The Wrong Underwear

The Austrians have a saying: "There is no bad weather, only the wrong underwear." 

Right now the UMC is wearing the wrong underwear for our current cultural and social climate. The United Methodist Discipline, however diligently tweaked over the last two centuries, is based on a pre-modern ecclesiology rooted in a pre-Christian understandings of the nature of reality, the social order, and the moral order. 

After beginning with a vibrant diversity of congregational structures linked by complex personal ties, the early church inculturated its structure and message into the prevailing Graeco-Roman culture. It became hierarchical in just those ways that mimicked the Roman Empire.

Equally influential from pre-Christian Graeco-Roman culture was an ideal of human personhood, and indeed all creature-hood, governed by unchanging forms and their characteristics.  Each position in the hierarchy was governed by its own form, so everything from inanimate objects up to the popes and emperors was determined by a particular form.

Within this cultural framework morality meant knowing one's place, and a failure to take that place was a moral failure. Because only humans could, through their choices, fail to be "true to form" conformity was a moral imperative. 

While there is no trace of these ideas in the teaching of Jesus, it is not surprising that, given his sensitivity to the surrounding culture, Paul would urge slaves to be good slaves and masters to be good masters and men to be proper men, women to be proper women, and children to be proper children. He was calling each to be true to form within the hierarchy of forms. That they had other moral obligations to one another under Christ's teaching was a given. Part of the complexity of Paul's writing is his dual citizenship in two different cultures.

By the time the Christian church entered the medieval period the vibrant diversity of the New Testament churches had disappeared and concepts of hierarchy and form permeated models of the natural world and placed the human social world firmly in a hierarchy bound by golden chains around God's feet. 

Methodism, rooted in Anglicanism, and in turn rooted in Catholicism has preserved this hierarchical and form-based understanding of reality in its ordering of the church. Even as the Discipline places conferencing at the center of our structure it organizes those conferences into a hierarchy. Leadership is likewise hierarchical. And descriptions of "ministry" proceed to describe in some detail what are the the ideal forms of Bishops, Elders, Deacons and so on, right down to laity. 

Within this hierarchy of forms are also the ideal beliefs (Doctrinal Standards) and behaviors (Social Principles Creed) expected of Christians who are true to form. The former are virtually unchangeable and the latter so entrenched and rooted in the larger American culture that they have shown remarkable consistency. But being purely formal, and in the case of the doctrinal standards purely verbal, it is easy enough to attain conformity without authenticity - something non-creedal churches recognized more than a century ago. 

The result in the UMC is a system of rigid conformity that is largely at odds with what is now a long emerging understanding that human personhood. A Discipline built on once-in-a lifetime vows and no meaningful power to engage in institutional change is medieval; however glossed with apparently democratic processes. 

In the contemporary world, or at least the North Atlantic world, personhood is not fulfilled by conformity to imagined forms, but rather through a quest for individual authenticity. Not surprisingly personal characteristics such as sex, gender and sexuality that were most firmly entrenched in ideal forms become points of conflicts among rising generations of United Methodists who insist, consistent with the emergent culture, that these are not givens but are be to discovered on the path to personal authenticity.  

In equal conflict with a discipline of conformity are claims that Christ calls us to the freedom to engage in this quest for personal authenticity. Efforts to confine that quest through demands for conformity to an ancient system based on pre-Christian cultural norms are thus opposed to the call of Christ.

And finally emergent understandings of community are based not on assent and obedience but continual engagement in the ongoing process of mutual understanding and shared engagement with the world.

In modernity we have begun to realize that chains are chains, however golden.

We Methodists have only ourselves to blame for these inner conflicts and tensions. It is we who, consistent with the revivalism explicit in Wesley's preaching and that of his followers, emphasized personal choice and freedom in Christ. It is we who called people to shake off the bonds of the old ecclesial cultures and find ourselves in Christ. It is we who enshrined personal conscience as a witness of the Spirit in guiding our lives toward life in Christ. It is we who made conferencing central to community.

Wesley asserted his right to defy the structures of Anglicanism, rewrite its liturgies, and revise its articles of religion. Why shouldn't we? On the American frontier Asbury and his fellow Methodists rebelled against the hierarchy of forms that had governed English politics and social structures for centuries. They helped establish a government based on equality and the free and personal choices of its citizens in their quest for three things never considered true to human form before in history: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Why shouldn't we follow in the footsteps of these pioneers? 

Once we learned that their individual conscience counted, and that pursuing it was the ultimate fulfillment of our humanity revealed in Christ, we were bound to question all the ancient forms that defined our personhood. Once we learned that we were all equal, and fully human only when equal, then we were bound to enact that equality more and more broadly. We were bound to overthrow the longstanding hierarchies that had bound us and others to differing ideal forms of behavior. Once we learned that community was built through dialogue rather than obedience we were bound to demand that we be heard. 

We cannot claim the freedom of conscience to defy the old forms in order to freely give our lives to Christ and not claim the freedom of conscience to defy the contemporary remains of those forms to follow Christ where we believe he leads us. 

The true heirs of the Wesleyan revival build on dialogue and loyalty to a shared vision rather than conformity to an entrenched mandate. They build on the interaction among and experiences of those engaged in apostolic ministry rather than the hollow claims of formal hierarchical succession. They build on the freedom of those set free in Christ to seek out new frontiers for witness as they were led by Christ. They build on the freedom of those escaping the formalism of the old European churches to find their true selves in responding fervently to the gospel.

It is now time to incorporate true Christian freedom of conscience into our Discipline. We need to build a system for structuring our ministry together through dialogue rather fear. We do not need harsher and harsher means to enforce community through conformity. We can leave that failed effort to those stuck in ancient, and scripturally irrelevant, forms and hierarchies, ruling as they always have through demands for obedience and the threat of retribution. 

Ours is to seek a new kind of Discipline to form the basis for seeking a common mission, built through dialogue, and based on the value of diversity in the church as the truest manifestation of the breadth of Christ's call to discipleship. The measure of our Discipline must become its capacity to sustain both diversity and dialogue as it accepts the authenticity of many different responses to the call of Christ. Then, and only then, will we have the basis for engaging our world with the gospel.