replace them with something different, all in the name of some higher good.    The higher good is variously stated: conscience, justice and inclusivity, all of which are defined not by Scripture, tradition, reason, our vows, our doctrine, and our heritage, but by progressive preferences. 

At the trial of Jimmy Creech some years ago the defendant did not offer a defense or even a plea of innocent or guilty.  He rather urged the jury to make a prophetic judgment:  it is not the practice of homosexuality that is incompatible with Christian teaching, but the prohibition against the practice of homosexuality that is incompatible with Christian teaching.   In other words, bring the whole system down by judicial decree. 

Or by any means.   Obfuscate, overload the system to make it inoperative.  If 400 ministers perform same-sex unions the system will blow all circuits and simply cease to function.   If all persons who are judged guilty of performing sex-sex unions are given but a one-day suspension (a resolution of the North Illinoisconference) then the force of our moral stand is trivialized as to make it meaningless.  Challenge all language so that words like practicing, self-avowed, heresy, status, celibacy, faithfulness must be defined in such a legalistic way that they are inoperative.  Why should it be necessary to ask questions about genital contact to ascertain if a person is a practicing homosexual?      Scott Campbell, who was defense for Amy Long, argued that questions about genital contact are not asked of heterosexuals.  Of course not, because “if a woman lives with another man while her husband is still alive” (Romans 7:3) she is an adulteress.   It is that simple.  That is assumed.   One does not have to prove genital contact to make that judgment.  But in the present situation we live under different rules.  Our covenant relationships were never meant to be business contracts that need ten pages of legal language to make them operative.  Our covenant together is based on relationships and relationship language is based on trust.   At the present time trust is in short supply.   

So there is a problem.  A serious problem.   Numbers of United Methodists, both clergy and lay, feel like aliens in their own denomination.   How can we exist in a denomination when some seek to undermine the core values that make us United Methodist and when the covenant relationships we speak of seem to mean nothing?

Is it time for leadership from our bishops?   In our system of church government we have an executive branch (the bishops in this case) and we need to hear from that executive branch, and it needs to be something more than “Let’s stay at the table;” or “We feel your pain,” or “Let’s wait until the next General Conference.”     Even the bishops who personally do not support the teachings of the Discipline in regard to human sexuality (which itself raises questions about how sincere they were when they took their own vows) must realize that if the present strategy of ecclesiastical disobedience and intentional obfuscation continues, the whole system could come crashing down.   To continue down the present road without intervention cannot be good for United Methodism. 

The bishops seem quite capable of strong action when they want to.   They were quite effective in blocking the election of judicial council members in 2008 who voted in favor of Judicial Council Decision 1032.    There have been numbers of instances where bishops (and cabinets and conferences) have taken care of moral problems and loyalty problems without having to hold trials and without public fanfare.      

In 1844 the church was being rent apart by attitudes toward slavery.   The bishops at the time could not work through their own conflicting attitudes about slavery, or, perhaps more accurately, what the church should be doing about a stated position of the Discipline which was being undermined and defied by a part of the church.   In what must be considered as one of the greatest historical “cop-outs” in the history of the church, the bishops encouraged the General Conference to “table” any action for four more years.   But the church had been tabling the issue far too long.  At that same General Conference the church divided.

Let’s pray that history will not repeat itself.