Several years ago, my wife and I were going out to dinner with another couple in our neighborhood who are members of a very conservative church. I was driving, and the other man was sitting next to me in the front seat, while our wives were together in the back seat. My friend started chuckling about my slow driving - I make it a point to respect the speed limit. I responded to his good-natured comments by saying, "Well, you take the Bible literally, and I take speed limits literally." What I didn't add, although I thought it at the time, was "… and the world would be much safer and happier if we all strictly observed traffic laws, and took the language in the Bible seriously but not literally."
Bible literalism is a key factor in a bitter and very painful crisis that is currently troubling my church, The United Methodist Church. The issue, as you probably already know, is the UMC's stance on human sexuality - specifically the status of its LGBTQ clergy, staff, and members. Since 1972, the UMC "Book of Discipline" (BoD) has included language stating that
"…The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church."
The BoD also contains language forbidding any ordained United Methodist ministers from performing same-sex marriages, and forbidding the celebration of same-sex unions within UMC buildings.
Over the ensuing decades, progressives in the church have essentially adopted one of two strategies with respect to these provisions: (1) Try to amend the BoD to remove them; or (2) Ignore them. Pretend that they are embarrassing typographical errors; quaint vestiges of some bygone era.
Strategy 1 appears to be doomed by arithmetic given the current structure of the church - the conservatives have the votes. United Methodism is truly a world-wide denomination. The votes of our Southern US delegations, when combined with those of the African and Asian delegates, provide a small but very reliable majority at each General Conference.
Our African and Asian delegates come from cultures that are quite rigid about matters of sexuality. One African delegate announced that if he went back home after voting in favor of liberalization of the church's stance, he would be hung. He was not speaking metaphorically. The fact that the only real numerical membership growth in all of Methodism is occurring in Africa and Asia compounds the problem.
Strategy 2 has actually worked pretty well over the years, especially for the more liberal Northern and Western US annual conferences. Because our annual conferences have had quite a bit of leeway in disciplinary matters, those more enlightened segments of Methodism have more or less operated as they please. Our latest uproar was ignited when a Montana annual conference elevated a bishop who is lesbian, married to her partner, and who said that she had officiated at more than 200 same-sex marriages. The conservatives, perhaps understandably under their view of things, considered that to be the last straw.
A "Special General Conference" was called in St. Louis in late February of 2019 to try to figure out a "Way Forward" from the impasse. The Conference considered several plans, but the one that finally was approved by the delegates, The Traditional Plan, slammed the door on any more "big tent" approach to human sexuality. The Plan required annual conferences to examine all candidates for ordination, before they could be ordained, to confirm that they were not "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals". It also established penalties for any UMC clergy-person who performed same-sex marriage ceremonies. The first offense would cost the offender a year's suspension without pay, and a repeat offense would result in permanent expulsion from the clergy.
It is worth noting that the final vote on The Traditional Plan was close - 53% for, 47% against; and the plan would not have passed without the very strong support of the non-US delegates. Estimates are that US delegates voted against the plan by a margin of about 60% opposed to 40% for. Non US delegates voted for the Traditional Plan by an estimated 75% to 25% margin.
It remains to be seen whether The Traditional Plan's vindictive provisions will ever actually go into effect. Just a few days before the Covid-19 Pandemic fastened its strangle-hold on the United States, a group of church leaders, representing all of the factions holding power in Methodism today, met to try to come up with some compromise. The result of their efforts was an agreement called "Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation" (The Protocol), which seems to be a hopeful step forward for the denomination as a whole.
The Protocol must be approved by United Methodism's General Conference before its provisions can apply, and our scheduled 2020 General Conference was a casualty of the Pandemic. We will have to wait until at least the Spring of 2021 to find out whether or not The Protocol will indeed provide "…Grace Through Separation". Essentially though, it provides that the conservative faction of United Methodism in the U.S. will split off and form a new denomination, and that they will receive a $25 million cash payment to help defray the costs of the separation.
All of this sound and fury, dating back for decades, is a clear warning that it is a mistake to base any contemporary policy or law on a literal reading of the Bible. There are two main reasons for this. First, the Biblical words were composed millennia ago in languages that are not in use today. Furthermore, the passages have undergone multiple translations before we read them in our English-language Bibles. We can't be sure exactly what the original writer actually said.
Also, the Bible authors lived in cultures that are dramatically different from our 21st Century life. Even if we believed we have a perfectly accurate translation of the words, the meaning of those words could carry radically different connotations to us as compared to a listener in the 1st Century BC.
United Methodism's conservatives base their position on homosexuality on six or seven verses in the Book of Leviticus, and in the Letters of Paul, sometimes referred to as "The Clobber Passages". The verses are given that name because they are often used as weapons by the conservatives in arguments with more liberal believers.
Take, for example, the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, Chapter 18, verse 22: "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." (New International Version)
Would it change your understanding of this text if you knew that when these words were written in the 1st Century BC, there was no concept of a committed, caring same-sex relationship? The same is true for the early Christians for whom the Apostle Paul was writing. Neither society had any word in their language to describe what we mean today by "homosexual". However, both communities were very familiar with the practice of wealthy men owning young boys as slaves in order to have sexual intercourse with them. Are we perhaps being over-eager to impose our 21st Century mindset on the author of Leviticus 18 and the Apostle Paul? Isn't it far more likely that the Clobber Passages refer to pederasty rather than to homosexuality as we know it today?
Another problem with legislating based on what "… the Bible says", is that the Bible says so many things. We almost inevitably end up picking and choosing passages, based on what seems to be the most compelling or urgent at any given time. The Book of Leviticus contains several dietary prohibitions against eating "… the flesh of the pig", or eating shellfish. Despite these verses, I can assure you that you do not want to be caught at a church supper standing between a hungry Methodist preacher (conservative or progressive) and a plate of barbecued spare ribs. You can also look long and hard without finding a single instance of a UMC Minister losing his or her license to preach for the offense of eating fried Gulf shrimp. What is it about the Clobber Passages that elevates them above all the other prohibitions in Leviticus?
How is it that we can chuckle at the dietary provisions, and never give them a serious thought; but we are willing to destroy the careers of dedicated, courageous men and women because they perform a wedding ceremony joining a couple that some of us do not approve of?
Hopefully, The Protocol will allow us to put all of this turmoil behind us, and to move ahead with our respective lives. I also hope that we will learn to be more thoughtful and humble about applying what "… the Bible says …" to contemporary life.
Thomas R. Borden Waugh, Alabama September 25, 2020
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