Love Is on Trial

Bishop Karen Oliveto (left) greets Dixie Brewster (right) prior to the opening of oral arguments before the United Methodist Judicial Council meeting in Newark, N.J.  At rear is the Rev. Keith Boyette, representing Brewster before the council. (Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians 13:13

According to Paul, “Love never ends.” It is eternal.

In a very real sense, it is love which is on trial as the United Methodist Judicial Council meets in Newark, New Jersey, this week.

Technically, it is about a motion made by Dixie Brewster, a laywoman from Milton, Kansas, and passed by the South Central Jurisdiction, which asks the court to declare invalid the election of Karen Oliveto as a Bishop by the Western Jurisdiction.

The contention of Brewster's petition is that since Bishop Oliveto is married to another woman, Robin Ridenour, she must be considered a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” and therefore in violation of the Book of Discipline and ineligible for election as bishop.

In a Washington Post article, Susan Hogan reports that “The two women greeted one another and shook hands before Tuesday’s hearing.” At a press conference after yesterday’s session, Bishop Oliveto was asked why she had sought out Ms. Brewster. She said that if we cannot love one another and show love for one another, then we are not witnessing for Christ.

In his opening presentation, the Rev. Keith Boyette, an ordained elder in the Virginia Conference and an attorney representing the South Central Jurisdiction, argued that  the “nomination, election, consecration, and  assignment of Karen Oliveto as bishop” violates church law and is, therefore, “null, void, and of no effect.”

As evidence that Bishop Oliveto was in fact a “self-avowed practicing homosexual,” Rev. Boyette presented a copy of the marriage license of Bishop Oliveto and her wife, Robin Ridenour.

My colleague Will Green, who is attending the hearing, commented eloquently on the use of the marriage license as evidence against Bishop Oliveto.

“This made me remember a conversation I had with Karen years ago when we were talking about performing same-sex weddings. She told me that out of all the weddings she has ever performed, she has noticed that the only couples who have copies of their marriage license framed and hanging up in their homes are all same-sex couples. This is a reminder that the ministry we have to offer is more valuable and beautiful than we can ever realize. She encouraged me to feel joy in performing weddings of same-sex couples because people who have had to fight and suffer to be able to celebrate their love are people it should be a special honor to minister to. 

“Knowing that Karen & Robin's wedding license was being submitted to the Judicial Council as ‘exhibit 1’ made it clearer than ever that this church treats our love as nothing more than evidence to be used against us.”

This tells you everything you need to know about the case. If love is used as the evidence against Bishop Oliveto, then it is easy to see which side we need to be on.

In conversation with a group of friends, I was talking about the argument brought by Rev. Boyette and the South Central Jurisdiction, that marriage is a romantic relationship and therefore a marriage between two women is evidence that they are “practicing” homosexuals. A recently divorced woman laughed ruefully. “Marriage isn’t always romantic,” she said. “And I can tell you about a celibate marriage.”

We laughed with her, but we also felt her pain.

A marriage license tells us that two people are married. It doesn’t tell us anything about their relationship. We may hope that being married would be much more than a legal contract, but we cannot know that.

My hope for Robin Ridenour and Karen Oliveto, and for every other couple, is that they are head over heels in love with each other. That they love each other deeply, intellectually, spiritually, physically, and emotionally.

And if they are blessed with that kind of love, then it is bizarre beyond words to use it against them.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

LGBTQ Civil Rights (A Lenten Lesson in Law and Grace)

Law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Romans 5:20

Through the mysterious algorithms of Facebook I was reminded of a blog post I wrote six years ago after testifying in favor of Marriage Equality at a State House hearing.

It had been in many ways the perfect Lenten experience.

I was at the State House for almost six hours before it was my turn to testify.

I spoke briefly (but passionately, I hope) about how I believed that God is always calling us forward as Abraham and Sarah were called to leave home and journey toward "the land that I will show you." We are working toward the Kingdom of God and we are impatient with the present because we look for a future that will be more just. And I believe that Marriage Equality is part of a more just future.

While I waited and watched, I had a lot of time to reflect and meditate. (A good Lenten discipline.)

