The Best and Worst Parts of Us

Today my heart is sad. Many Iliff students attended/are attending General Conference and the rest of us have been following it from Denver. (General Conference is held every 4 years and is the governing body of the United Methodist Church)

A petition had been brought forward by the legislative committee that recommended eliminating the phrase in the Book of Discipline that said "homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching" and replacing it with the phrase "faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness." It was rejected.

Another petition stated that "although the pastor is to educate and counsel the person seeking to unite with the local church, God’s redemptive gift is available to all persons, and the pastor is to faithfully receive all adults willing to affirm our vows of membership." The petition would have made it harder for pastors to deny church membership based on sexual orientation. It, too, was rejected.

The discipline currently states that "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" cannot be ordained, and pastors cannot perform same-sex unions. Both were upheld.

Part of my hesitation to enter ordained ministry has been my belief that the church body has the capability of bringing out the very worst in humanity, and that we fail to live the radically inclusive love Jesus practiced.

However, today at noon, nearly 30 of us--some Methodists, some not, some gay, some straight-- gathered together to pray. We prayed for the delegates at General Conference. We prayed for the people who are excluded and rejected by the Church. We prayed for the people who exclude and reject. We prayed for the gifted preachers, scholars, and care-givers who cannot be ordained in the tradition that rasied them.

And we cried. We cried because exclusion not only causes damage to the children of God who are exluded, but also to the Body of Christ itself.

I have to hope the Church will eventually correct this. The American Methodist church was founded in 1784, but it refused to ordain women until 1956...

"The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.