Commentary: Gay Rights Activists Target United Methodist General Conference

on April 25, 2008

Gay rights activists from within and without the church have worked energetically for several years to undermine the United Methodist Church’s commitment to biblical Christian teaching, and are now particularly targeting the April 23—May 2  General Conference, the denomination’s top policy-setting authority.

The main pro-homosexuality United Methodist caucus group is the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), which (often successfully) encourages sympathetic church leaders to violate the clear policies established by previous General Conferences.

RMN’s agenda is more radical than merely opposing the denomination’s disapproval of homosexual practice.  It has defended the practice of concurrent multiple sexual partners.  A brochure distributed by one of RMN’s programs at a 2006 conference portrayed unmarried adolescents “becoming involved in sexual relationships” as a necessary step for becoming “fully self-actualizing and integrated.”  RMN has also promoted the theology of retired Bishop Joe Sprague, who denies such fundamental doctrines as Christ’s eternal deity and atoning death for sins.

RMN’s executive director left United Methodism years ago to be ordained in the obscure Orthodox Catholic Church.  Yet RMN has ironically denounced United Methodists who support their own church’s historic and democratically confirmed teaching as “outside agitators.”

At the last two General Conferences, RMN has also worked closely with Soulforce, an activist group funded by various foundations and “corporate sponsors” to forcibly disrupt the delegates’ work and demand that our denomination’s theology be rewritten according to their dictates.  This year Soulforce is publicly vowing to take similar “direct action” at the United Methodist General Conference.

In recent years, a number of secular gay-rights political groups have demonstrated a growing interest in promoting their agendas within United Methodism and other religious bodies.  In 2005, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which calls itself “America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality,” launched its Religion and Faith Program to tout the support of sympathetic religious leaders while promoting their agenda within United Methodism and other religious bodies.  HRC President Joe Solomonese has called the program “the cornerstone of our efforts to change hearts and minds.”  In 2006, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force took over management of the “Institute for Welcoming Resources,” whose express purpose is providing training, resources, and targeted funding to RMN and similar caucuses in other denominations.  That same year, the Gill Foundation, which calls itself “the nation’s largest private foundation focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights,” convened a coalition of gay rights organizations to plot strategy within various North American denominations.  More recently, an HRC action alert urged supporters (not necessarily from within the UMC or any other church) to work alongside RMN and Soulforce at the current General Conference, lobbying delegates against the denomination’s “spiritual violence” and stressing that “[i]t is important for the delegates to see the numbers who support our cause.”

It is not difficult to understand the interest of otherwise secular gay-rights leaders in undermining churches’ adherence to biblical teaching on marriage and sex.  As one key activist for Soulforce’s United Methodist efforts recently wrote on the group’s web board, taking over the United Methodist Church for their cause would be “significant to us strategically” because of the facts that “[i]t’s the third largest denomination in the U.S.” and “[i]ts members hold positions of power in society—John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are members of the United Methodist Church….”  The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in turn explains its religion-related work by arguing that pro-homosexuality shifts in at least some religious bodies “have, in turn, provided the foundation for winning” key victories for their political agenda.

Whatever the outcome of key votes at General Conference, the reverberation will be felt far beyond the denomination’s own membership, and on sexuality issues beyond the basic question of the morality of homosexual practice.

 

UPDATE: Since this article was first posted, we were contacted by Reconciling Ministries Network Executive Director Troy Plummer.  He informs us that while he is indeed ordained in a non-Methodist denomination apparently more in line with his beliefs, he has consistently stayed active in United Methodist congregations, including by serving on the staff of one before his tenure at RMN.

Plummer also objected to this article saying that RMN “has defended the practice of concurrent multiple sexual partners.”  The link for this statement makes clear that it was particularly in reference to an article published in a magazine, Open Hands that was primarily published by RMN and whose Editorial Advisory Committee included RMN representative Susan Laurie (a current RMN staffer).  Plummer informs us that under his leadership, RMN does not support “concurrent multiple sexual partners” and instead supports “monogamy and fidelity in forming family.”  —Ed. 

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