But 60% of the church's members would like to lift that ban. That is causing the split.
They plan to meet in a few months to decide whether to remain one church body or two, and possibly more. Since 60% of Methodists are accepting of LGBT people, their group would get to keep the current church title of "United Methodists," but lift the ban. The new group, the homophobes, will be known as "Traditional Methodists." What is "traditional" is keeping the ban.
I found the labeling here confusing as hell. One has to remember that the "existing church" wants to get rid of its homophobia-colored rules - the ban on gay clergy and same-sex marriage - and the "traditional church" wants to hold onto them.
Apparently they have been struggling over this issue for some time and the existing UMC folk are now willing to pay the "traditionalists" to go. Some $25 million dollars, in fact, no small sum. Methodists from around the world will meet in Minneapolis in May to make the final decision. They're hoping for an amicable divorce.
Splits among Christians are nothing new. If you know church history, you will remember when church leaders came to blows over what's known as the filioque controversy. You've got your Father, and you've got your Son, and you've got your Holy Ghost. Ah, yes, but does the Holy Ghost come from just the Father or from the Father and the Son? Filioque = "and the son." May not mean much to you (or much of anybody these days), but at the time, in the 11th Century, the Roman Catholic Church split over it. The boys in charge of things in Rome decided the Holy Ghost came from both the Father and the Son. But another group, centered to the East in what is now Istanbul, and far enough out of reach of the Roman Catholic bureaucrats to exercise a little independent thinking, decided it came from the Father alone. And voilà, you've got your Eastern Orthodox Church (Greek and Russian).
There's no escaping the fact that once you organize yourselves into an institution with others who think like you, you find a need for people to run the show. That makes you like any other bureaucratic institution. What starts out as a group of religious believers ends up a political action group.
America is regularly misunderstood to be a democracy. It is not. That would imply majority rule, and everybody knows we don't work that way. We have an electoral college, for example, and representatives in state capitals and in Washington making decisions for us. Democracy is an aspiration, not a reality. It's the destination, not the journey. And what best describes that journey is the painfully slow but hopefully certain progress in extending civil rights to more and more of the population. Politically, those pushing the extension are called liberals, although that term is fraught with such baggage that increasingly we choose to call them progressives. Those holding out for the status quo are labeled conservatives.
In the days of slavery, progressives advocated abolition; conservatives held out for the status quo. In the days of child labor, progressives advocated child-labor laws; conservatives held out for the status quo. When only men could vote, those advocating extending the right to women were the progressives of the day; the conservatives liked things the way they were.
Religious leaders tend to believe they are doing the work of God, and that means the ideas they come up with are God's ideas. Sometimes he puts those ideas in books, sometimes he talks to you directly and you have a revelation. Once he has made his will known, it tends to get written in stone. You can't have a God who changes his mind all the time. That means religious people are inclined to be conservative. Progressive believers have to make the argument that God's will is ongoing, that he never reveals himself all at once, that you have to go with the flow and change with the times, as God gradually shows you the error of your past ways. Conservatives slap such labels on that method of dealing with doctrine as "cafeteria Catholicism" - picking and choosing doctrinal beliefs that suit you at any given time.
Go back in history and you find it filled with this same struggle the Methodists are currently struggling with. You need money to build St. Peter's? How about selling indulgences, promises to forgive sins you haven't even committed yet for a few coins. It works. That majestic glorious building gets built and becomes the head church of the Vatican. But progressives, like Luther and others, find the whole idea stinks to heaven and voilà, (a second time) you got your Catholics here and you got your Protestants there.
The problem always centers on the speed of change. Today the "traditionalists" (another name for "conservatives") in the Methodist Church want to hold onto the practice of excluding gay people from the inner workings of the church, even though the majority of its members are pressing for change. You can still call yourself a child of God, but you can't be a leader, and you can't exercise your civil right to marry the partner of your choice unless they are of the opposite sex. That's the "traditional" way, you see.
Remember when the Baptists had this problem? Back in slavery days, the majority of its members decided it was against the will of God and they wanted the Baptist Church to take an official stand against it. Which they did. And sure as the sun rises in the East, a significant minority of their members broke away. "Traditionalists," you could call them, who wanted to go on holding slaves. And here now we have a third voilà - otherwise known as the Southern Baptist Convention. *
The Southern Baptists have come a long way since then. They used to be known for their advocacy of allowing each individual congregation to make its own decisions; today they make many more demands on the beliefs of their faithful. But at least they are now open to black people living with not only full civil rights in the larger community, but they allow them to have leadership roles within the church body. Times change. Conservatives too progress.
It would be nice if the Baptists could look back on their history and not find that stain, when "conservatives" held out for what all decent people today recognize as the insidious evil of racism. But there it is. Full-fledged racism is part and parcel of Baptist Church history.
In the Lutheran Church there are three main subdivisions. There is a relatively progressive wing known as the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and a more conservative bunch known as The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. Then there's the arch conservatives who call themselves the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. The more conservative you get, the more homophobic. Once it was filioque; once it was slavery. Today it is homophobia that divides not just the main Protestant denominations into progressives and conservatives; it's not just the Methodists, although they're in the limelight at the moment.
I was raised a Baptist but became a Lutheran when I reached adulthood. I also had a job as church organist in the Methodist Church in my home town. I have a close connection with all three denominations, in other words. I no longer share any of their doctrinal beliefs, but although I've left the church my respect for these folks remains in tact. They were the good people of my youth. They taught me right from wrong. They modeled, many of them, what I should do with my life, once I went out into the world. I wish I could push a button and make them all progressive overnight. I wish I didn't find myself cracking jokes like I did with friends over dinner last night?
Q: What church do you go to?
A: Methodist
Q: Homophobe Synod?
A: No, United Methodist.
But Rome wasn't built in a day.
And I still haven't got a clue whether the Holy Ghost came from the Father alone, or from the Son, as well.
I just know that we are free to join any of these organizations. And equally free to join none of them.
And that's real progress.
* Protestants have a habit of naming themselves after meetings: the breakaway Baptists, rather than call themselves the Southern Baptist Church or some such, call themselves the Southern Baptist Convention. Another word for an assembly of clergy, and sometimes lay people as well, is synod, as in Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.]
The photo above is of La Mesa Methodist Church in La Mesa, California, a church chosen at random. I have no idea how its members feel about the upcoming vote. I just wanted a picture of a Methodist Church.
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