Convo will be "opportunity for healing" -- An E-Interview with RMN's Troy Plummer

The Rev. Troy Plummer is executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network, the group that is planning the Hearts on Fire convocation being held Sept. 2-4 at Lake Junakuska. I have previously posted a letter about the convocation distributed by the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and an interview with Mark Tooley who heads up the IRD's UMAction. 

Rev. Plummer is very busy preparing for the conference so I appreciate his willingness to respond to these questions:

IRD refers to Hearts on Fire as a pro-homosexuality rally or jamboree. Do you agree with this description? How would you characterize it?

The Reconciling Ministries Network  affirms God’s love for persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Hearts on Fire is our biennial convocation, our eighth convocation since 1987. We hold them roughly every other year.

We held our convocation once before in the Southeastern Jurisdiction --at Emory University  in 1997 when our theme was "Come to the Table." Other convocations have been held at places like Augsburg College, George Washington University, North Texas State University, and the United Church of Rogers Park in Chicago.

Hearts on Fire will include  worship, Bible study, workshops,  and a bishops' plenary. Saturday the creator of the transformative Disciple Bible Study, Bishop Richard Wilke, will present a keynote address "Listening to the Spirit" based on Acts 15.

The Book of Acts shapes the event with Bible study led by Drs. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan and Karen Oliveto; worship created by Dr. Heather Murray Elkins, Mark Miller and Bon-Jeong Koo; and preaching by Beth Stroud, Bishop Carcaño, Margaret Mallory, and James Preston.

The Rev. Gil Caldwell, co-convener of United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church,  believes Hearts on Fire will be “an opportunity for healing both of the continuing wounds of racism and the wounds of prejudice against gay and lesbian families.”  This is a good description of the event.

Is it true that Hearts on Fire will not honor "Christian virtues such as chastity and faithfulness?"

I hope people read the section of our website that has to do with gay marriage. In my introduction to this resource, I talk about Linda and Elli who got married after 25 years of living together. They came to this decision after studying the Bible for nine months as part of a Disciple Bible Study group in their local United Methodist Church. This graceful revelation  came not from the very real experience of 25 years of love, or the love of four children and eight grandchildren, but from Bible study.

People ask me why we make a "fuss" about gay marriage. I say: The fuss is about living in honesty and loving in honesty. The fuss is about the fidelity and faithfulness of persons of same-sex orientation to their spouse and also to their family of faith. We not only advocate for and celebrate these values, we are asking our church to support their GLBT members in these values.

IRD has also said that "official United Methodist teaching about marriage and sex will NOT be presented at Hearts on Fire, except as a target for ridicule and condemnation."  Will church teachings about marriage be ridiculed at Hearts on Fire?

I hope everyone reads Dr. Tex Sample's essay about marriage on our website. Dr. Sample surveys the Christian teachings about marriage. Then he says this:

"The point is that marriage in the Christian tradition serves a number of ends: procreation, fidelity, sacrament/al, mutual support and companionship, mutual society, and loving companionship. What is striking is that all of these ends can be met by homosexual marriages, even the procreative end when the procreative end is understood as raising children for the Kingdom of God and not primarily as a function of nature [a biological function]. On these grounds, it is appropriate for gay and lesbian Christians to be married in the church, and it is not in violation of Scripture or tradition."

We take very seriously the church's teachings on marriage and study their meaning for our lives.

Are there any other statements in the IRD letter you would like to comment on?

I do not find it helpful to get into the cycle of debating spurious charges. We like to emphasize our positive attitude and positive hope for justice for GLBT people within the church.

We are using space at Lake Junaluska, because it is home. We have been baptized into the United Methodist Church as infants, adolescents, and adults --all of us-- persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities . We have promised to nurture all those who have been baptized in the faith.

We attended church camps like Lake Junaluska as children and youth, and our faith was nurtured there. As a life-long United Methodist who attended church camp each summer, I am delighted to be participating in worship and Bible study at a United Methodist camp. This is our home.

