Many United Methodists know of the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), a vocal pro-homosexuality caucus within the denomination. Less well known is the Church Within a Church (CWAC) movement, an RMN ally that similarly opposes the church’s teachings about marriage and sexual ethics.
On November 9-11 CWAC hosted the “Living a New Vision” conference in Boston, repeatedly equating its cause with the 1960s civil rights movement.
| The Rev. Gil Caldwell claimed that homosexual activists in the church are operating “out of the Scripture in a way they [conservatives] are not.” (Photo courtesy UMNS) |
The Rev. Dr. Traci West, Associate Professor of Ethics and African American Studies at United Methodism’s Drew University Theological School, described the homosexual agenda as “enmeshed” with the struggle for African American civil rights. She said, “Of course we [homosexuality activists] have to learn from the civil rights movement.” And West contended, “We can talk about gay rights and black freedom in America as fully integrated.” She warned that traditionalists on sexuality issues exploit “the language of trying to ‘protect our way of life, our families.’” The Drew professor dismissed such concerns as part of “an old strategy” previously used by racists against civil rights advocates.
West questioned, “Do you wonder sometimes how our [United Methodist] church can be so nasty, hurtful, disdainful of God’s [homosexual] children?” She claimed that United Methodist churches sent the message to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community: “‘Put your money in the collection plate … [but] do not expect your pastor to treat you equally.’” West theorized, “I think the church is influenced by our culture [and its] … cruelty.” And the church’s moral disapproval of homosexual acts shows that “our moral compass is way off,” according to the seminary professor.
West claimed that “thousands of LGBT youth [have been] put out on the streets by their Christian parents.” As a result, she claimed, “the church is creating poor people because it is just so obsessed with heterosexual superiority.” Citing statistics of domestic violence in dysfunctional heterosexual relationships and marriages, West called on conference participants: “Let’s go beyond reproducing the way heterosexuals have done marriage.…” West challenged the importance that the Christian tradition has attached to the union of the two complementary sexes in marriage: “The meaning of marriage isn’t just about sexual orientation; it’s about how you treat each other.”
Just as God answered the biblical prophet Habakkuk with a command to “write the vision,” West insisted, “God answers [by]… giving us an opportunity to write the vision…. Not to repeat all the white supremacist lies that ‘all blacks are homophobic, all the central conferences [the UMC’s overseas annual conferences] are homophobic.’”
Throughout the day-long CWAC conference, the official United Methodist position that “sexual relations are only clearly affirmed in the marriage bond” between man and woman (Book of Discipline, paragraph 161) was treated as “oppressive.” CWAC Executive Director Cathy Knight declared, “The myth of heterosexism in the church is so wounding.” Various speakers and workshops discussed strategies to forward the LGBT agenda in the church and culture.
The Rev. Dr. Gil Caldwell, a United Methodist pastor and civil rights activist from Asbury Park, NJ, complained that conservative opponents to the LGBT movement “think we don’t know the name of Jesus…. They don’t understand that we are operating out of the Scripture in a way they are not.” About conservatives, Caldwell expressed the hope: “There must be something that we can agree on if we’re talking about the same Jesus.” But he added that agreement may not be feasible “if we’re talking about varying definitions of Jesus.”
Caldwell defended liberalizers, saying, “I hope there will be an understanding that those progressive folk… [are] not trying to be politically correct, they are trying to be theologically and Christologically correct.” He reminded the audience that “sweetness does not mean weakness.”
In a later workshop entitled “Creating and Transforming Faith Groups into Boundary Crossing Justice Ministries,” several activists discussed their work for progressive causes. The Rev. Tiffany Steinwert of Cambridge Welcoming Ministries sought to claim Methodist founder John Wesley as a precedent for her modern work for the acceptance of homosexuality in the church. “John Wesley was concerned about those who were marginalized,” she recounted. He was the only clergy member “who visited a man imprisoned for sodomy.” Steinwert did not raise the possibility that Wesley’s frequent prison visits sprang from his concern for individual sinners rather than any approval of the sins into which those individuals may have fallen.
Steinwert cautioned against seeking unity as if it were “a golden calf.” Using the analogy of a table, she said, “I am welcome for my conservative brothers and sisters to come and sit at the table, but they can’t stick a fork in my hand.”
Former United Methodist Women’s Division executive Ann Craig, now of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, offered strategies for positive media coverage. “Most of the churches and … [within] the LGBT [community] …is very inwardly focused,” she noted. In contrast, Craig said that “GLAAD is a lot about external media,” and she encouraged her participants to “move the focus outward.”
As an example, Craig mentioned, “We’re continuing to work with St. John’s [United Methodist] Church in Baltimore,” where Pastor Drew Phoenix is a transsexual who professes to have changed from female to male. [link to earlier story] Craig’s workshop described important media tactics, such as how to “pitch stories,” choose a representative who can “stay on message,” and tailor one’s message to the “movable middle” audience.
During the afternoon’s panel discussion, Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson discussed the debate within that state over state-sanctioned homosexual marriages. At the time of the debate, Wilkerson said she had wondered, “Should I be concerned that I’m not concerned about whether this is the right thing?”
Referring to other Christians who criticized her support for same-sex marriage, Wilkerson asked, “Why can’t we just call this a difference of opinion? Why do I have to be the devil incarnate? Why is my Christianity called into question?” The state senator replied with some universalist theology: “If God is the God of everyone,” she asked, “why should I pick and choose, and really how would I do it?”
Mpho Tutu, the daughter of former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Executive Director of the Tutu Institute, struck a similar universalist note in her address to the CWAC conference. “In God’s vision, perhaps George [W. Bush] and Osama [bin Laden] and Saddam [Hussein] may sit together at that Kingdom table,” Tutu hypothesized. “We don’t know…. It’s God’s house.”
Tutu objected to Christians drawing distinctions between moral and immoral behavior as being “really arrogant beyond measure.” Such judgments, she alleged, “treat God as though God is a recalcitrant teenager and we get to screen his friends.” Tutu did not discuss the possibility that God might have revealed his own strict standards for “screen[ing] his friends.” Nor did she consider that we sinners who violate those standards might nevertheless become God’s friends through repentance, faith in Christ, and transformation of life.
Following the day’s events, speakers, family, and friends honored Caldwell for his role in the civil rights movement and his current work as a LGBT advocate. Don Messer called Caldwell “a prophet who not only preached but walked his talk.” And retired Bishop Dale White recognized Caldwell for his “presence in the midst of … intractable cultural blindness.”
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