None of the Above

The UMC has become two different churches bound by a single, inadequate, Discipline. 

We have fundamentally different understandings of the purpose of theology (and not just its content) and fundamentally different ecclesiologies (and not just practices of ministry.)

Those of us who teach theology students to think critically often forget that the modern concept of critical thinking arose for the purpose of political independence. The early modern and Enlightenment political philosophers believed that people would have to think for themselves if they were to be independent political actors. For this reason the ability to think critically was meaningless unless it was coupled with the ability to act independently. 

That would require a change in the political systems of the day because this freedom to act independently was meaningless unless the actor could remain free within the nation/state. The mere freedom to be jailed, or to be exiled for one’s views, is no freedom at all. So there would need to be freedom, at least within critical realms of behavior, to act on one’s conscience. 

This demand for freedom creates the kind of democracy created by the US Constitution, which I’ll call democracy(1). In this democracy those who have a minority opinion still have the right to speak their minds and in some cases act out their beliefs. They can continue in at least some ways to act on their critically thought out convictions without submitting to the will of the majority. They have freedoms within the social context and not merely the freedom to leave the social context. There result is constant negotiation of boundaries between private behavior and the public good; a key characteristic of democracy(1).  

As the Methodist Church very slowly grew into a democratic institution it was resistant to applying this idea of democracy(1) to its own corporate life. Instead it gradually adopted what I’ll call democracy(2). It adopted democratic rule within a voluntary covenant. Unlike democracy(1), in democracy(2) there are no necessary rights to freedom of thought or expression, much less action, for those whose critical thought leads them to disagree. They face (in one way or the other) the demand to conform to the will of the majority or to leave. Structures aren't set up for constant negotiation of boundaries. Legislation takes place in short periods every four years and there are high constraints on change. 

Thus American Methodism in its various forms maintained a tight reign on freedom of thought and action and for much of its early history practiced a form of excommunication of members and clergy who didn’t meet the disciplinary standards. Members could be refused a ticket for Holy Communion, and clergy faced a grueling public annual review by their peers at the Annual Conference.

All of this made little difference so long as the social consensus in America on both orthodox Christian teaching and conventional Christian morality was same as the long-standing ecclesial consensus. As long as church members, preachers and theologians did not feel themselves constrained they had no need to rebel. And so long as they saw the church primarily as a voluntary institution, renewed generation by generation through the explicit choice of those who joined, they had little reason to rebel. They could leave with the same freedom they chose to join.

But things have changed in the last 150 years of so. 

First, beginning in the late 19th century more and more Methodist clergy came up through university settings where they were taught to apply critical thinking to theological and moral issues. Indeed, critical thinking came to be seen as the defining quality of educated clergy. It set them apart from early generations who came up through the course of study. And having been taught to apply this critical thinking as part of their ministerial formation, they justifiably believed that they were being encouraged to preach and act on their conclusions.

Yet critical thinking could be applied in different ways. The origins of critical thought in the Enlightenment questioned established authorities in order to establish freedom from political and religious dogma, and this was largely the tradition of university based seminaries, where pastors-in-training learned to apply critical hermeneutics to scripture and the history of doctrine. But for many American Protestants, including Methodists, the critical eye needed to focus less on traditional Christian dogmas than on the emerging dogmas of modernity, particularly as they challenged the authority of scripture and the creeds. 

With the rise of self-consciously evangelical universities and theological schools critical thought among Protestants, not least Methodists, divided into that which primarily examined traditional sources of authority for theology, and that which primarily examined the Enlightenment assumptions about authority at the root of such critical inquiry. For Evangelicals the purpose of critical thinking became apologetics: the defense of traditional authority. 

The result was two different ways of claiming the value of critical thinking within the Methodist Church: one to question and reform traditional sources of authority and the doctrines and ethics based on them, the other to support tradition and demonstrate its validity. Both, of course, had political ramifications.

A second change came as the Methodist Church gradually transformed from being a voluntary society  and turned into an established church. By the mid-20th century more and more Methodists were middle class and educated. Already they had an educated clergy. Not surprisingly they adopted the established church values of those who preceded them in American society. Members now entered the church as infants through baptism and their membership proceeded through an educational process leading to confirmation; a concept borrowed from the established church models of the Episcopalians and Lutherans in the 1950’s. 

