Midlife Meditation

The Scouts beat the Methodists. On July 18, the Scout Executive announced that the policy forbidding gay adults from serving as Cub and Boy Scout leaders had been revoked. Chartering organizations still have final say in whom is qualified to lead a pack or troop, meaning churches may continue to discriminate, but the national organization no longer ties the hands of those sponsors who seek to remove sexual orientation from their lists of qualifications. Putting the decision in local hands was not enough for a number of churches, who promptly disavowed their association with Scouting. The radical religious right will continue to bury its head in the sand of denial even as it goes on blindly lashing out at people whose identity is itself sinful by their definition. Consequently, evangelicalism continues its slide deeper into irrelevance. By the time Millennials are fully in charge of this nation's government and other institutions, conservative Christians will be little ...

I waited ten years to become an elder, and fought hard to obtain that status. To an extent, it cost me my first marriage. Four and a half years later, I stepped down from my appointment, going on what has become a permanent leave of absence. Ultimately, ordination in the United Methodist Church just didn't work out for me. Increasingly, my former colleagues, particularly those in the Western and Northeastern Jurisdictions, have found the strictures of ordination an uncomfortable fit for them. Some of them have voluntarily surrendered their orders rather than continue to submit to church discipline with regard to the full inclusion of sexual minorities in the ministry and mission of the church. Many others have found themselves put on trial for disobeying that discipline, performing weddings for same-sex couples or openly acknowledging that they are, themselves, self-avowed and practicing gay men or lesbians. Meanwhile, I am still an elder, honorably located (translation: happily ...

  E pluribus unum: out of many, one. That's our United States of America summed up in three neat Latin words. To the world, we're a single, monolithic entity, the only true superpower left. American culture has conquered the world. McDonalds, Starbucks, Wal-Mart--our corporations are everywhere. American tourists are known for their loud, aggressive friendliness. We don't mean to be rude, but sometimes we just can't help ourselves.   25 years ago, I had the privilege of spending two years serving an English Methodist/United Reformed congregation. It was a "united church," a merger between two Methodist congregations and one from the United Reformed denomination, and as such, it had an ongoing identity crisis. Every time there was a pastoral change, the position had to constitutionally switch between Methodist and United Reformed. My first wife, Brenda, and I came to Trinity Church as a clergy couple with one year of student pastorate experience behind...

  I'm an Eagle.   In October 1978, my mother pinned a badge like this one to my uniform. It was the culmination of a ten-year journey, an accomplishment and honor achieved by only a small percentage of Scouts. My father became an Eagle sometime around 1940, and there was never any doubt in my mind that, as difficult as it proved to be, I would someday attain this rank, as well. All four of my younger brothers became Eagles, too. There was no way any of us was going to be the lone standout. And who wouldn't want to be an Eagle Scout? A paragon of honesty, reverence, and service? I bore this distinction with pride for a quarter of a century.   Until, that is, Scouting went south.   I mean that quite literally. In my youth, Scouting was a center-left organization, honoring diversity of creed and ethnicity, promoting global citizenship, responsible membership in the commonweal. Scouts were environmentalists, diplomats, public servants. Yes, there was a c...