United Methodism’s largest agency inaugurated its new chief, a former liberal bishop, and approved grants for left-wing political advocacy at its October 2008 meeting. Resolutions affirming abortion rights and opposing U.S. border control were also approved. The 90 directors met in Stamford, Connecticut.
The General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) has long been one of the church’s most controversial agencies because of its political activism and frequent preference for humanitarianism over evangelism.
“Mission is not only about us…” but “for the sake of the planet, for the sake of peace, and for the sake of the poor” said Ed Paup, GBGM’s recently elected general secretary. Just like Moses atop Mount Nebo, said Paup, it is fitting for the GBGM to, at the beginning of this new quadrennium, take stock of “where it is we’ve come from to where it is we’re going.”
Global Ministries is the United Methodist board responsible for overseeing and coordinating the church’s global missionary (main GBGM body), women’s ministry (Women’s Division), and disaster relief efforts (UMCOR and GBGM Health & Relief). While the Board enables many United Methodists to carry out the mission of “Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” political stumbling blocks still create a distraction at times from its mission.
This year, the Women’s Division reiterated its support for abortion rights and resolved to use its local membership to advocate socialized medicine, while GBGM continued to pursue one-sided advocacy in Middle East affairs that favored Palestinians, and rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government’s efforts to control who immigrates into the country. It is one of the largest agencies of the church.
Paul quit as bishop of the Oregon-Idaho Conference this year to become GBGM chief. Paup said he will tackle the “peril of planet earth… the cry for peace from all [people]… [and] not only address poverty, but eradicate poverty.” He noted that there are “seven billion people on the planet; in 1930 there were 2 [billion].” Of those, he observed,” Fifty percent go to bed hungry every night.” The church, he said, is “in need of a missional ‘extreme makeover;’ an extreme missional makeover for justice and peace for all of God’s children.”
Financially, Paup said that for 2009, “I will ask that we take $900,000 of reserves to balance the budget for this next year…with the intent to come back next fall with a balanced budget.” He added, “We cannot do this every year… we will have to trim $3 million from our budget.” Positively, however, the Board noted that “world service dollars are up again from last year” and that income from special Sundays had increased over the past fiscal year. In the face of unpredictable financial markets, Paup said that “we hope we can maintain the budget that we have brought to you for 2009,” but “we don’t yet know what the markets will do.”
West Ohio Bishop Bruce Ough was unanimously approved as the president of the Board of Directors for 2008-2012. In his remarks, he thanked the board for his election. Additionally, he emphasized the importance of a “heart for mission,” saying, “We once again want to be released to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ and not the arms and legs of the institution.”
Committees seemed tame as new board members settled into their roles and attended orientation sessions. The Mission Development standing committee approved all grants proposed in the “Mission Opportunities” handbook that GBGM staff referred to them with almost no discussion at the full committee level.
While the book contained a host of programs that many United Methodists would whole-heartedly support, such as support for persons in ministry (PIM grants), orphanages and schools in India, and a school for deaf Palestinian children, it also contained grants to questionable organizations. Too often, too little information was presented in the grant proposals for directors to be able to make good decisions, and consequently the Mission Development committee approved sub-committee recommendations without discussion.
Women’s Division
The Women’s Division, while under the umbrella of the General Board of Global Ministries, maintains a separate staff, budget, and board of directors. Inelda Gonzalez, the President of the Women’s Division board, reported on the actions taken at their board meeting a week prior.
There, United Methodist Women’s chiefs “Reaffirmed… strong support for reproductive health and freedom [access to abortion] for all women, both in the United States and around the world.” While no scriptural mandate was provided for their staunchly and divisively pro-abortion views, UMW leaders did cite as vague institutional cover the fourth goal of the “United Methodist church’s new quadrennial foci, which is ‘improving health globally.’” No mention was made of the psychological effects this global “reproductive freedom” would have on women’s health, or on the health of the infant girls being aborted.
The Women’s Division approved, on behalf of its membership, “a campaign… to educate and advocate on behalf of a single-payer health plan in the United States.” The program would use the witness of United Methodist Women to do grassroots lobbying in favor of socialized healthcare.
The Women’s Division directors also signed a petition to support a “campaign to get fair wages and decent working conditions for tobacco farm workers in North Carolina.” No mention of the organization sponsoring the campaign was made, nor did the Women’s Division specify the current injustices of the system and how they would remedy them in their report to the GBGM directors.
Israel/Palestine
Grants favoring Palestinians over Israelis perpetuated GBGM’s historic partiality so recently evidenced in its controversial Missions Study (http://www.theird.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=578&srcid=578 ) that referred to Israelis as “hysterical” and “paranoiac” was represented in the grants. While no ministry to any Israeli individuals or with any Israeli organizations was considered for funding, no less than 9 grants went to Palestinian ministries or advocacy groups.
