Or, how we just eviscerated the constitutional authority of the annual conference and barred celibate gay people and even a few “non-practicing, non-homosexuals” from ordination
by Rebekah Miles
April 29, 2019
Special to United Methodist Insight
[This is a very important exposé of what the General Conference of 2019 just did, and the Judicial Council just approved. Full article from UM-Insight.]
With its April 26 ruling, the United Methodist Judicial Council has affirmed key components of the So-Called Traditional Plan, more accurately titled the Oh-So-Very-Radical Plan. Whatever you want to say about the Traditional Plan legislation that will become church law in January 2020, it is anything but traditional in the history of United Methodism and our understanding of the authority of the annual conference. Our new church law, now confirmed by the Judicial Council, eviscerates the fundamental authority of the annual conference that has been in place for over two centuries and that is at the heart of our constitution. On that score, this is a radical change with far-reaching implications for issues having nothing to do with sexuality.
But first, let’s look at the parts that do have to do with sexuality, because those are also unexpectedly radical. We just made our stance on the commissioning, ordination, or consecration of gay and lesbian people at once more strict and more strange. Until now, the church prohibited the commissioning and ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” meaning people who are not only sexually attracted to those of the same gender but who are also sexually active (practicing) and publicly avowing it (self-avowed).
Two bizarre alterations
We have altered that position in two bizarre ways. First, we now prohibit Bishops from commissioning, ordaining, or consecrating “self-avowed homosexuals.” What happened to the word “practicing,” you might ask? That’s a great question with a surprising answer; we dropped the word “practicing” in this legislation. As of January 2020, if you are openly gay and celibate, you can be approved by your Board of Ordained Ministry and even voted into full conference membership by the clergy, but the Bishop will be legally prohibited from ordaining you. And if you are gay, celibate, and already an ordained elder, you could even be elected by your jurisdiction as a Bishop, but it would be illegal for the other Bishops to consecrate you. Let me repeat, you no longer have to be practicing, just self-avowed. Celibacy is not what it used to be!
The United Methodist Church has long insisted that gay and lesbian people are of “sacred worth” and that it was the activity that was the problem, not the person. A friend recently told me, “If celibate ‘homosexuals’ cannot be ordained, then it’s not just ‘practice’ that is ‘incompatible with Christian teaching.’” I have been racking my brain for an honest way to refute his point, but if Bishops are prohibited from ordaining celibate gay candidates, it is no longer possible to make a credible argument that the church’s problem is with the practice not the person.
There’s more. We have redefined our felicitous phrase “self-avowed practicing homosexual” to include anyone “living in a same-sex marriage, domestic partnership or civil union.” This is odd, because in some countries and states two people may be in a legally recognized domestic partnership even though they have never had a romantic or sexual relationship, for example, two celibate heterosexual single mothers who are close friends and share a home and care for their children but not a bed. We now hold the line on ordaining anyone in a domestic partnership, even if that partnership is not in any way sexual. Admittedly, this would not be a common occurrence, but it does illustrate how radical and poorly conceived this new law is.
To summarize our new church law in regards to sexuality, as of January 2020, a gay person does not have to be practicing—but only self-avowed—to be barred from commissioning, ordination, and consecration. And a person does not even have to be gay or in any kind of sexual relationship to be legally considered a “self-avowed practicing homosexual.” Hey, I am not making this stuff up; the authors of the legislation already did that for us.
Only one offense with minimum penalty
Speaking of the many things, including celibacy, that have nothing to do with sex, we can at least take strange comfort in the fact that none of them will trigger mandatory minimum penalties for clergy. We, in the United Methodist Church, have mandated minimum penalties for only one offense: officiating at a same-sex marriage. Your pastor could steal the church’s money, have sex with various and sundry people, or even stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, without triggering a mandatory minimum penalty. But if he agrees to officiate at the wedding of his beloved lesbian daughter, we have made it more difficult for his conference to avoid a clergy trial and have mandated that the conference must suspend him for a year without pay if it is his first offense and take away his ordination credentials if it is his second. God help the pastor who has two gay children … or the progressive pastor with a conscience!
You might be thinking, “Gosh, isn’t it strange that we have never before mandated minimum penalties for any other offenses?” No, it is not strange at all! It has been our tradition and our constitutional guarantee to leave all decisions having to do with clergy character and conference relations to the annual conference, including trials and the assignment of penalties.
