The Main Point: Stay Connected

As its title suggests, this blog is dedicated to the proposition that The United Methodist Church should remain . . . well . . .  united, and that it should do so notwithstanding its members’ continuing disagreement over whether or not “the practice of homosexuality” is “incompatible with Christian teaching,” as the denomination’s Book of Discipline has provided since 1972.

A Wesleyan Way Forward: No Capitulation Required

I will not seek here to persuade one faction or another to relinquish or soften its views on the merits of any doctrinal issue. Nor will I argue that our differences on human sexuality issues are ultimately reconcilable in substance. I can assure you that, after 45 years of acrimonious debate, I have not suddenly discovered the common doctrinal ground upon which all United Methodists can finally stand with integrity when it comes to human sexuality.

That is not to say I have no strong positions that are relevant to the subject, or that I will be shy about stating those positions. Those who know me well can attest that I have a well-developed ego. (Okay, maybe it’s over-developed, and maybe that’s apparent even to those I’ve met only in passing.) Still, I freely acknowledge that I possess neither the theological acumen nor the spiritual insight needed to responsibly argue the merits of just about any conceivable component of “Christian teaching,” let alone those concerning human sexuality.

But here are a few things I am firmly convinced are true, and I will seek here to convince you of the same:

(1) It was not lost on John Wesley that Methodists would never—not in a million years; not ever—agree on all components of “Christian teaching.”

(2) That said, the very furthest thing from Wesley’s mind was that his followers should ever seek to resolve their inevitable doctrinal disagreements by ballot—as if Christian truth (of all things) could be reliably and authoritatively revealed by a show of hands of a bare majority of the relatively few mill-run Methodists (no different from you and me) who gather once every four years as delegates to the General Conference.

(3) On the contrary:

i.  History is clear that Wesley bequeathed to us in creedal form “but a general backbone of theology,”[1] which he “evidently designed . . . to be the briefest and barest possible symbol of expedient doctrines.”[2]

ii.  And history is equally clear that the authors of our Constitution—under the episcopal supervision of none other than Francis Asbury himself—deliberately and firmly placed Methodist doctrine “beyond the reach of the . . . General Conference,”[3] including by adopting the “Restrictive Rules,” the announced purpose of which was precisely to ensure “that the doctrine, form of government, and general rules,” as received from Wesley, would “be preserved sacred and inviolable.”[4]

How do these principles advance of the cause of preserving unity in The United Methodist Church? I submit that they are indispensable to illuminating a path forward that promises to allow us to remain united both (a) with fidelity to core Wesleyan principles, and (b) without requiring any United Methodists to renounce or submerge their sincerely held doctrinal beliefs.

If we can recover the bedrock principle that we are not empowered to impose our doctrinal perspectives on one another by legislative fiat, then we are freed to rededicate ourselves to the fundamentally Methodist perspective that our inevitably imperfect doctrinal understandings are to be grounded in the first instance on the foundation laid by Wesley, but are otherwise to emerge as living, biographical realities—to be “worked out” in community, as our General Rules indicate—through the day-to-day application of our multi-faceted conferencing processes. As our bishops once wrote, “it has been one of the fundamental aims of Methodism to make all her organizational features instrumental for the development of spiritual life.”[5] Similarly, prominent scholars have recognized that the most distinguishing “marks of Methodism”—namely, “its connectionalism, its discipline, its catholicity, and its itinerancy”—illustrate that “Methodists do doctrine” principally by “embed[ding] fundamental Christian affirmations in practices.”[6]

One time-tested “organizational feature” of Methodism—and perhaps the primary one that ought fully to be re-embraced in service of unity—is the one that has always culminated in reserving exclusively to the clergy members of each annual conference the final responsibility of deciding, on a case-by-case basis, which men and women are suited to being ordained as ministers of the Gospel and appointed to serve United Methodist pulpits. Under a proper reading of our Constitution, our clergy may freely vote their consciences in implementing that process, and the solemn exercise of their independent judgment should not be subject to short-circuiting—in one direction or another—based on the ever-evolving doctrinal perspectives of a bare majority of General Conference delegates.

These Concepts “Cut Both Ways”

This blog will be further guided by the principle, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” And the leading, concrete example of how this principle will operate is as follows:

Dispensing with the unconstitutional fallacy that the General Conference has authority to define United Methodist doctrine means not only that the General Conference is not empowered to issue binding proclamations that the “practice of homosexuality” (or the celebration of same-sex marriages) is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” It likewise means that the General Conference cannot impose any contrary doctrinal perspective on United Methodists either.

Rather, under the Wesleyan system of church governance, all of our clergy members are entirely free to vote their consciences—including as informed by their own understandings of Christian teaching and Methodist doctrine—in determining whether any given candidate should or should not be ordained. If we are truly Methodist in our perspective, then along with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke, all of us (not one faction or another) are charged to be thankful to “God for the whole of this economy,” being “confident in all its parts,” and obliged to trust that God’s “grace and providence” will inform the collective judgments made, on a case-by-case basis, by the bodies to whom the ultimate ordination decision has always been reserved—the elders in full connection of the annual conference in which the candidate seeks to serve.[7]

Notes:

[1] Richard Wheatley, “Methodist Doctrinal Standards,” Methodist Quarterly Review, Vol. LXV (Jan. 1883) (“Wheatley”), 28 (quoting James Monroe Buckley, in Christian Advocate ( Oct. 20, 1881)).

[2] Abel Stevens, History of The Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Vol. II (1867), 209.

[3] John J. Tigert, A Constitutional History of American Episcopal Methodism, 3rd ed. (1908), 324 (emphasis added).

[4] Report of the Committee Relative to Regulating and Perpetuating General Conferences (May 16, 1808), in Journals of the General Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church, Vol. I, 1796-1836 (1855), 82 (emphasis added).

[5] Doctrines and Discipline of The Methodist Episcopal Church (1936), 5 (emphasis added).

[6] Russell E. Richey, Dennis M. Campbell and William B. Lawrence, Marks of Methodism: Theology in Ecclesial Practice (2005), 7-8 (emphasis added). See also Thomas Frank, Polity, Practice, and the Mission of The United Methodist Church (2002), 102 (“what is available for reflection and dialogue is mainly the lived and practiced theology of a denomination’s adherents as they worship and work together in congregations, councils, missions, and manifold other forms of church”) (emphasis added).

[7] These quotes regarding our ages-old clergy-selection process are drawn from the “Explanatory Notes” that Asbury and Coke prepared to annotate the Discipline at the request of the 1796 General Conference.  See The Doctrines and Discipline of The Methodist Episcopal Church in America, with Explanatory Notes by Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury (Philadelphia: Henry Tuckniss Parry Hall, 1798), 66-68.