Southern bishop exemplifies episcopal leadership on Junaluska controversy

Everyone who is concerned about the Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center renting space to the Reconciling Ministries Network for a conference should read Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey's letter to his conference.

In his letter Bishop McCleskey (pictured above) of the Western North Carolina Conference  summarizes the policies of the Book of Disciple on  issues having to do with sexual orientation.  He shows that the Lake Junaluska management has not violated the Discipline:  Jimmy Carr, executive director, has consistently interpreted the policies of the Discipline  accurately  (see Carr's statement here), and no denominational, jurisdictional or conference money has been or  is being used to subsidize the conference. Carr even consulted with the General Board of Finance and Administration to make sure he was not violating denominational rules before he accepted the booking. Nothing has happened here inconsistent with the Disciple.

Conversely, the Discipline instructs us to be in ministry with "all people" and says: "We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends." (Paragraph 161.G)

Bishop McCleskey comes to this conclusion: "I believe the decision for the Lake Junaluska Assembly to host this conference, as an expression of our call to Christian hospitality and ministry, is appropriate and in keeping with both the letter and the spirit of the Book of Discipline."

He ends the letter with a stirring episcopal challenge:

I am aware that United Methodists hold strong and diverse opinions about this issue. That does not bother me. What does trouble me is the animosity and mean-spiritedness which persons on each side of the issue have expressed towards those who differ with them. I know personally United Methodists who are strongly opposed to this event and United Methodists who are strongly supportive of it. I know persons on both sides of this issue who love Christ and The United Methodist Church deeply.

I pray for civility in our differences. I pray for grace in our search for unity. I pray for unity in Christ which recognizes our diversity. I pray that the negative energy being expended around this event may somehow be transformed into positive emphasis on our primary mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ. He never called us to agree with each other, but he often admonished us to love one another. Whether we do that, he taught us, is the primary test of our discipleship!

I do have some minor reservations about the bishop's statement that each side in this matter has expressed animosity and mean-spiritedness. I think the Reconciling Clergy's response to the Good News Movement was anything but mean-spirited. However, even though I have not seen it, I am sure some of us who support the Reconciling Ministries Network may have responded less than graciously, so I will not complain too much about the bishop's efforts to be balanced.

All in all, Bishop McCleskey has exercised exemplary episcopal leadership with this letter. He has interpreted the Discipline accurately; he has  supported a church agency that has followed the Discipline, and he has challenged us to end the negativity.

I have already written here and here about the irony of groups that are working to change the Discipline on some issues trying to block other groups  from renting church facilities when they themselves think they should have the right to use them.  The Good News Movement's response to this obvious inconsistency is to say that the difference is that Good News's  views are consistent with Scripture and tradition while the Reconciling Ministries Network's positions are not. This is just another way of saying that conservative advocacy groups should be able to use church facilities because they are right, and we should not be able to because we are wrong.

Our interpretations may be different, but we read the Bible too. We base our thinking on the Bible, and its clear emphasis on inclusion and justice. You may disagree with our interpretation, as we disagree with yours, but you should not support double standards on the basis that yours is the true biblical interpretation and ours is wrong.

This is why these groups have the potential to be  more dangerous than they might appear to be at first glance. They just do not seem to understand that they do not necessarily have the corner on full and absolute truth, so they seem to feel no compunction about stifling or repressing others. If I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am absolutely right and can learn nothing from you, why should I  need to let you have your say, or  a place to meet?

In contrast to Bishop McCleskey's leadership, I am concerned about what other southern bishops  are saying. According to a report from the Institute on Religion and Democracy Bishop  Will Willimon (pictured right)  and others have expressed  “concern and displeasure” about the Reconciling Ministries conference. There is a statement on the North Alabama Conference website saying Bishop Willimon and his  cabinet will be sending a letter to Lake Junaluska urging management "to examine more closely its practices and procedures regarding the groups hosted at its facilities." I hope they make the letter public or issue another statement clarifying the basis for their objections. They should tell us  specifically why they are  displeased.

I am also concerned about the terminology being used by those unhappy with the Reconciling Ministries conference being held at Lake Junaluska. Good News refers to this event as a "pro-homosexuality rally." The Institute for Religion and Democracy does the same thing. It has even taken to calling the conference "a large pro-homosexuality conference," presumably because a large "rally" would seem more threatening than a small one. (See here.) About 400  of us are registered to attend, so I am not sure why the conference qualifies as a large "rally." 

Unfortunately, some others have taken up this inaccurate  terminology. In one of his weekly round-ups, John the Methodist of Locusts and Honey even refers to the event as a "pro-gay demonstration." (It is, of course,  hard to tell when John is trying to yank your chain and when he is serious.)

