Buoyed by several legislative victories, especially Obamacare’s passage last year, the chief lobbyist of the United Methodist Church opened the spring meeting of the church’s lobby agency arm on February 9 with an address to the 63-member board, meeting outside Orlando, Florida.
“We helped secure passage of healthcare reform in the United States last year,” General Board on Church and Society (GBCS) General Secretary Jim Winkler boasted, highlighting televised thanks to the GBCS and the United Methodist Church by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “You undoubtedly know that was celebrated in some churches and quarters and a source of concern for others.”
Winkler’s acknowledgement of controversy was a reoccurring theme during his nearly hour-long address, part laundry list of the board’s advocacy work over the past year on behalf of politically liberal policies and part apologia for practices igniting criticism from some in the denomination, which has 7.7 million U.S. members.
In addition to Obamacare, Winkler also rejoiced in the ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) by the U.S. Senate. The treaty commits the United States and Russia to a reduction of nuclear arms, mandates the exchange of information about the arsenals and provides for inspections.
“These treaties are ones our church has supported and have advocated for a long time,” Winkler said. “Their passage was due in no small part to our advocacy coupled with those of so many others for peace.”
Winkler said the board and staff had been “intensively involved” in meetings with members of Congress and coalitions to encourage the passage of legislation. But while the United Methodist lobbyist claimed the GBCS had mobilized “thousands and thousands” of people, he lamented that the group still reached “but a fraction of our local people.”
Winkler also had legislative losses to report.
“We sought but failed to secure passage of the DREAM Act,” Winkler said, blaming “antiquated rules” of the Senate for the defeat of legislation that would have provided a path to citizenship for those who entered the country illegally as children. The GBCS official also noted the failure of the board to get the United States to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and nuclear test ban treaties. While the U.S. Senate has not ratified the CEDAW treaty, countries such as Libya, Saudi Arabia and Myanmar have.
Lastly, Winkler bemoaned an upcoming 15 percent reduction in GBCS budget during the next quadrennium.
“These are real dollars that will translate to real personnel and ministry cuts unless we can find funds elsewhere,” the GBCS official said.
“A lot of our ministry has to deal with policy and advocacy, and some believe it is removed from the local church and is irrelevant to life in the local churches,” Winkler said. “But I tell you the things that I have mentioned – helping to pass treaties for the elimination of nuclear weapons or working against gun violence or seeking funding for child nutrition — this is directly related to life in our churches all around the world.”
United Methodist Building Litigation
During his address, Winkler was ebullient in announcing a favorable court ruling last fall in the board’s ongoing effort to “reform” a trust that governs the church’s Capitol Hill office building and other assets originating with Methodism’s old Temperance Board. But he acknowledged that the agency’s legal fight for control of the assets still continues. A 1965 trust document restricts the Methodist Building Trust, which includes stocks, to issues relating to alcohol abuse. But GBCS has long ignored the restriction and, upon realizing its legal vulnerability, successfully persuaded a D.C. Superior Court judge to overturn the restriction.
“To say the least, this was a long and difficult matter,” Winkler said of the ruling by Judge Rhonda Reed Winston, which brushed aside objections by the District of Columbia Attorney General, who argued for compliance with the original trust. “In essence the accusations leveled against this board for many years boiled down to a charge that every trustee and every board member over the past 45 years has colluded in a conspiracy to misspend church funds.”
Winkler characterized Judge Winston’s ruling as an endorsement of the board’s permissive use of funds produced by building revenue and stock appreciation. “The expenses in this lawsuit had very little to do with our advocacy and instead with defense of our advocacy,” said GBCS Trustees Chair Fred Brewington, who lamented the legal dispute to change the trust as “wasted time and resources.” GBCS spent over $1.5 million on its litigation.
“Unfortunately the D.C. Attorney General has filed for redress,” Brewington said, predicting a stretched out appeals process.
When asked by a GBCS board member why the D.C. Attorney General had objected to changing the building trust, Brewington hesitated, eventually speculating that bureaucratic inertia was the motivation. Although unexplained to the directors, the D.C. Attorney General has asked the judge to reconsider her motion and to amend the trust to allow expenditure on work against alcohol abuse, drug abuse, prostitution, and gambling, all of which were causes in which the old Temperance Board was involved.
“[The litigation] is not just about the GBCS, it is about our work for the world,” Brewington concluded.
Heading Off Criticism
Winkler’s address seemed partly aimed at heading off criticism that the GBCS and its staff have long received from around the church. The agency’s practice of lobbying the General Conference has proved controversial, both in content and the sheer number of proposals (in 2008 GBCS submitted over 100 resolutions to the denomination’s rulemaking body).
Winkler acknowledged negative feedback from the 2008 General Conference delegates on the sheer number of resolutions, and pledged that the agency would halve the number of proposals to the legislative body in 2012. He was unapologetic about the agency’s now standard practice of lobbying the church body, however.
“As a layperson in the church, I prefer that those who are charged with the responsibility of doing the ministry that [GBCS is] doing also bring back recommendations to the General Conference for what the General Conference may want to say or consider in the future,” Winkler said, defending his own agency’s practices.
Board members, Winkler said, should not vote for petitions if they did not feel comfortable with them.
“Do not feel railroaded,” the GBCS chief said, attempting to assuage concerns. “Sometimes I hear it said across the church that ‘this is all fixed’ or ‘it’s all staff that controls everything.’ If you don’t feel that you are the ones who are in charge, we need to deal with that.”
During the meeting, at least one GBCS director decided to abstain from all votes on resolutions, saying that it was the role of United Methodists, not the denominational boards, to introduce resolutions.
Winkler also spoke about his practice of lobbying the government on politically controversial matters about which United Methodists disagreed, such as Obamacare. At one point, he compared strong policy disagreements to trivial disputes over what kind of cups to use at coffee hour.
“I’m sometimes asked ‘why should the church take a position on a divisive issue?’” Winkler relayed, arguing that even in local churches, decisions that have created dissent were still being made. “I’ve been in churches where there was a big fight on moving from Styrofoam cups at the coffee hour to paper cups, I was in churches where there was a real fight over whether to make space for wheel chairs in the sanctuary. Fortunately, in spite of the fact that it was divisive, the decision was made that our priorities were that as people of God to protect the earth and do what we can and to care for those among us who don’t have the same physical abilities of many of us. And I think we have to move forward on that basis.”
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