Methodist Gay Lobby Bullies General Convention

It’s pretty common from leftists: the notion that they have the right to use “any means necessary” do get what they want. And the gay lobby, especially in “mainline” Protestant denominations, is as bad as any.  This was obvious at the General Convention of the United Methodist Church.

The window of opportunity for delegates to do their work was further narrowed by the antics of activists of the Common Witness Coalition (MFSA, RMN, etc.) and allied groups.

Dozens of shrill protesters against biblical standards for sexual self-control, most of whom were not delegates and not all of whom were even necessarily Methodist, invaded the delegates-only seating area on Wednesday, May 2, for an illegal demonstration, loudly drowning out the presiding bishop while he attempted to close the session in prayer.

The next day, following the conference’s decisive re-affirmation of the UMC’s biblical statement on sexual morality (by a significantly larger majority than the previous General Conference), the same activists again stormed the delegates-only section to take it over for yet another fundamentally self-righteous protest. Their refusal to leave, despite repeated, gracious pleas from the presiding bishop, forced the conference to shut down. . . . It is worth noting that RMN has received heavy funding from secular pro-homosexuality groups seeking to take over the UMC . . . , and that the secular gay-rights group, GLAAD, “was on the ground at the United Methodist General Conference, supporting efforts to change the denominational policy.”

Our bishops reportedly considered taking decisive actions, including seeking police help, to end the forceful occupation of the conference floor and/or prevent further such invasions, but ultimately did not do so. Instead, several liberal bishops went to negotiate with the protesters, now led by Amy DeLong, as they held the General Conference hostage. (DeLong is the openly partnered lesbian minister who a church trial in the liberal Wisconsin Annual Conference notoriously refused to discipline for “being a self-avowed, practicing homosexual” – which is absolutely forbidden for UMC clergy – and who currently leads her own self-serving protest group.)

The occupiers refused to allow business to continue until our bishops submitted to their ultimatums:

• Bishop Wenner, President of the Council of Bishops, would open the next session expressing agreement with liberals’ argument that affirmation of biblical morality harms GLBT people (and WITHOUT acknowledging others’ pain in such controversies).
• This would be followed by a prayer offered by a United Methodist minister meeting DeLong’s criteria of (1) being openly gay, (2) currently serving in a particular kind of appointment, and (3) speaking in a prominent location specified by DeLong.
• Delegates would be forbidden from even considering any other “sexuality-related” petition that afternoon.
• A special meeting of the Agenda Committee would be held that afternoon, called by DeLong and including representatives of the Renewal and Reform Coalition, to “negotiate” the manipulation of the rest of the General Conference agenda.

Conference leaders submitted to all of the above. Claiming to speak/pray “on behalf of” all bishops, Bishop Wenner dutifully opened the next session with the assertion that gay and lesbian people had “been hurt by actions of the General Conference and by the polity of The United Methodist Church,” avoided acknowledging anyone else’s pain, and in line with the protestors’ theology. . . .

This afternoon meeting—which included legislative committee chairs, the Agenda Committee, and representatives of the General Conference Commission, the bishops’ Unity Task Force, liberal caucuses, the Renewal and Reform Coalition, and JustPeace—agreed to transfer all “sexuality-related” petitions to the end of the agenda list, ensuring that there would be no time for them. The protesters had already eaten up the time scheduled for such petitions, and much other pressing business remained for the final day.

This decision basically tabled three categories of petitions. Several would have revoked current denominational policies aligning requirements for clergy conduct and the use of apportioned denominational funds with biblical standards on sexual morality. Since sexual liberalism manifestly lacked majority support, voting on these petitions would have accomplished little. Other proposals would have strengthened enforcement mechanisms for such standards. Theologically orthodox United Methodists were eager for such badly needed reforms. Also tabled were four other liberal sexuality-related petitions, which would have mandated pension benefits for homosexual partners of church employees, broadly endorsed various GLBT-friendly public policies, and imposed a radical system of unaccountable membership-on-demand.

DeLong and company also demanded that petitions to end our denomination’s scandalous affiliation with the strident Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (a move the relevant committee had supported in a decisive, historic vote) be labeled “sexuality-related” and moved to the back of the agenda with the other tabled petitions. Despite the strong objections of renewal leaders and even some relatively fair-minded liberal denominational officials, the Agenda Committee agreed to classify RCRC as “a sexuality issue.” The committee had also decided to overrule the anti-RCRC petitions’ original “global” classification in order to treat them as “U.S.-only” issues, even though: they dealt with a global denominational agency, UMC leaders from Africa, Europe, and the Philippines were outspokenly eager for the General Conference to pass them, and they involved a resolution that explicitly mentions “international” issues, the United Nations, and South Africa. Under the new rules, classifying RCRC as a “U.S.-only” issue provided a useful pretext for demoting these petitions’ priority. Moreover, the relevant legislative committee chair, Rev. Molly Vetter, used her position to have the anti-RCRC petitions deemed low priorities. Throughout the final day, DeLong and her allies sought to intimidate delegates and conference leaders by being very visibly primed and ready to fulfill their threat to forcibly shut the General Conference down in a THIRD illegal protest so that delegates would be unable to even discuss RCRC. But the anti-RCRC petitions were far enough down on the agenda list (albeit not at the very end as DeLong had demanded) that the Agenda Committee expected that there would not be time to get to them, EVEN IF it had not been for the eleventh-hour chaos caused by the Judicial Council’s striking down the compromise restructuring plan. And indeed, time ran out for plenary consideration of RCRC, which gave the bullying protesters what they wanted.