The real question is how the church could break the promise we make to nurture every baptized United Methodist in the faith and still remain faithful to Jesus? The conservative United Methodist  caucus Good News, as well as outside agitators like the Institute on Religion and Democracy and the American Family Association, continue to attempt to stir up inhospitality to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender United Methodists. Such extremism ultimately fosters a climate of exclusion that violates the Gospel and harms the whole church.

These group's target of choice today is Lake Junaluska for faithfully living its mission to serve all United Methodists in continuing to make disciples for Jesus Christ. These groups' purpose is to intimidate those who have faithfully followed both the Gospel and United Methodist policies. The Book of Discipline is quite clear: All persons of The United Methodist Church, regardless to their age, race, gender or sexual orientation, have access to the ministries of our church.

Such attempts to intimidate only serve to illustrate the clear need for our ministries to continue to open hearts, to open minds, and to open doors. In the midst of manufactured controversy, RMN continues to rejoice in the many miracles we have already received in making our convocation possible.  Many good things have come even from this painful and wounding attack on Lake Junaluska and us. We are grateful for notes of support, for generosity, for new-found friends and allies, for Holy Spirit moments of awareness, connection, and grace.

Comments

[Revwilly]

On the issue of homosexual couples raising children....I mentor a child at a local elementary school. One day we were working on a story he had to write about a beautiful fall day. He did not know where to start so I began asking him questions which. One of the questions I asked was, "who would be with you on that day?" He thought for a moment and then his face lit up and he said,"my dad!" Then just as quickly his face fell. You see, he had two moms, one of which was artificially impregnanted. I think all boys deserve to have dad and all girls deserve to have moms. Most of us did and we are glad we did.

The Bible teaches that human beings were created in the image of God - male and female. How can a child with two moms or dads come to truly understand the full image of God when the primary carriculm(a parent of the opposite sex) is purpose not present?

The boy I mentor is very confused and troubled. Much of it comes from the confusion he encounters at home.

Homosexual couples raising children is contrary to the nature of God who's image is a reflection of male and female. Heterosexual marriage, among other things, reflects the image of God - male and female. Both are needed in a home.

[Andy B.]

Dean,
I really appreciate that this interview had the same fair, even tone as your previous interview. Once again, thank you for putting these two interviews out there.
Revwilly,
I know a boy who is routinely abused by his father, who also abuses the boy's mother. What would he give for two loving mothers or two loving fathers instead of his disfunctional "traditional" family?
- Andy B.

[Craig Moore]

What is it that Troy Plummer and Dr. Tex don't understand about the Biblical definition of a marriage in Gen.2? Are the words man and woman that hard to comphrehend? It seems very clear and not to complicated, the definition of marriage is between 1 man and 1 woman. I know, I know, I am not as smart as these guys but neither is most of mainstream America. God thing we have you liberals to enlarge and redefine what a marriage is.

[Revwilly]

Andy,
Why would you necessarily put the boy in a gay home? Can't gay people be disfunctional/abusive of children?(not to suggest that all are, just all all heteros are not)I'm talking about the ideal home is one that has a loving father and mother. This is the norm. This is what children NEED. Children can't afford to have us experiment with their lives - neither can society.

Please try to deal with the argument I am making instead of pointing extreme situations.

[John Lomperis]

I don't have time to get into an extended, dead-end back-and-forth, but I do find Plummer's calling the Christian ministry I work for (IRD) "outside agitators" to be quite misguided.

The steering committee for the IRD division that deals with the United Methodist Church is entirely composed of faithful United Methodist clergy and laity. The bulk of our financial support comes from thousands of United Methodists who agree with us. Like it or not, Mark Tooley is an active United Methodist, and like it or not, there really are a lot of people within the denomination who agree with IRD's goals and principles.

Meanwhile, PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that while the top leader of RMN, Troy Plummer, was raised United Methodist, he has left the denomination to be ordained in a small breakaway Catholic denomination?

For the sake of full disclosure, I will share that I have recently been worshipping at two different congregations, one a United Methodist congregation, and the other being a somewhat unique interdenominational church that welcomes the unique perspectives brought by its United Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Mennonite congregaants. Someone else who worships at the latter is the Chief Financial Officer of the United Methodist GBCS. I remain on the membership rolls of my "home" United Methodist church in Missouri.

I would also wonder whether Plummer or anyone else from the RMN has ever criticized the way Soulforce, a group that is not even specificly Christian, let alone United Methodist, forcibly takes over the General Conference floor in attempt to demand that the denomination change it's theology, or if they would not have a problem with more conservative outside groups (say, Operation Rescue) doing the same thing.

Thank you, Rev. Snyder, for being willing to post interviews with "both sides."

[Douglas Asbury]

It is interesting to me that Revwilly calls Andy's illustration an unacceptable one because it is an "extreme situation," when the original illustration he gives of a boy he is mentoring being raised by two moms and expressing the longing to have a dad could also qualify as one. The fact is, though having a loving father and loving mother in the house may be "the ideal" in some platonic sense, the reality is more often than not less than ideal. Furthermore, the boy Revwilly mentors would have expressed the same longing if his mother had divorced his father on account of abuse and kept the child away from him because he had abused the boy; or if his father had been killed in Iraq; or in a variety of other situations that began with what Revwilly calls "the ideal" that are touched by the contingencies of life. In such a case, the boy would have only one mom at home rather than two. Fortunately, God provides this boy not only with a second mom to make his home potentially more stable, but also a caring mentor in Revwilly. Bless you, Revwilly, for your loving service to this boy and your Lord. The degree to which you can help this boy celebrate the positive values of his circumstances - even of having two moms, regardless of your feelings and judgments about that - will help determine whether or not even that "less than ideal" situation can be filled with grace for him.

[Douglas Asbury]

Just to follow up on my own comment, ever since I first read John Stott's "Same-Sex Partnerships? A Christian Perspective" that does not affirm such partnerships, I have had a sense that one thing that provides an unacknowledged undercurrent to this whole discussion of same-sex unions is a feeling that would be put into words something like this: "The church has historically done such a poor job in helping heterosexual persons build and maintain strong, loving marriages that we don't even want to have to begin trying to help LGBT persons build and maintain such relationships. It's just beyond our capabilities. So we must resist efforts to make such relationships acceptable." Of course, Stott didn't say anything like that directly, nor have I heard any other conservative critic of gay marriage say anything like that. But I can't help thinking that the reliance of such critics on the McWhirter and Mattison data on gay couples from the 1980s as a foundation for claiming to show the hopelessness of the possibility of faithfulness between gay partners, as well as other arguments that claim to "prove" gay marriages will never succeed, all have something like this subtext underneath. Even ex-gays rely on such a subtext, claiming they've seen the truth of it in the "gay community."
The fact is (pace Boswell), there's never been an openly gay Christian community supported by the whole church that has been encouraged and empowered to define what a "godly gay sexual expression" looks like. We are now in the formative stages of one, but it is still having to work more defensively against other Christians rather than progressively to have the kinds of conversations and arguments that will be needed to clarify a spirituality and ethic that are authentically gay and Christian in a way the whole Church can affirm. Such a definition will challenge what I am calling the "secular gay ethic" that currently is taken by many to be the "only gay ethic" that exists. That faithful gay Christians have done what we have in this direction so far is testimony to the power of God in people's lives that provides strength and wisdom even to those under siege. But until the whole Church embraces the "new thing" God is doing and seeking to have fulfilled, the controversy will remain focused on issues of the use and misuse of political power and language and personal agendas and will fail to serve the well-being of all God's children, gay or straight. Faith in God is the answer, and "both sides" need more of it, but especially those who lack the vision that God provides, since "nothing is impossible with God."

[Revwilly]

Douglas,
"Nothing is impossible with God." That's what the people in Exodus believe about transforming the lives of gay people.

Beyond that, however, we don't believe homsexual partnerships are right and not for any of the reasons we listed above. We believe that the Bible clearly states it is wrong.

I know you believe that if I/we conservative read the books you have suggested we would see the light of day and agree with you. Some of us have read those books(at least several of them)and we still don't agree with you.

It seems there is a hint of condescension in your posts. I'm probably wrong, but it just seems that way to me.