Most of us who will be attending the conference accept and  celebrate people, and seek to respect their sexual orientations, so we could just as easily be called pro-heterosexuality, I suppose. To call us pro-homosexuality is a strange term, and it is hard to believe it is used with good will. We want acceptance and justice for everyone. 

I have been very moved by the speech Kathryn Johnson made at the Methodist Federation for Social Action's Voices of Faith Conference last April. Entitled "Lest We Lose Sight of Our Vision: Laying Down Our Sword Within the United Methodist Church," the speech challenged us to treat others with whom we disagree with respect. As one example, she says:

Call people by their name. I choose to be called Kathryn, not Kathy. I ask people to respect that and call me Kathryn. If my name is “pro-choice,” others should not call me “pro-abortion.” I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice. Likewise if a group in the UMC chooses to identify themselves as an evangelical renewal group, we should refer to them in that way. We may not believe that their words or behaviors are evangelical or renewing, and we should feel free to hold them accountable, to express our convictions about their actions. I believe we can do so, however, without name calling.

Some will object that each group names itself in way that benefits them, says Roger Conner. Of course they do. So do we! Each of us gets to pick a name that accords with our highest ideals. By calling people by the name they choose, it is also fair game to call on them to live up to that name.

I have been working very hard to follow this basic concept of civility. I hope others might think about doing so as well.

Comments

[Revwilly]

To me the issue is not so much the facility being rented to Reconciling Ministries as it is that they chose Lake Junaluska fulling knowing the reaction it would get. Does love seek to aggrivate?

[Dean Snyder]

Willy

Why do you think RMN fully knew the reaction they would get? When I heard the conference would be there, this reaction never occurred to me. I would be surprised if RMN leadership intentionally set out to aggrivate anybody. They wanted a place to hold their conference that would be attractive to United Methodists, I think.

But even if I am wrong, let me ask you this: When African-Americans worked to integrate Lake Junaluska when it was racially segregated,were they not motivated by love?
Dean

[Revwilly]

In response to your question, I don't know. I do know that RMN and those associated with them like do things which get reactions, like smash communion chalices on the floor of General Conference. Love?

[Dean Snyder]

Are you maybe painting all of us with the same brush?

[Revwilly]

Sometimes it's very easy to do that when only defends the objectional behaviors of their group. True?

[Revwilly]

I guess if you criticize Reconciling Ministries you are alway guilty of intimidation.

[Dean Snyder]

Willy

I can't keep up with you. I don't understand your point. What do you mean by objective behavios and intimidation? I apprecite your thoughts and insight on this blog, so I don't want to miss your point, but I am lost here.
Dean

[Revwilly]

Sorry, I didn't give you a context. Reconciling Ministries has referred to people's criticism of the Junaluska event as a form of intimidation of them and the Junaluska people.

[John]

Unfortunately, some others have taken up this inaccurate terminology. In one of his weekly round-ups, John the Methodist of Locusts and Honey even refers to the event as a "pro-gay demonstration." (It is, of course, hard to tell when John is trying to yank your chain and when he is serious.)

I do my best to make the MBWR as objective and unbiased as possible. It is, however, a huge time hog and so I must write very quickly and never revise. Sometimes I don't even have time to spellcheck. Whenever I have made a mistake or incorrectly understood an post, I am glad to correct it -- hence my tag line at the end, inviting people to suggest corrections.

[Dean Snyder]

John
You do a great job with the round-up. A great job. I was just using your terminology, surely done in haste, as an example of the use of terminology in such a way as to slant a story. I am attend the RMN conference. There will be worship, worships, and fellowship. Why is this conference constantly referred to as a rally or a demonstration? When Good News has its annual conference, do we call it a rally or demonstration? Do we call the Confessing Movement's annual gathering a rally? Actually, I believe Mark Tooley at IRD began calling the RMN conference a rally, and others have picked it up. Mark is good at knowing what terms will inflame his base, and he seems to have few compuncrtions about using the most inflammatory terms possible, but the rest of us should not pick up his terminology without reflecting on its accuracy. It is not fair, and is actually hurtful.
Not that I am suggesting you would do anything intentionally to hurt others. I know you wouldn't.
Dean

[Douglas Asbury]

As much as I appreciate Bishop McCleskey's affirmation of Lake Junaluska's decision to host the RMN conference, I want to comment on his statement that Jesus calls us to love one another. In doing so, I will seek to provide the Good News answer to the good bishop by reference to Robert Gagnon's argument in "The Bible and Homosexual Practice."

