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Hoosier United Methodist News Archives
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May/June 2004 |
Welcome:
What shall we do to be a UNITED Methodist Church?
During the recent United Methodist General Conference in Pittsburgh, the 100 plus bishops of the church invited all of our 10 million members, both lay and clergy, to "conferencing on key themes in Wesleyan theology and practice, using the best of our pastoral leaders and scholars." This conferencing will be the priority of each bishop.
The bishops' four conferencing themes include: our relation to the earth, sound doctrine and catholic spirit, personal and social holiness and watching out for each other that is being accountable for each other and to the "least of these." These themes will guide the church's discussion - conferencing.
Why? The bishops view the church as being fragmented theologically and the world as being fragmented socially with a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. They seek spiritual and social transformation. They ask us as United Methodists to confess our amnesia of God's mighty acts in history; our anesthesia and numbness in facing the world's suffering, injustice, violence, exploitation and death; our alienation from each other and the church; and our anemia and failure to trust the power of love.
Seeking God's new creation, they say "hope will triumph over cynicism, insecurity and despair." They also link the church's three-decade conflicts over human sexuality saying this conflict adds to our fears, suspicion and cynicism.
The answer: "God is calling us to be a community in which all know their identity as beloved children of God, where all barriers are removed, and where justice enables the lowly to be exalted and the least and the last and the lost to be welcomed with joy at the table in God's cosmic home" - finishing God's creation.
Such high platitudes are as laudable as a spring school commencement address, but four more years of talk along strongly divided theological viewpoints of God's reign will not heal the deepening rifts in this or any other church. The question is: can we live in community with theological diversity? To put it more bluntly, can those under the Wesleyan tent exist together under that tent with two different worldviews, two different theological views? Can there be justice for both heterosexual individuals as well as homosexual individuals when both push their agenda as being the only agenda within the life of the church? In these terms - no. But as we continue to talk, to dialogue, to conference - I believe God's Holy Spirit will draw us closer together as children of the most high God.
One step was taken toward that unity in a healing resolution of unity with delegates proclaiming: "As United Methodists we affirm in covenant with one another, even in the midst of disagreement and reaffirm our commitment to work together for our common mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ throughout the world."
This is but a stop-gap measure. The church continues to be divided but wants to remain united as leaders work towards a more lasting unity. The church continues to lose members as conservatives leave for churches seeming purged of homosexuality and homosexuals leave because they have given up on being tolerant of a church that is intolerant towards them.
Prayerfully, over the next four years we can take radically new steps to be not only tolerant of varying social and theological viewpoints and respectful of the United Methodist covenant discipline, but also able to project an organizational structure that will tolerate our differences.
One way we are united that gives us all hope of unity is in our common belief that Jesus Christ is Lord of life and that God's love surrounds all people.
Daniel R. Gangler, editor
Last updated on May 17, 2004