As a Christian it hurts to hear the Bible (and Jesus!) misused to promote an unholy trinity of tradition, fear and ignorance. One woman lamented the fact that until her testimony, no one had mentioned “the sin of sodomy.” She assured us that a same sex couple cannot really teach children about sin because their lives are immersed in sin. She told us that “it grieves our Lord and Savior, and his Blessed Mother in heaven.”

The Bible has over 30,000 verses, and there are, in fact, six brief passages that condemn homosexuality. None of them are in the Gospels. Oddly, they only condemn male homosexuality. Each of the passages is problematic in one way or another. And not one of them is addressed toward a faithful, committed, monogamous same sex relationship. But listening to some of these folks one would think that everything from Genesis to Revelation was written just to condemn homosexuality.

At times I felt like I had fallen into the Bible Study from hell. No wonder that to many people outside the church it looks like Christianity is fundamentally about self-righteousness and condemnation. This was a weaponized Gospel. Devoid of grace. Abounding in judgment. It was painful.

In a post last month I spoke of ours as "a time when so many Christians seem to hate immigrants (and LGBTQ people, and people of color, and poor people) so much more than they love Jesus." That statement drew immediate and fervent response from several traditionalists. Just because they believed something was sinful, they argued, that did not make them haters.

As an intellectual argument, it sounds plausible. But in practice it does not work. Expressing the belief that homosexuality, or "the practice of homosexuality," is sinful is experienced as hateful.

And that night at the State House there were many Christians who seemed to hate gay people a lot more than they loved Jesus.

“But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

There were wonderful grace-filled stories told by parents about their gay children and by children about their gay parents. 

Partners told of their struggles to build a life together. 

A neuro-scientist talked clinically about studies of sexuality and the brain, and then introduced his brother, who is a pediatrician and cannot marry his partner.

Altogether it presented a very vivid illustration of Paul’s argument about law and grace in Romans. The more the traditionalists invoked the Law (Natural and Religious), the more “the trespass multiplied” by them against their sisters and brothers.

The Law was used as a club; in the apparent belief that if they could pound home their point with sufficient force, then they could make same sex relationships go away.

They are against Same Sex Marriage because they are against homosexuality, and they are against homosexuality, at least in part, because they do not believe that the Bible is a living Word. For them it is a dead letter. As Paul argued in his second letter to Corinth, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The dead letter of the Law can be used to wound, but it cannot heal and it cannot bring life.

We need to remind ourselves that we are called to be “ministers of a new covenant, not of letter, but of spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (II Corinthians 3:6)

The ACA Has Achieved Something Significant

Five Year Old James Cook of Cleveland, Ohio

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

“I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Mark 2:1-5, 11-12


Modern readers tend to focus first on the miracle.

They may believe it literally, or they may see it as a metaphor. They may rationalize it, or they may see it pointing toward larger truths about healing and wholeness and forgiveness, they may focus on sin and guilt in relation to physical health.

But there is something else, central to the story, which is easily missed. What impresses Jesus is the four friends carrying the paralytic. “When he saw their faith” he offered the forgiveness that led to healing.

They picked him up and carried him.

When Jesus saw them carrying the man, he called that “faith.”

Over the past eight years of our national debate about the Affordable Care Act, one of the most contentious questions has been about whether or not healthy people have a responsibility to carry those who are ill.

And the good news is that we have made progress.

In September of 2011 CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was moderating a Republican Presidential Candidates debate in Tampa Florida. He posed a hypothetical question to Dr. Ron Paul. If a healthy thirty year old man with a good income chose not to buy health insurance and then became catastrophically ill, what should happen? Paul tried to dodge the question by recalling (incorrectly) that years ago the churches took care of people who had no insurance, but a significant portion of the audience could be heard chanting, “Let him die! Let him die!”

Not our finest moment, though the Ayn Rand crowd must have rejoiced in the triumph of “the virtue of selfishness.”

No one is really happy with the individual mandate requirement of the Affordable Care Act. But without some means of requiring everyone to buy coverage it is impossible to pay for the very popular provisions protecting those with pre-existing conditions and eliminating the lifetime limits on coverage.