Beginning on page 471 Gagnon spends 15 pages with extensive footnotes making the case why the church's affirmation of homosexual practice is NOT a loving response. He ends by saying that, in fact, the church must "love the homosexual by humblyproviding the needed support, comfort, and guidance to encourage the homosexual not to surrender to homosexual passions." In the pages leading up to that conclusion, he emphasizes, among other things, that affirmation of homosexuality "will lead to a larger number of people afflicted with serious health problems and shortened life expectancy," that it "will increase the incidence of pedophilic activity, or at least adult-adolescent same-sex activity," and so on. I don't need to quote all his negative assertions, backed up as they are by corresponding citations. The problem with these arguments is not that they are made but that they accurately reflect the misinformed fears of a majority in society and our church. As long as support for homosexuality is equated with support for the idea of allowing people to engage in irresponsible and destructive patterns of behavior, as the Religious Right is wont to encourage society and the church to do, there will be no development in the church of an approach to homosexuality that is agreeable to all.

The problem is that in spite of all his scholarly erudition, Gagnon has chosen to believe studies that support his preconceived notion that homosexuality is not to be affirmed, and he thereby fails to make a distinction I believe to be crucial between "homosexual persons" and "Christian homosexual persons." The difference is comparable to the difference experienced when we change from talking about "people" to talking about "Christian people," but Gagnon refuses to acknowledge such a difference. To him. all homosexual persons, even those who are Christians, desire to "practice" the same "lifestyle" as he describes and that will lead to the horrors he has catalogued. And Gagnon is not alone. He is just the one who articulates that position in the most extensive manner. Many, if not most, of the people in the church and society believe as he does, and fail to make any distinction, as he also fails.

This is not to say that gay Christians are all agreed as to what a "Christian gay lifestyle" should look like. One needs only compare Carter Heyward's "Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God" with Marvin Ellison's "Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality" or Mel White's more popularly written "Stranger at the Gate" to see some of the variations within the gay Christian community and to know that the meaning of gay sex can, indeed, have profound influence for change on the whole church's understanding of the place of sexual expression in God's plan for humanity. But also, anyone who compares Gagnon's picture of gay sexual expression with any of the three others I mentioned will quickly note the hopefulness and sense of promise of their visions as contrasted with the sense of dread of his.

Ultimately, the point I wish to make here is that Gagnon and others who speak only out of the fear that there is no distinction between "homosexual sex" and "Christian homosexual sex" are bearing false witness against the neighbor, and the last time I looked, that was still listed in the Ten Commandments as a violation of God's redemptive purpose.

One concern that I have beyond those I have so far expressed is that the church has so long and so vigorously invalidated same-sex love relationships that they/we have, like judgmental parents whose negative regard for their child's love partner simply drives the child more firmly into that partner's arms, driven many gay Christians into the gay community that engages in many of the sexual practices Gagnon rightly condemns. At the same time, many who have done so, I believe, are conflicted, since they are disturbed by what they also judge to be inappropriate behavior in which they do not wish to engage, but which they refuse to condemn in their friends, because those friends have offered them the acceptance the church has refused them. I believe that many gay Christians who have sought refuge in the secular gay community would not only welcome attempts by the church to help them craft a responsible and loving idea of what a "gay Christian lifestyle" would look like, but would also seek to offer the possibilities of such a lifestyle to other gay loved ones who have never thought of the church as a place where they themselves might find refuge or love. Instead of leaving sexually-irresponsible gay people to their horrific fate (as the church also seems to have done to sexually-irresponsible straight people), the church could actually begin to reach gay - and perhaps other straight - people with the redeeming love of Christ and guidance in living a godly and fulfilling life.

We gay Christians need to take responsibility for failing to insist that such a distinction as I have described be made in the conversation, simply as a starting point for further dialogue. We also need to call the Right to account for painting us all with the same brush in order to gain an unjust advantage in the debate by playing to the fears of those who are willing to accept a negative portrayal of those they don't know or understand. Our doing so is also a matter of saving the Right from the consequences of their own sin.

I pray that our conversation can begin to be based on truth-telling rather than to continue to involve the bearing of false witness against the neighbor.

Douglas Asbury

[Revwilly]

There is just one main thing wrong with Mr. Asbury's argument - there is no such thing as "Christian homosexual sex". The Bible clearly and exclusively teaching that the only appropriate sexual expression between human beings is that which is within heterosexual marriage.

[John]

I had been under the impression that it had been a pro-gay rally. But now I see that I have been misinformed. Thank you for the correction.

[Dean Snyder]

John
Didn't mean to come on too strong.

