Midlife Meditation

Bishop Karen Oliveto meets with her accusers prior to the Judicial Council hearing that will rule her election illegal. In the end, it was--and will continue to be, to the bitter end of the due process--as Methodist a defrocking as could ever be. It was inevitable from the moment Karen Oliveto was elected to the United Methodist episcopacy by the Western Jurisdiction that the legitimacy of that election would be appeal to the Judicial Council, the denomination's highest court. The Council's duties parallel those of the US Supreme Court: it is the ultimate arbiter in disputes over the Discipline , a copious and often self-contradictory book of rules and regulations that is, to some Methodists, more significant than the Bible. The Discipline  can only be amended by the General Conference, a representative body of the entire global denomination that is equal parts clergy and laity, and which meets quadrennially. If the General Conference met more often, perhaps the Judicial C...

Bishop Karen Oliveto kneels during her consecration at the Western Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church. And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to [Jesus], “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”  He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” (Luke 16:39-40) Who knew the last straw would be a study commission? The United Methodist Church has been struggling with sexual diversity in the ministry since 1972. In that year, the General Conference (the quadrennial meeting that decides all matters of polity for the denomination) first amended the Discipline (the denominational rule book) to forbid ordination of "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals." Since then, generations of gay and lesbian candidates for ministry have been forced to remain closeted for their entire careers; to lie to to their congregations, superintendents, and bishops; to carefully avoid using certain terminology with church officials wh...

United Methodists would rather study than decide. I begin with confession. As I've written before, I was not temperamentally well suited for the ministry. The most successful pastors are extraverts who can work crowded rooms, skillfully making every interaction feel like an intimate one-on-one. There are exceptions to this rule, introverts who teach themselves to be more competent greeters, but really shine during in-depth conversations where their excellent listening abilities make for more profound connections. Personally, I much prefer the latter qualities in a pastor, but I completely understand the draw of the warm, electric, extraverted crowd-pleaser. I'm an introvert. There's no getting around it: I don't do well with meet-and-greet occasions. Interpersonally, I'm at my best when I've got the time and space to talk deeply with just one other person, and during my ministerial career, I made that kind of connection a number of times. T...

Jumbotrons somehow manage to make Annual Conference look even more conventional. Thursday night reminded me why I used to love going to Annual Conference. I was there for the annual memorial service, when the conference lifts up the names of clergy and clergy family members who've passed away since the last conference session. I was there to honor my father. This was yet another in the long line of observations of Dad's passing that will culminate next month with the scattering of his ashes. I was prepared for the reading of his name, for the singing of traditional hymns, for the extended sermon by a retiring clergy person. What I wasn't ready for was how much it felt like coming home. In so many ways, it was if I'd never left: all those faces I recognized, so many of them coming up to me before and after the service to warmly greet me, share their condolences, wish me and my family well. Participating in the service was like putting on an old shoe: every...

1925: the Ku Klux Klan marches on Washington, their faces fully exposed. Brace yourselves, boys and girls. It's going to be a bumpy ride. This week, the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church affirmed Rev. Frank Schaefer's reinstatement to the ministry. Schaefer had been defrocked for presiding over his son's wedding to another man, reinstated on appeal to a higher church court, then had that appeal appealed by the board that originally defrocked him, putting it in the hands of the denomination's extremely cautious highest court. True to form, the Judicial Council's decision was based entirely on procedure, doing all it could to avoid setting anything resembling a precedent: the Board of Ordained Ministry had used incorrect procedures to punish Schaefer, therefore its original decision was void. There is nothing here to protect him, or any other pastor, the next time a Methodist-minister-blessed gay wedding takes place; in fact, next time there'...

Just in case there's any doubt at all about the intent of my last post, the one in which I announced my availability to perform gay weddings: Yes, I know it's against the Discipline (that's the United Methodist Constitution, for you muggles out there); no, I don't wish to do it in secret (no back alley weddings); and yes, I am not only willing, but eager to face whatever penalties may be imposed on me by the church that formed me as a spiritual being, ordained me as first a deacon and then an elder, and ultimately decided it had had enough of me, an antipathy I concluded within a year or two was and is quite mutual. As Robyn Morrison has eloquently detailed in the blog she shares with her husband, Gerry Hill , the covenant United Methodist elders enter into at ordination is fundamentally twisted. To be true to our vows, we elders must espouse and practice doctrines that few of us believe or consistently apply to our own lives. Elders flaunt their creatively adap...

A few days ago, my friend Gerry Hill  did something wonderful. I wrote about Gerry in my last post, describing his sincerity, integrity, and through-and-through Christianity. Right around the same time, Gerry posted on his own blog a decision he had come to: after decades of living with the hypocrisy of United Methodist acceptance/rejection of gay personhood, he was surrendering his orders . This is huge. Becoming an elder of the United Methodist Church is akin to becoming a doctor. It took me ten years from the time I entered seminary until the Bishop finally laid hands on me, and considering I only stayed in ministry another four and a half years after that, that's not great value for preparation. Most elders, once they get to that point, stay with the profession a good deal longer than I did. Ordination is not just licensure; it's vocation, and even more than that, it's identity. There are some elders who embody their ordination so deeply that, even if they keep it...

There's a lot of irony to this picture, and especially to where I found it: an anti-Obama blog accusing him of heading a cult of personality. There are at least two problems with that notion: first, apart from his speeches, Barack Obama has demonstrated in the first four and a half years of his presidency that he is, if anything, less charismatic than his predecessor. Second, Superman is, of all superheroes, the one demonstrating the least personality charisma. Try having a conversation with him, and you discover in no time at all that, like Obama, he's very impressive in what he does with the powers he has, but schmoozing is not one of them. For a person to be the center of a cult of personality, he or she must, in fact, have a personality. Powerful speeches or a rocking physique do not generate a cult. Having a personal touch, making people feel like you're addressing them individually, that you really do feel their pain and care deeply about alleviating it, and d...

  Methodism is a non-credal denomination.   Ostensibly that means Methodists do not have a statement of faith to which they must adhere in order to belong to the church. That should mean there is no such thing in Methodism as heresy, as to be a heretic is to act contrary to the dogma of the church. And in traditional terms, Methodists remain non-dogmatic. While Methodists are expected to believe in the Trinity, the Resurrection, and other doctrines typical of Christians throughout the world, there is no one way in which they must believe. Methodists can believe, for instance, that Jesus was a great teacher and historical figure, but that the miracles presented in the Gospels are symbolic, that the Resurrection describes something that happened in the disciples' hearts, that, in fact, all the teachings about the divinity of Christ are metaphors for how humans can find spiritual fulfillment through prayer and good works, and still be fully within the fold of the church....

  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...