The ACA is far from perfect. But it has achieved something significant. It has shifted the terms of the debate.

When we first began discussing the ACA, one of the primary objections was that “we can’t afford it.” In other words, we won’t carry sick people. If people need to be carried they will have to pay for it on their own.

In the initial debates and in subsequent attempts at repeal, those against the ACA did not mention the folks without health insurance. And they did not seem worried that repeal would take away insurance from twenty million people who were previously uninsured and now have health insurance through the ACA.

But now that has shifted.

President Trump’s official position is that the ACA should be repealed and replaced with Health Savings Accounts, which is not really a viable alternative to insurance. But in his public statements he has repeatedly said that we can’t have twenty million people losing health insurance. And other opponents of the ACA have said the same thing.

In the long run we need some version of single payer health insurance like almost all of the developed world. And we could do this using the present Medicare model.

But for now at least we seem to have taken a small step toward.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Finding a Way Forward

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13-14

On Monday the United Methodist Council of Bishops announced the formation of a special “Commission on a Way Forward” and named the thirty-two members they had appointed.

"After three months of diligent and prayerful discernment, we have selected 8 bishops, 11 laity, 11 elders and 2 deacons to serve on the Commission," said Bishop Bruce R. Ough, president of the Council of Bishops. 

Although I am hopeful that the commission really can find a way forward, there are huge problems.

Ough said the commission "is representative of our theological diversity." That is a good thing and I take him at his word that the Council of Bishops has tried to get a fair representation of the spectrum of theological positions within the UMC. But the underlying problem is not just that we have theological differences, though those differences are real. The greater issue is that some of us can accept those differences and others cannot. 

And the commission has only two self-identified LGBT persons.

The Commission's mission, as mandated by the General Conference this spring, is to "bring together persons deeply committed to the future(s) of The United Methodist Church, with an openness to developing new relationships with each other and exploring the potential future(s) of our denomination in light of General Conference and subsequent annual, jurisdictional and central conference actions." 

The language explicitly states that we may be looking at more than one “future.” The commission is not necessarily looking for a united future. And some of those appointed to the commission have already indicated that they are in favor of schism.

The press release states that, “The 2016 General Conference gave a specific mandate to the Council of Bishops to lead The United Methodist Church in discerning and proposing a way forward through the present impasse related to human sexuality and the consequent questions about unity and covenant.”

There are questions about unity and covenant, but by describing our conflict as “related to human sexuality,” the press release makes it sound as if this were an academic discussion of theological perspectives.

A group of “United Methodist Queer Clergy” responded firmly: 

“We demand that the Special Commission on a way Forward named yesterday speak the truth about its business: it is not talking about ‘the present impasse related to human sexuality;’ rather, it is talking about us, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex children of God, and about whether or not the denomination we serve will continue its 44 year discrimination against us. We feel erased and disappeared in the mission statement of the Commission.”

It is not about theology.

It is not about biblical authority.

It is not about doctrine.

It is about human beings.

Will the United Methodist Church continue to exclude LGBTQ persons from full participation in the life of the church? Will we continue to oppress LGBTQ persons? 

We do not have to agree on theology, biblical authority, or doctrine. We do have to agree that no one will be excluded because of who they are.

I will not presume to speak for others. I clearly cannot speak for my LGBTQ colleagues and friends. But I do not believe that every United Methodist pastor should be required to officiate at same sex weddings, or that every United Methodist church should be willing to accept a gay pastor. 

We need to find a way forward. This will not be the final word. We need to keep our eyes on the prize. 

As Bill Coffin said in the closing paragraph of his autobiography, "I am hopeful. By this, I mean that hope, as opposed to cynicism and despair, is the sole precondition for a new and better life. Realism demands pessimism. But hope demands that we take a dark view of the present only because we hold a bright view of the future, and hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible."

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

It Is Time to Move On

Lou Ann Sandstrom and Kathleen Kutschenreuter, at Foundry UMC

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Mark 8:34-38

I am not ashamed of Jesus.

And I am certainly not ashamed of his teaching.

But I am sometimes ashamed of those who claim to follow him.

