The Rhetoric of An Affirming Non-Ministry

Zachary Groff
March 4, 2019

Last week in St. Louis, representatives of the United Methodist Church from around the world gathered together for a special session of their General Conference. The delegates to the meeting collectively represented over 12 million church members, worldwide.

Called for the purpose of considering a Commission on a Way Forward report, which evaluates the church's official stance on human sexuality (and, by implication, its qualifications for ministry), the General Conference voted to uphold its current standards. Not only does this move maintain the denomination's stand upon God's Word, declaring that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching," but it also represents a setback for the progressive agenda to normalize homosexual practice across the denomination.

This development in a denomination the size of the UMC is remarkable. The General Conference's decision to adopt the so-called Traditional Plan goes against recent trends in Mainline Protestantism (and Evangelicalism). The surprising result of the meeting will go down in history as a moment when the church in the "global South" chose biblical teaching over Western progressivism. Many observers anticipate a fragmentation to occur in coming months/years. As Mark Tooley (President, Institute on Religion and Democracy) wrote this weekend, traditionalists in the church wondered, "How long would their traditional beliefs be tolerated by United Methodists who view support for historical Christian sexual standards as morally equivalent to white supremacy?" Even mainstream news sources like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and network news stations are dedicating attention to the General Conference and its outcome.

Though each of the items in the last paragraph is worthy of deeper exploration on its own, the piece of the 2019 UMC General Conference puzzle that has attracted my attention is the progressive party's use of language (hinted at by Tooley), especially by ordained ministers in the church.

What these men and women have given to us are examples of what I am calling "the rhetoric of an affirming non-ministry." In so doing, I want to intentionally hearken back to eighteenth-century American Presbyterian minister Gilbert Tennant, who blasted his non-revivalistic contemporaries in an infamous sermon entitled The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry.  

Consider some of the progressive UMC delegates' statements regarding the vote to uphold the church's condemnation of homosexual acts:

  • Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe (General Secretary of the General Board of Church and Society) described the decision as "punitive," inflicting "unbearable pain" upon the church. She lamented, "The wound may one day be healed by the grace of God... but the scar left behind will be visible forever." Elsewhere, she is cited as saying, "The United Methodist Church's special General Conference failed Tuesday to love LGBTQIA people, recognize their gifts in the church, maintain our unity in the midst of diversity, and to live out our Gospel mandate to seek justice and pursue peace."
  • A pro-inclusion delegate from Oklahoma fumed, "I am a 32-year-old, and I am one of the youngest delegates here. For a denomination who claims so desperately to want young people in our churches, maybe we need to reevaluate.... This body is not where the disciple making happens. Thank the good Lord, am I right?"
  • One response on Twitter bemoaned the decision, "This is devastating. Above all, the United Methodist Church is supposed to be a place of grace and service, not this bigotry and hate. My heart is broken into a thousand pieces."
  • Rev. Will Green (Associate Pastor, Foundry UMC in Washington) reflected on the decision, "The church had the opportunity to affirm the blessing of same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ people. Delegates could have rid the language that forced me from my home and charted a path for all queer people to fully experience God's grace as United Methodists. But they didn't. The United Methodist Church is today a more exclusionary, judgmental and queer-phobic denomination than it was when I preached Sunday from one of its pulpits. Not only has it not flung open its doors to queer people and those who love them. It also has closed and locked a door that was until this conference just barely cracked."

 

Consider what it is that has evoked such laments and deprecations. The denomination merely - if surprisingly - upheld its traditional stance on homosexual activity, and voted to strengthen its enforcement of standards that were already on the books. The denomination did not introduce a more conservative and fully biblical stance, such as a condemnation of same-sex attraction as inherently sinful.

It is safe to say that the responses listed above are examples of the rhetoric of an unconverted ministry. Voices in other ecclesiastical circles (both Evangelical and Roman Catholic) make similar statements in opposition to biblical standards of sexual ethics. Here are just a few instances:

Share on Facebook SimpleMailto logo
Tags: 
Cultural ethics
denominationalism
ethic
Sexual Ethics