Furthermore, an important petition, supported overwhelmingly in committee, would have helpfully amended the UMC Discipline’s statement on “Our Theological Task” (¶104) with thoughtful, nuanced, and very Wesleyan affirmation of “Scripture as the primary source and criterion for doctrine” while dispelling popular misunderstandings about Albert Outler’s “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” But on the final morning, the Agenda Committee decided to kill this liberal-opposed petition by grouping it with the tabled “sexuality-related” petitions (despite that petition making no mention of sexuality).

In subsequent newsletters and online postings, the liberal caucuses shamelessly celebrated the any-means-necessary way in which they had “won” in defeating key petitions, not by substantive dialogue or honest persuasion, but rather by resorting to threats and raw physical force to prevent delegates from voting on them. One RMN affiliate praised the “courageous act of direct action taken by LGBT activists on the conference floor on the penultimate day” who “occupied the floor and forced the conference to adjourn,” “let business resume only after conference leaders promised that they would not allow” sexuality-related petitions, including the RCRC ones, “to be debated and voted on,” and “enforced that agreement by letting conference leaders know that if any of these proposals did come up, they would immediately reoccupy the floor and prevent further business.” DeLong similarly boasted of how her protest efforts “held at bay” petitions she did not like. One of the protest leaders, an MFSA member and clergy delegate from a liberal annual conference blogged: “Hey! Protest making legislative change! Awesome.” [emphasis added]

This sort of thing harks back to the campus radicals of the 60s, who would happily shout down campus speakers they didn’t like, and shut down an entire university to attack policies they did not like. It also harks back to the Hitler Youth, who were in the habit of shouting down and disrupting their political opponents.

Liberal Methodist Elites Demean African Methodists

The United Methodist Church is one of those “mainstream Protestant” denominations that are controlled (in the U.S.) by liberal, fundamentally secular elites.

But Methodism has a long history of evangelism in Africa, and these U.S. elites have made the mistake of allowing African Methodists the right to participate in the affairs of the denomination on an equal basis. The result: there is a majority in decision-making bodies against the gay agenda.

That’s what happens when you give people from Africa equal treatment.

So what do the U.S. Methodist elites do? They demean Africans.

From Juicy Ecumenism:

Recently United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcano of Phoenix chastised the just concluded governing General Conference of her church for failing to overturn United Methodism’s biblical teachings about marriage and sexual ethics.

“Our homophobia was blatant as we heard delegates compare homosexuality to bestiality, and voice other dehumanizing expressions against our LGBT brothers and sisters,” she complained in a column. She targeted the African delegates specifically.

“Delegates from Africa once again proclaimed that their anti-homosexual stand was what U.S. missionaries taught them. I sat there wondering when our African delegates will grow up. It has been 200 years since U.S. Methodist missionaries began their work of evangelization on the continent of Africa; long enough for African Methodists to do their own thinking about this concern and others. Our conservative U.S. United Methodists continue to depend on the conservative vote of African and Filipino delegates to maintain our exclusionary position on homosexuality, a position I believe would be changed for the inclusion of our LGBT sisters and brothers if a U.S. vote for a U.S. context were taken. The manner in which we deal with the concern of homosexuality affects all of ministry in the U.S., and we are the poorer for it. It is time for us to let go of our wrong position and be the church of Christ Jesus, a church that excludes no one.”

As to the “bestiality” allusion, Carcano was echoing the New York Times report on General Conference, which said:

Several Americans begged delegates to ‘hear the pain’ of gay church members. Moments later, a delegate from Africa said in Swahili that saying that a homosexual person was created by God was like saying “that God created me to live with animals.”

The New York Times then quoted a gay advocacy caucus spokesman:

The Rev. Troy Plummer, executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network, which advocates full inclusion of gay people, said in an interview: ‘I’m tired of being compared to beasts in our church. Even if our world understandings differ, it’s just horrendous. That our perspectives differ is the truth, and we just voted 61 to 39 percent that we can’t tell that truth.’

The ostensible beastiality quote that Carcano and Plummer cited is based on a Congolese delegate who said:

“I rise to stand against this reasoning for the following reasons. First, the theme of our general conference is to make disciples for the transformation of the world. If we accept homosexuality, it means that the world transforms the church on homosexuality. You say a homosexual person is created by God the way he is or she is. I stand to say that that is not true. If we say that this is the way that God created them I refuse to accept that when they say ‘I am homosexual, I was created like this.’ Because God is a loving God, He cannot create a person with something that makes him or her suffer. If another person would come to the church and say, ‘God created me to live with animals,’ if we say ‘No’ it doesn’t mean we don’t love that person. I stand to say that the grace of God is for all people, but the grace of God does not allow us to sin. I ask to not accept this petition.”

The African delegate was not comparing homosexuality to beastiality, as Bishop Carcano claimed. Nor was he comparing homosexuals to “beasts,” as the caucus group spokesman claimed. Instead, the Congolese was saying the church’s mission is to “make disciples for the transformation of the world.” He noted that affirming homosexual behavior would be to allow the world to transform the church.

Allowing the world to transform the church has been the seeming mission for liberal bishops in America for many decades. The result is 3.5 million lost members in America. Carcano’s own Desert Southwest Conference is now down to under 39,000, having lost nearly 17 percent in the last 10 years alone. Meanwhile, there are over 2.2 million United Methodists under the 3 bishops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The African churches are growing because they believe in transformation through the Gospel. Their success sadly earns them condemnation from some liberal, declining areas in the U.S. that are making their churches irrelevant by endlessly seeking accommodation with American secular culture.

One of the commenters on the Juicy Ecumenism website noted that the U.S. Methodist elites are engaged in “cultural colonialism.” That’s a good assessment.

But also note that these liberal elites always claim to be on the side of “people of color,” on the side of poor people and on the side of “oppressed” people of the Third World.

But what happens when those people get uppity, and fail to serve the agenda of their First World patrons? They get demeaned and derided.