I participate in several social media groups where United Methodists and others share opinions and insights and discuss issues of faith and practice. Last week on one of those groups someone posted this question:

"Does anyone ever post anything about feeding the hungry, providing healthcare for the poor, and other things that Jesus told us about? It seems that most if not all posts are connected somehow to sexuality issues in the UMC. Much energy is being spent on this issue to the detriment of many other issues the church could address. I agree with the idea of removing the restrictions on clergy and members, but it is as if the orthodoxies are holding the entire church hostage with this issue. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to split."

That’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing because it is true. That is pretty much all we talk about. And it has to stop.

We need to move on.

We have spent too much time and energy on this. 

Unfortunately, we can’t move on until we have resolved this. And the resolution can only go one way. We need to stop the trials. We need to let conferences fulfill their responsibilities in determining the fitness of clergy to serve. We need to remove the discriminatory language in the Book of Discipline.

It’s embarrassing.

One thing that both sides ought to agree on is that this has been a public relations disaster for a very long time. 

Think about it.

In the twenty-first century two people celebrating their love for one another in marriage should not be news. We have marriage equality everywhere in the United State and in most of the civilized world. 

This should not be an issue.

For Christians of conscience, our first concern must be the harm done to LGBTQ persons, especially our youth. And our second concern should be the moral issue. The exclusion of LGBTQ people is just plain wrong.

But beyond all of that, it is hard to think of anything in recent history that has done more damage to Christian faith than the persecution of our LGBTQ siblings.

Among the early casualties in this conflict, is our witness to the nature of God. We cannot even imagine having this discussion in the presence of Paul Tillich or Reinhold Niebuhr, or any of the great twentieth century theologians. By reducing God to a rule giver, we have anthropomorphized the Ground of our Being, Being itself, into a grumpy old man in the sky who is petty and mean, judgmental, and superficial, more concerned with rules than with human beings. How absurd that looks from outside the church. 

This “god” we worship must have a very strange sense of priorities.

Of course, the anthropomorphism would be a problem all by itself. And there are plenty of “Christians” eager to embrace an anthropomorphic vision even without the issues around a rule giving “god,” but our current debate has given that vision a legitimacy within the church that it would not otherwise have had. And it has undermined our attempts to invite those outside the church into the spiritual journey.

A second early casualty is the Bible. In this argument the traditionalists have reduced the Bible to a rule book and led us to focus on some of the worst texts in the Bible, take them completely out of context, misrepresent them, and then give them a literal interpretation. If the goal is to invite folks to explore the biblical witness, does anyone really think that Leviticus is a good place to start?

The result of this misbegotten effort is not to legitimize the stigmatization of LGBTQ folks, but rather to de-legitimize the whole Bible. Because of this conflict there are folks outside of the church, and even some inside, whose only encounter with the biblical word is through those “clobber verses.”

By asking people to accept the literal interpretation of these scattered texts, we encouraged them to judge the whole Bible by the truth or falsehood they found there. The emphasis on the literal interpretation of those verses advanced the public perception that the only right way to read the Bible was to interpret it literally. Not surprisingly, many found the Bible to be untrustworthy. 

The final early casualty of our argument is the church itself. If those outside the church could not trust the Bible, then they also could not trust the church which had told them how these strange texts should be interpreted. 

The demographics tell an important story. 

According to the Pew Forum, in 2001 Americans opposed same sex marriage by more than twenty percentage points, 57% to 35%. In 2016 the numbers are almost exactly reversed. Supporters outnumber opponents 55% to 37%. White mainline Protestants basically mirror the national average, and United Methodists show a majority in support. But among younger Americans, Generation-X and Millennials, the support is even higher, with approximately 70% of Millennials supporting same sex marriage.

Demographically, our exclusion and oppression of LGBTQ people is a ticking time bomb.

Our experience of LGBTQ persons is changing and so are our attitudes. Eventually, even the traditionalists will come around. In the meantime, we continue to harm our LGBTQ friends and neighbors, and we continue to marginalize the church. 

If we want to have a credible voice in an increasingly secular world, we need to do what Christian ethics demands. Our present policies will soon render us irrelevant.