For an increasing number of Methodists the idea of a revival and its emotional hijinks seemed primitive, the commitments it elicited fleeting, and the preaching simplistic and out of touch with the modern world. They no longer expected a visible change of heart or mind prior to real membership in the movement. Modern Methodist Christian education was driven by developmental psychology and the idea that a Christian baptized at birth would never be conscious of any life other than a Christian life. By the late 1970's seminaries like Perkins (where I attended) could sponsor debates on whether a person needed to be born again to be saved rather than simply assume it was so. 

From the standpoint of developmental psychology no 11 or 12 year old could seriously offer a one-time intellectual assent to the questions they are asked when they are confirmed. Their intellects were still forming, as was their moral reasoning. So (as James Fowler theorized) their faith was still developing and could be continued to do so throughout life. (On this view how many children who have been confirmed in the last 70 years had any clear concept of their sexuality at this age?) The “once was lost but now am found” concept of Methodist membership became a relic of an unenlightened era of spirituality better left behind. 

This shift would gradually move from church membership to inhabit the membership of clergy in an annual conference. If a person was called, and had the academic qualifications and competencies to manage a congregation there was little that would actually exclude them from ordination. Previous barriers, such as being a woman, disappeared. And previous reasons for expulsion, such as being divorced and remarried, disappeared as well. Moreover the commitment required for ordination,  typically four years of graduate school and two to four years of additional apprenticeship, meant that by the time a person was ordained other vocational paths were closed, and withdrawal from the process would instantly incur huge student debt. A professional clergy was created to serve a broad minded establishment church with a wide variety of needs in ministry and a tolerance for diversity; not a disciplined volunteer army of evangelists. 

By the time I was ordained an Elder in 1982 virtually the only hindrance to ordination was being a self-avowed homosexual, and even then if you didn’t tell no one asked. Many candidates for annual conference membership expected this barrier to fall in the near future, and took it no more seriously than questions about indebtedness and alcohol and tobacco. United Methodism seemed to be evolving for the better, and many expected it would likewise leave behind the vestiges of its primitive concepts of human sexuality. 

All this meant that for many United Methodists the UMC was becoming a democracy(1) organization in which a right to membership, and indeed a right to join the annual conference as clergy, was assured even if one’s critical reason led one to heterodox conclusions and behaviors. Only behaviors perceived to harm others (and which thus elicited a formal complaint) would be the basis for exclusion. After all, the boundaries between private behavior and the public good must be negotiable in a real democracy(1).

Or so it appeared if you were in that particular church world (the one I grew up in.)

In fact there wasn’t a steady evolution of UMC culture in the 20th century. Rather, hidden cultural divisions among Methodists that had been growing through the 20th century were becoming more acute. While it appeared that the UMC was taking on a broad-minded established church culture there remained a substantial Evangelical force within the church. As importantly the Discipline continued to assume UMC clergy were a tightly disciplined voluntary order. While the UMC grew theologically diverse, and with changes in the 1980’s liturgically and organizationally diverse, the Discipline continued to assume that UM clergy were bound to standards of orthodoxy unchanged for 300 years, and standards of moral behavior perceived to be even more ancient. And thus it made no serious provision for constant negotiation of the social contract between the church, its members, and its clergy. 

In short the culture of much of the UMC in the US was in conflict with its organizational structure. Bishops and boards of ordained ministry (who were on the front lines of the cultural difference) could moderate those conflicts, but without changes in the Discipline they could hardly eliminate them. 

It was inevitable that the UM democracy(2) culture and its structure found in the Discipline would collide with the culture of democracy(1) entrenched in much of the church. And the inability of the organizational structure to allow for an increasingly diverse cultural reality has led us where we are today. The conflict over same sex marriage and ordination is merely the symptom of a much deeper disfunction of an organization whose Discipline can satisfy neither of the two church cultures found in the UMC. 

And now we as a church face a choice. The Traditional Plan essentially forces the culture of the church to conform to its Discipline, rolling back the decades in which the UMC became an established church with a democracy(1) culture and re-establishing it as a democracy(2) organization. The One Church Plan seeks to conform the Discipline to a democracy(1) church culture, effectively ending the status as a democracy(2) organization that dominated its founding and first century.  

Ultimately neither plan will be satisfactory. Each represents a final kludge, a final short term fix to a problem that has emerged for decades and will inevitably result in two different churches with two radically different characters. Either way I hope we’ll all eventually realize that rules never spark revival, nor can hearts be truly warmed by standing next to someone else’s fire, particularly when that fire is across an ocean. Then the ecclesial organization(s) might get back to work supporting the only people who have faithfully done ministry in the midst of all this: the congregations and their clergy.