There's a Madness in this Methodism

[captainsblog]

As one civil state after another opens its doors in the name of love- from Rhode Island to Minnesota, and New Zealand to France just within the past few weeks- I continue to see them slammed shut in my religious denomination of lifetime attendance and almost 40 years of formal membership.  Best as I can tell, the United Methodist Church stands alone among the ordinarily progessive branches of American Protestantism in continuing to ban the marriage or ordination of its gay members.  Episcopals do it; Presbyterians do it; Unitarians, of course, do it, practically ordaining gay couples who pass by on the street.

Let's do it, Methodists! Let's fall in love!

Or not.

Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Ogletree, a United Methodist clergyman and distinguished scholar of Christian ethics, will be charged and tried in a church trial for officiating at the wedding of his son, Ogletree and Methodists in New Directions (MIND) announced today. Because the wedding, legally performed in New York State, was between two men, Ogletree’s participation in it is barred by church law, which holds that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and explicitly forbids its clergy from performing same-sex marriages or holy union ceremonies. The trial will be the first since a nationwide movement of clergy and lay supporters emerged within the church to publicly defy the ban and to extend their ministries to all couples, gay and straight, on an equal basis.

“I could not with any integrity as a Christian, as United Methodist or as a specialist in Christian social ethics refuse my son’s request to preside at his wedding,” explained Ogletree, who is a retired professor and a past dean of both the Yale Divinity School and Drew Theological Seminary. “Performing Tom and Nick’s wedding was one of the most significant ritual acts of my life as a pastor,” he added, referring to his son, Thomas Rimbey Ogletree, and son-in-law, Nicholas William Haddad.

“That Tom Ogletree – a lifelong faithful Methodist and theologian who wrote a section of the very rule book now being used to prosecute him – could be brought up on charges for officiating at his own son’s wedding shows just how far off course the United Methodist Church has gone from any effort to live up to its slogan ‘open hearts, open minds, open doors,’ to say nothing of following Jesus’s commandment to ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’” said Dr. Dorothee Benz, chair of MIND.

Ogletree’s service to the United Methodist Church (UMC), which dates back to 1952, includes a term served on the UMC’s Episcopal Committee, during which he authored “Our Theological Task,” the section of the UMC’s Book of Discipline that explicates one of the foundational pieces of Weslyan theology. This discussion of the role of scripture, tradition, experience and reason in the life of the church forms one of the key parts of the Discipline, the text that outlines both the UMC’s doctrine and its rules.

“Tom’s actions were quintessentially pastoral,” said Rev. Vicki Flippin, associate pastor of The Church of the Village in Manhattan. “No minister should be required to discriminate against those they are charged to care for.”

The wedding took place on October 20, 2012, and a complaint was filed on October 24 with the bishop of the regional church body that Ogletree is part of, the New York Annual Conference (NYAC). The complaint set in motion a formal disciplinary process that has now resulted in the bishop referring the case to church counsel (the equivalent of a prosecutor) to draw up charges, which are the first step in initiating a church trial.

Missing from that last paragraph is who filed that complaint. But the New York Times reports it: several of his fellow United Methodist clergy, a mere four days after the recognition of this union in the sight of God and of his congregation.

Jesus, fellas, could you at least have waited for the kids to get back from their honeymoon?

Under our denomination's dysfunctional structure, changes in doctrinal position can only come every four years at General Conference, a nationwide (and increasingly worldwide) gathering of so-called United Methodists- United Statesian and African-Asian, but not the more accepting followers of Wesley within its formal church homes in Canada (which welcomes all to sacraments and clergy) or even Wesley's original home of Britain (less affirming but only bans same-sex blessings, not ordination).  Because the right-wing pews of the denomination are growing faster than us filthy liberal Northeasterners, the attempts to change the policy in 2012 were shot down; to my great disappointment, though, at least one pastor from this very area, in whose church I did lay speaking classwork, came out after the vote (see what I did there?) and gloated, in so many words, about how the Southern and African factions saved Jesus from the icky gay people.

I spoke up in church against such twaddle the following Sunday, using, not my words, but those of John the Apostle.

Since then, I've heard of efforts by bishops, congregations and individuals within the church to work within these bounds of slavish thinking. Of hints of a "don't ask don't tell" practical reality coming from the episcopal level; of pledges by whole congregations to not celebrate ANY weddings within their walls until all can be welcomed there; and of movements at the national and conference level to speak up in protest. Our own will be at our Annual Conference's annual conference (named by the Department of Redundancy Department), but I was more visibly touched by the group in the downstate New York Annual Conference, in which Reverend Ogletree will be tried and burned at the stake. Theirs is called MIND- for Methodists in New Directions- and their name and message play on our denomination's professed mission statement of "open minds, open hearts, open doors."

I am not personally affected by these oppressive positions- neither I nor anyone I am related to will be barred from the ministry or the marriage altar on account of them- but I wish my brothers and sisters to do unto our gay and lesbian members and clergy just as they would do unto Jesus. While I may not be affected by it, I did get the stinkin' t-shirt, which I intend to wear proudly to our own sanctuary and, if they'll let me in, to our annual conference's ordination of one of our (very straight but very supportive) members:



And all of God's children said, Amen.