The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

 Much has been written. I believe there are three key points for me. The UMC allows us to be an effective local expression of a genuinely global, ecumenical, apostolic, missional Church.  The UMC allows us the room to try new ways of adapting to our constantly changing social and cultural context. It allows us the space to disagree for the sake of loving our neighbors, particularly those who have been despised and rejected. It allows us the freedom to make mistakes, grow in knowledge, and be reconciled to one another.  Remaining in the UMC is an expression of fidelity to those who over decades and indeed centuries have been faithful to us, providing material support, intellectual encouragement, spiritual sustenance, and prayer for our well-being and our journey in faith.  In the New Testament we learn that the first local churches, the first Christian congregations, were formed by the apostles as part of their mission to "go and make disciples of all nations, ba...

Several times in the last few weeks I’ve had conversations with people who are concerned about guard rails. They worry that if the United Methodist Church should allow same-sex marriage, then in the end it will essentially allow anything. They worry that there will be no guardrails to guide human sexual behavior and limit different forms of human sexual relations. The argument is based on a fundamental misconception that God's law, enforced by the Church, is the source of human morality. Without a Divine legislator, judge, and executioner humanity will collapse into a chaos of sinful behavior.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  The reality, as attested by scripture, is that God's law is nearly worthless in keeping people on the straight and narrow. On the other hand the witness of history is that human societies self-regulate rather well, and are able to create structures of mutual care, guardrails if you will, that have allowed these societies to steadily progress ...

Absent self-representation by LBGTQ+ persons there is no Christian knowledge of human sexuality. There is a modernist fiction that you can obtain an objective knowledge of what it means to be human without actually listening to the subjective self-representation of actual humans. This is particularly true among Christians who believe that with the supposedly objective facts about humans revealed by their Creator in scripture, reasonably assessed and presented, one knows all one needs to know about the basic aspects of their humanity.  In reality all true knowledge of humanity is rooted in an understanding of the subjective experiences of being human. And this is particularly true with the kind of knowledge obtained through God's Word. Enlightenment philosophers sought a means to obtain true knowledge of the world, which they believed was obtained through objectivity.  They recognized the individuals would have a subjective view and experience. So to overcome individual subject...

Doctrine is the shadow cast by the light of Christ as it falls across a culture. It is an indicator but not a manifestation of the nature of that light. I was confirmed as a member of the Methodist Church in 5th grade. My instruction came from an old fashioned fire breathing Texas pastor amd I confess I remember little of the doctrinal content. I said my vows at age 10 and became a full member of the Methodist Church. If It had been 30 years earlier there would not have been a confirmation class at all - just stand up at the revival like my parents had and give your life to Jesus. That was the normal process of catechism until the middle of the 20th century.   Less than 20 years after being confirmed I was examined by the North Texas Annual Conference BOM and went on to become a pastor in the now United Methodist Church. I don't recall the much about the process, but satisfying the BOM with regard to the orthodoxy of beliefs was far easier than satisfying Schubert Ogden and John De...

A couple of three years ago at a conference I was sitting at lunch with a group of scholars, missiologists I respect. They were generally more conservative than I am, and so when the topic of same-sex marriage came up I decided to be more an observer than participant.  Speaking of his church members, one said, “they don’t want to live in a world where men marry men.”  And they all nodded. These scholars speak other languages fluently. They have lived years in other cultural settings. They read the Bible and are dedicated to following Jesus. They teach students of many races and many have married into other cultures and ethnicities. They are themselves Latino and African American and  Asian as well as White American, men and women. They cannot be easily dismissed as bigots.  But they can be located in a global evangelical meta-culture which, to cite Clifford Geertz, creates a structuring of human experience that, being perceived of as uniquely real, offers a deep sen...

Is marriage between a man and a woman an essential part of God’s Reign, and thus Christian witness to Jesus Christ as Lord of that Reign?  The most distinctly Christian understanding of marriage comes from Jesus' declaration that, "But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. "  (Luke 20:35)  In the eschatological dimension marriage simply isn't a thing. Marriage is bound to the times and spaces of the current human ordering of creation. The teachers of the law want to show the foolishness of believing in the resurrection. Jesus shows them the folly of taking the things of this world and projecting them into the next.  This explains why Jesus speaks of marriage and divorce only in terms of their inner, relational meaning. These are the principled aspects of human relationships related to God's Reign. The foundations of God‘s reign as taught by Jesus Christ...

The United Methodist church has, over several decades now, spent an excessive amount of time and energy in conflicts over marriage. We need to drop it and move on to witnesses to Jesus Christ and carrying out the ministry of Christ. Part 1 Christians have traditionally believed that God has created an orderly natural world and desires orderly human relationships as well. But does God mandate a particular social order? Too often Christians confuse their human task of ordering the social world with the Divine provision of the principles on which such a human ordering of the social world can take place. But what about the nuclear family consisting of a man and a woman? Is that not a foundational ordering of the social world by God? No. Normal isn't normative. Scripture tells us that the original family consisted of a male and a female, each drawn from the same primal human. "Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion ...