United Methodist Figureheads Seek Arrest…Again

The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) prognosticated potential arrest in a recent press release. A President’s Day protest, which will take place later on today near the White House, is supposed to highlight continued deportations of illegal immigrants by the United States government. Prominent United Methodists will join faith leaders, undocumented aliens, and labor leaders to try to focus President Obama’s attention on immigration issues. Most prominent in this UMC company will be GBCS staffer Bill Mefferd, United Methodist Women’s Carol Barton, Justice for our Neighbors manager Melissa Bowe, and  Bishops Minerva Carcaño and Julius Trimble, who co-chair the denomination’s Interagency Immigration Task Force.

The leaders of this initiative urge executive fiat to address their grievances. The press release reports the President himself “through his executive authority can expand the deferred action for childhood arrivals program and suspend deportations.” Bishop Carcaño, no stranger to liberal political activism, announced, “We are willing to be arrested in front of the White House to tell the president that compassion on immigration starts with the stroke of his pen.”

No doubt these activists have the best of intentions. Immigration issues are important, and Christians are by no means forbidden from addressing the issue. However, the immediate results of this protest may very well be farcical. The GBCS tipped its hand with the touted threat of arrest. Such a measure, which is supposed to mimic the noble nonviolent protests of Martin Luther King, Jr., sounds more like the inept “Circle of Protection” protest prayer.

During the Circle of Protection heyday in 2011, Religious Left leaders prayed in protest against cuts to certain government assistance programs, seemingly in favor of a tax increase from US citizens to balance the budget. This group entered the Capitol building Rotunda and loudly prayed and sang, left largely unmolested by security and police. However, the Circle’s members were carried out in handcuffs, not really for their controversial economic position, but more for trespassing. Later on, the charges were dropped; not necessarily the Selma March by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, liberal immigration reform—like high government spending—is not a position without champions. Significant funding, popular media attention, and powerful leaders have been funneled in favor of this cause. This perhaps explains the shrill prediction of publicity arrests in the press release. GBCS elites and their allies are desperately clawing for attention, appealing to the issue du jour to draw awareness to themselves, even if liberalized immigration reform is a position that is quite controversial within the rank-and-file United Methodist denomination itself.

It is not as if the GBCS doesn’t have other pressing matters it could be attending to at present. Just last week, First Things editor R. R. Reno penned a magnificent piece predicting important areas of society where Christians certainly face tremendous opposition, if not later mistreatment. While America by-and-large is not highly populated by secularists, intellectual and political leaders certainly endorse and champion secularism as a means to address society’s ills. Reno warns,

To be blunt: Religious people who hold traditional values are in the way of what many powerful people want. We are in the way of widespread acceptance of abortion, unrestricted embryonic stem cell research and experimentation with fetal tissue. We are in the way of doctor-assisted suicide, euthanasia and the mercy-killing of genetically defective infants. We are in the way of new reproductive technologies, which will become more important as our society makes sex more sterile. We are in the way of gay rights and the redefinition of marriage. We are in the way of the nones and the engaged progressives and their larger goal of deconstructing traditional moral limits so that they can be reconstructed in accord with their vision of the future. Traditional religious people are in the way, and many of our fellow Americans are doing their best to push us out of the way. The outspoken among us have been largely expelled from higher education and other institutions of cultural authority.

The United Methodist General Board of Church and Society should be standing as a bright lamp to guide faithful United Methodists through these troubled cultural waters. It is becoming harder for everyday laymen to orient themselves in the society at large and to propound the uniqueness of the Christian faith and teaching to the world. The GBCS needs to be allying with other religious denominations and organizations in solidarity to fight the hard, inconvenient, and downright unpopular battles of life, marriage, and religious liberty.

A sterling example of such social leadership can be found in the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The ERLC addressed a recent study that asserted divorce was higher in more conservative evangelical parts of the United States. However, a deeper look at the research in this timely interview indicated that divorce is high only for nominal red state Christians, not for active evangelical couples and families who have support and counsel from a local congregation. Thus, the ERLC prepared Southern Baptists for any false narratives that might arise from this study as it garners media attention.

In contrast, for the GBCS, a day’s worth of energy and resources will be spent on a cause that has already picked up significant cultural steam. That sounds a lot more like following than leading.