Douglas
One of the most amazing thing to watch at Foundry is folk, now that their existence is "allowed," figuring out how to live as followers of Jesus. I myself choose not to say much. As a friend tells me: "First, Christians told us we couldn't be gay. Now, they are trying to tell us how to be gay." But it is an inspiring porcess to watch people move from "Nothing I do can be okay" to "How now should we live?" Clearly you are a part of this process of discernment, and I always appreciate your sharing. Thanks.
Dean

[Douglas Asbury]

I encourage you, Revwilly, and others who assert a similar position to read the Marvin Ellison book I cited, or Eugene Rogers' "Sexuality and the Christian Body," or even Stanley Hauerwas' essay "Gay Friendship: A Thought Experiment in Catholic Moral Theology" in his book "Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified" (also found in Rogers "Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings"). Also read Helmut Thielicke's "The Ethics of Sex" and Lewis B. Smedes' "Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living" under the topic of homosexuality before you make such a blanket statement. Even though the church has traditionally held such a position as you indicate, I and others assert that in developing that position the church was actually recognizing and addressing only same-sex sexual abuse, but that it had no concept of any positive value coming from loving same-sex relationships that involved sexual relations as we understand them. Though throughout history, including the present, evidence can be found that certain cultures have found positive value in some same-sex sexual relationships that are always clearly described and limited, the majority of shapers of Christian tradition have not recognized that, including, for the most part, those who shaped the biblical canon. However, I would also refer you to two books recently published by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.: "Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel" (Continuum, 2005) and "The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament" (Pilgrim Press, 2003). Jennings makes strong cases in both books for the recognition within the canon of at least "homoerotic" relationships, even though there is no direct assertion of the presence of genital same-sex activity in the biblical record. Nevertheless, Jennings points out, for example, that the story of David/Jonathan/Saul has all the markings of a love triangle involving clear erotic elements (as opposed to simple political alliances or friendships as we understand them) without the scriptures seeming to indicate that such relationships between the various men were a cause for concern. So at a minimum the scriptures leave space for same-sex relationships in our day, even if they do not openly describe them as they do relationships between partners of different sexes.

[Hook]

Bishop McCleskey served the SC annual conference before his term in WNC. I can tell you he served well, even-handed--always generous to all sides, modeling the very position he advocates so well in his letter.
I wish we had more Bishops like him.

[the_methotaku]

I just lost all my respect for Will Willimon. The IRD is nasty, and I consider anyone who gets involved with them tainted, politcally and spiritually.

[Dean Snyder]

Dear methotaku
There is no indication Bishop Willimon has had any involvement with IHD. IRD's website reported that Bishop Willimon and his cabinet expressed "concern and displeasure" about the conference being at Junaluska. IRD references the North Alabama website when it reports this. There is no indication that IRD and the bishop have been involved with each other. Frankly, however, I am surprised by Bishop Willimon's position, and the vagueness of it. I have e-mailed Dannette Clifton, communicator for North Alabama, at dclifton@northalabamaumc.org asking for more clarification as to why Bishop Willimon and the cabinet are concerned and displeased. So far she has simply referred me back to the vague statement on the North Alabama Conference webpage, althought I have now followed up by e-mailing her this post. But I would not want to give the impression that IRD and Willimon have been involved.

Dean

[Jan Rivero]

This morning after church someone handed me a letter from Mark Tooley decrying the upcoming conference. He claims that this conference is going to include "celebration of exotic sexual behaviors." Dean is right, there is a propensity for using not only inflammatory comments but unfounded ones to make their case. Where does Mark get this information? How does he KNOW this?

I appreciate all of this conversation. But I do pray for the day when we stop arguing about hetero/homosexual relationships and instead talk about what constitutes a loving relationship, and as a church take a stand in favor of love and respect. Does domestic violence in a heterosexual relationship make for a good marriage? Does deceit and adultery make for a good marriage?

We are called to seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. I happen to have family who, in a homosexual relationship, has managed more justice, mercy and love, than others in the family who have cheated on their spouses, broken their marriage vows and ruined their families.

I guess I like to think that Jesus is more concerned about us loving our neighbor than casting them into the fire. And I'm pretty certain that those "exotic sexual behaviors" Mark is worried about aren't going to be celebrated at the conference.

May God be merciful to us all.

[the_methotaku]

Thanks for clarifying that, Dean. +Willimon had my respect for allowing same-sex holy unions at Duke Chapel, even though he didn't aggree with them himself. I'm glad that he doesn't seem to be working with the IRD on this, but opposition to the RMN renting the Lake Junaluska facilities seems most out of charecter. I hope we can learn more about this apparent reversal. (I'm more rational when I'm posting on Sunday afternoon then latenight on Saturday.)

[rofovnifo]

Hi

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Bye