This brings us back to the chief reason that the So-Called Traditional Plan is really the Oh-So-Very-Radical Plan. The new laws challenge and weaken the fundamental authority of the annual conference “on all matters relating to the character and conference relations of its clergy” (2016 Book of Discipline, Part I, Division II, Section VI, ¶33, Article II). This fundamental authority of the annual conference dates from the earliest days of American Methodism and was clearly in place before the 1808 Baltimore General Conference when we established a constitutional order; indeed, this authority is embedded in our constitution. With the recent Judicial Council ruling, any General Conference, by simple majority vote, can supersede the historic and constitutional authority of the annual conference. The long-term implications are deeply troubling and go way beyond issues around sexuality.
And there is still more. Until now, the decisions of annual conference court trials could only be appealed to a higher body outside the annual conference in very limited circumstances; those found guilty could appeal on the basis of errors in the process outlined in the Book of Discipline. Now, the church—not just the person found guilty—can appeal if they believe there were serious errors of church law or administration. Again, this weakens the traditional authority of the annual conference to deal with “all matters relating to clergy membership and conference relations,” including church trials. Note that it will apply to any church trials not just those dealing with sexuality.
Of course, until now, most complaints in our church never came to trial because the conference leaders had the authority to handle complaints through a just resolution process. We have now placed greater limits on that process, making it more difficult to find a resolution without going to trial. Moreover, we have mandated the inclusion of the complainant in the resolution process and even insisted that “every effort shall be made to have the complainant(s) agree to the resolution.”
Changed process for all matters
Note that these provisions change the process for complaints about all matters not just those having to do with sexuality and officiating at same-sex marriages. Bishops and District Superintendents tell me that many of the complaints they receive are frivolous; moreover, the complainants in these trivial matters are often embittered people who bear a grudge against the person they are charging; mandating that these people have a greater role in the process is in no one’s interest. Granted, many complaints are not trivial and many complainants are not embittered nitpickers, but we have just altered the process for all complaints and all complainants, limiting the pastoral authority of our leaders to discern the most gracious, wise, and just course in a particular situation.
With these new laws, we have also ensured that we will have more church trials and more convictions with harsh minimum penalties. Granted, the intention of many who supported this legislation was not to increase trials but to deter clergy from officiating at same-sex marriages. In my experience, sincere people of faith, whether progressive or conservative, who are driven by conscience are not usually deterred by personal cost; indeed, they are often emboldened by it. These new provisions will almost certainly result in more clergy taking more risks to create so many church trials that the annual conferences have insufficient human resources to handle them. We do not have enough clergy members to form twenty-five or fifty trial courts in an annual conference. Moreover, I expect that because of the severe mandatory minimum penalties, we will find many retired pastors, progressives and centrists, stepping up so that younger clergy and their families will not suffer financial devastation because of our unjust church law. Then we will see scores of elderly pastors under church trial. It’s like taking a hundred Kris Kringles to court; that’s never going to turn out well!
We would be hard pressed to find any United Methodists who believe that our church and its mission would benefit from lots of church trials and the distressing news stories, pictures, videos, memes, and GIFs that will come with them. This is especially true in U.S. culture where the huge majority of young people already describe Christians as anti-gay (80%), hypocritical (85%), and judgmental (87%).* (Dear God, just think of the snarky gifs and memes our young people will create!)
‘J Con’ no longer about Jesus
Our 18- and 20-year-old daughters have come to Annual, Jurisdictional, and General Conferences with me since they were babies. They had a special name for all of our conferences— “J Con” — short for “Jesus Conference.” No longer. My children and many of their generation now know our conferences not as Jesus conferences, but as judgmental conferences. We will be known as the church of more trials and harsh penalties, the church of public conflict, rancor, and bitterness.
We can be and do better. But we cannot be better together. It is time for the leaders of our church and its various factions to join together to devise a plan either for division or significant restructure. That is the only way out of our current mess. We may abhor division or restructure, but the alternative is to continue on our current rancorous course which is disastrous for our church and its mission.
And if we cannot put together the votes for a fair division or restructure, then defiance is the only way forward.
Let’s not kid ourselves that any of these groups are going to back down. People on all sides, now even the centrists, are driven to new extremes by conscience and by the disastrous circumstances in which we find ourselves. The actual way forward—not the ideal way we like to imagine—will either be growing conflict, defiance, and internal schism or a fair negotiated division/restructure. I keep thinking of John Kenneth Galbraith’s brutally wise quip, “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” It’s time to embrace the unpalatable.
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*The Barna Group, “A New Generation Expresses Its Skepticism and Frustration With Christianity,” https://www.barna.com/research/a-new-generation-expresses-its-skepticism-and-frustration-with-christianity/
The Rev. Dr. Rebekah Miles is an ordained elder and five time General Conference delegate from the Arkansas Conference and Professor Ethics and Practical Theology at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Some of the points made here about annual conference authority were also made in an open letter to General Conference delegates co-authored by Miles and Kalaba Chali.