A grant to the Sabeel Youth Leadership Training Program gave $10,000 to a group whose partner organization, Friends of Sabeel in North America (FOSNA), has sponsored speakers who declare Israel to be a “racist” state that implements “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” policies. (GBGM Executive Secretary of Human Rights and Racial Justice, David Wildman, attended that October 2007 conference: http://www.theird.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=751&srcid=198 .)
Similarly, $10,000 would go to the decidedly pro-Palestinian news outlet, the International Middle East Media Center, for its Palestinian Youth Media Training program. Another $11,400 would support a staff person for the group over the next three years. The Media Center is an affiliate of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People, an advocacy group exclusively by and for Palestinians that acknowledges only Israel’s faults in the current Middle East conflict.
The political advocacy group, “US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,” has worked closely with the Women’s Division GBGM for some time, and received $5,000 in GBGM grants. It rejects Israel’s right to self-defense and supports “comprehensive divestment” in Israeli economic interests.
UMC Protects the ‘Right’ to Immigrate Illegally.
The denomination’s tendency to denounce the U.S. government for enforcing its immigration regulations continued. The October 2008 Mission Program Updates book boasts at the start that “the General Conference without floor debate adopted two new, comprehensive resolutions on migration/immigration.” The measures, originating from GBGM and its fellow agency the General Board of Church and Society, were lumped into a consent calendar due to time concerns, one towards the end of the General Conference, and approved along with several other dozens of petitions.
The Updates book also notes that “Global Ministries personnel played a key role in planning and carrying out [immigration related] events;” both of which downplayed the responsibility of government to monitor who crosses its borders, and were favorable to the “sanctuary” movement in which churches harbor an illegal immigrant whom the government is seeking to deport. (IRD covered these events: http://www.theird.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Document.Doc?id=43 , http://www.theird.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=665&srcid=665 .)
Most United Methodists would likely agree that the current system of immigration is broken, and that the church should care for immigrant families. But whether all United Methodists would match the extremity of Global Ministries by putting all the blame on the U.S. government’s attempts to enforce its border security laws, or advocate what seem to be the ambiguously open-borders policies popular in certain United Methodist agencies, appears doubtful.
Nevertheless, GBGM staff ensured that the anti-enforcement attitude of the agency would continue by preparing an October 14th memo that contained these church-wide resolutions, as well as internal GBGM resolutions that object to criminalizing illegal immigration and call for “work through the [United Methodist] Interagency Task Group on Immigration for the demilitarization [presumably removing of the wall, checkpoints, and guards along the]… US/ Mexico border. In particular we oppose the construction of further walls and other obstacles on the border that endanger lives of immigrants [who are attempting to cross illegally].” The memo stated the board was called to “respond in the name of Jesus Christ to government raids…”
Other Grants and Funding
A two-year, $9,900, PIM grant would go to provide staff to the organization (The Nicaraguan Foundation for Integral Community Development, or FUNDECI) f the anti-American, radical liberation theologian, and Sandinista leader, Fr. Miguel D’Escoto. No information on the current work of the organization is included in the Mission Opportunities book.
Recognizing that “theology is a possible hindrance to feminist leadership,” one grant gives $5,000 to the International Women Workshop of the Association for Theological Education in South East Asia (ATESEA). The conference “will deal with the issues related to the teaching and understanding of Feminist Theology” with an aim to “empowerment, transformation, and liberation, not only of the feminists themselves but also for others.”
The decidedly left-leaning Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) will receive a $2500 grant and the North American Regional Committee of the World Student Christian Federation $1,000 in 2009. The North American Regional Committee of the WSCF is hosting their 2009 conference in San Francisco on “Raising New Prophets, the Arising of a Movement” and will feature progressive workshops on “healthcare, immigration, and LGBTAQ” issues.
Some grants were merely vague. While a $50,000 grant to the Rio Grande Annual Conference sounds like it will establish a mostly useful “Leadership Institute [that] will train laity and clergy to not only develop holistic ministries that respond to needs of community members but also respond to issues of social injustice,” the grant proposal does not mention which “social injustice[s]” the Institute will seek to remedy or how. A $15,000 grant to the German organization, ImPuls-Mitte, which is apparently affiliated with, but independent of the UMC at Hamburg-Hamm, would provide a “recognized partner” for unspecified “political and economic factors in the community.” The goal of Impulse would be “to conduct house meetings and trainings in order to involve individuals in social decisions affecting their lives and neighborhood.”
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