Earlier today two United Methodist bishops were arrested outside the White House protesting the Obama Administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants. The bishops want the President unilaterally to stop enforcing immigration law. It is official United Methodist policy, as ratified by the church’s governing General Conference, and printed in the church’s Book of Resolutions, that the United States should automatically accept and confer all the benefits of citizenship upon anyone who enters and desires to stay in the U.S.
There’s nothing new about United Methodist bishops and other denominational officials getting arrested in staged protests intended to provoke brief police detention. In recent years there have been arrests for protesting welfare spending limits, for gay rights, against nuclear weapons, against various U.S. military actions, against trade sanctions on Communist Cuba and for environmental causes.
There have been no United Methodist officials protesting in solidarity with persecuted Christians around the world. None protesting on behalf of the unborn or terminally ill. None against the deconstruction of marriage and family or the impact on children. None against any repressive regime that was hostile to the U.S.
United Methodist officials generally only agitate for utopian causes: open borders, unilateral disarmament, an unlimited Welfare State, sexual revolution. They do not expend effort on or even acknowledge merit in the incremental pursuit of ordered liberty and approximate justice.
In contrast, a prudent Christian political witness in our fallen world seeks measured steps that protect against egregious injustice and that incentivize personal and civic virtue. Utopianism portrays persons as victims of abstract dark forces. Traditional Christianity sees persons as decision-making, moral beings who are innately fallen yet by God’s grace can receive redemption. Utopians demand Heaven in this world. Traditional Christians understand that Heaven and Earth will only unite at the eschaton, but Heaven can be glimpsed through the advance of God’s Kingdom.
Unsurprisingly, Methodism’s political witness hasn’t been taken very seriously in over 40 years. Its advocates seem unconcerned. Better to be righteous than relevant, they often imply, as they wave placards at small demonstrations, pleading for arrest.
How did Methodism’s political witness degenerate into triteness? Methodism from the start was perfectionist and crusading, so perhaps the embers of self destruction were always present. But traditional Methodism, through the 19th Century, up through even Prohibition, still acknowledged human sinfulness and the urgent need for personal salvation and holiness.
Theological modernism and the Social Gospel transformed official Methodism into a repetitive screed for unrealizable utopian demands, such as endorsing state ownership of industry in the 1930s and rejecting all war in response to Nazi and Japanese militarist aggression. Oddly, the failure of Prohibition, which was Methodism’s chief political cause and venue into intense activism, only accelerated Methodist insistence on a perfected society through statism and vague world government.
When United Methodism returns to orthodoxy, it may rediscover a prudent Christian social witness that seeks measured but important steps toward social goods. Goals will include the legal protection of vulnerable human life, protecting the traditional family as the core human unit, defending religious and other freedom of conscience for all, recognizing private property as essential for liberty and prosperity, affirming the state’s divine vocation for stipulated police and military powers, and celebrating non-state mediating institutions, above all the churches, that are essential for human happiness and fidelity to God’s desires for creation.
Some day!
Comment by Kevin Condon on February 18, 2014 at 1:03 am
It seems a form of posturing, even self-referent. Though some may be ardent idealists, others say with their actions, “Look at me, being bold and courageous”, later to hear, “I never knew you”. The fortunate will emerge from the enemy’s fog and see Christ clearly, perhaps in the eyes of a real prisoner, or maybe in dying eyes that look expectantly toward their genuine final reward. Since we don’t know who is who, we just love them and pray for them, as tolerantly as we can. The quality of the soil that holds their seed may yet allow growth. We hope our soil is sufficient.
Comment by James D. Berkley on February 18, 2014 at 2:08 am
Does one make an appointment for a designer arrest? The whole thing is so silly and effete.
It isn’t even proper civil disobedience. When brave black demonstrators sat at the lunch counters at which they were prevented by law from eating, they were breaking the law they demonstrated against. It was the same for conscientious objectors who refused induction. They intentionally broke an objectionable law.
But these publicity-seeking bishops were breaking a good and necessary law that is totally unrelated to the one they were protesting. If they were opposed to a fence around the White House, it might have been civil disobedience in the classic sense. But as it was, it was pure political theater of the absurd.
Now, however, they have something to put in their next Christmas card and to burnish their liberal credentials. How darling!
Comment by Daniel on February 18, 2014 at 10:45 am
Mark,
I think this is your best piece to date. I would like to see you expand on your “Methodism from the start was perfectionist and crusading, so perhaps the embers of self destruction were always present” comment. I agree and this is the major reason why I left the UMC. Perhaps this is not the right forum for such a piece, but I think it needs to be written. For some reason Arminian theology seemed to find to a comfortable alliance with Socialism and Communism, and even though every one of these experiments in governing has ended badly, UMC bishops still seem captivated by them.
Comment by John Edwards on March 1, 2014 at 6:22 pm
I disagree with your comment about Arminian theology. I do not think the UMC in its present day form practices anything close to Arminian theology, which was abandoned by the UMC in the 60’s. It is the abandonment of Arminian theology that keads to Socialism/Communism
Comment by Bonnie Allen on February 18, 2014 at 12:18 pm
Good article. Please leaders – realize that we need to preach Christ, not promote meaningless civil disobedience.
Comment by Bonnie Allen on February 18, 2014 at 12:22 pm
Good article. Please – highly paid leaders of the U.M.C. – we need you to preach Christ, not promote meaningless civil disobedience.
Comment by John S. on February 26, 2014 at 8:28 am
Funny how they only risk arrest in the US. Wouldn’t a true social conscience call for action at the source of many of these troubles? Should not protests of nuclear weapons and gay rights also be carried out in Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan, etc? Justice NOW (as long as its safe and I’m not inconveinenced too much, oh and a cheerleading section of the press would also be nice.)