United Methodist Bishops and Adultery

on January 24, 2015

Imagine a special conference held exclusively for people in troubled marriages. Imagine that the main reason for the brokenness in every single participant’s marriage stemmed from ongoing, brazenly unrepentant adultery, either on the part of the participants themselves or on the part of those to whom they were bonded in the sacred covenant of marriage.

And then imagine that at one or two dramatic points at this conference, the speaker invited everyone to stand up to signify their re-affirmation of their marriage vows (which, of course, included a vow of fidelity) and that every participant, even those adulterers who had been the most outrageous and in-your-face in taunting and hurting their spouses, stood.

Such a ritual of re-affirming marriage vows, however forced and hurried, would not have been insignificant.

But would this alone have been sufficient for these troubled marriages to restore wholeness, bring healing, re-establish trust, and move forward in faithfulness?

Hardly!

Given how frequently Scripture uses adultery as a metaphor for spiritual unfaithfulness, the fictional marriage conference described above is a rather close allegory of the global United Methodist Council of Bishops meeting last November.

As in the marriage conference allegory, our bishop’s somewhat hurried re-affirmation of the vows they took when they became bishops, to uphold our denomination’s doctrine, Discipline, and unity, was neither insignificant nor enough. It leaves unanswered all kinds of questions about what they will actually do, collectively or individually, about the present existential threats to our denomination’s doctrine, Discipline, and unity. While they had lengthy closed sessions to discuss these matters, what will our bishops actually do to restore United Methodist faithfulness to the triune God? What will they do to restore wholeness, bring healing, and re-establish trust with the faithful United Methodists who pay the salaries of even those bishops who have most blatantly betrayed their promises to God and us? Such questions have been treated by too many of our bishops as none of the general United Methodist public’s business.

Even when all the present bishops, church leaders, and visitors came together for communion at that November meeting, there were rather prominent,painful, and completely needless reminders of our denomination’s intractable divisions, and the weakness of the Council’s responses. Out of all the less divisive people the bishops making these decisions could have selected as communion servers on the final day, they chose covenant-breaking Melvin Talbert, doubtless well aware of potent symbolism communicated of his acceptance by the Council. Another day, the grape juice server eschewed traditional language to instead say “the cup of blessing” – evoking the rejection by many liberal United Methodists of core, orthodox Christian teaching about the blood of Jesus and His substitutionary atonement for our sins. And in one day’s communion service, Sue Laurie, a former Reconciling Ministries Network staffer now with Amy DeLong’s “Love Prevails” (aka, Love Bullies) group, awkwardly approached the communion servers and was actually granted her request to take one of their places, hijacking the serving of communion to make a LGBTQ liberationist “witness” to those who came there to be served.

In the absence of any collective or individual public actions to restore trust since the November meeting, there have been some rather one-sidedly unhelpful public actions by some of our bishops.

The very next business day after the Council meeting, Bishop Deborah Kiesey of Michigan announced “just resolutions,” apparently orchestrated by herself in conjunction with her district superintendents fulfilling her wishes. Two of her clergy, Michael Tupper and Edwin Rowe, who conducted same-sex unions faced no penalty for betraying our denomination’s biblical standards and their own ordination vows, but were actually rewarded. They were invited to help organize events with “the stated goal of reducing our church’s harmful rhetoric and actions toward LGBTQ persons.” The Book of Discipline that Kiesey and these ministers vowed to uphold also includes a clear, broad ban on thus using annual-conference funded events “to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.” But they apparently don’t have any more interest in being men and women of their word with regard to that part of the Discipline as they do in regard to the Discipline’s ban on clergy conducting “sin blessing” services.

Thus, the credibility of the re-professed commitment of our entire Council of Bishops to their own vows to God and our church were rather dramatically undermined, as rapidly as possible, by one of their own.

The collective credibility of our Council of Bishop suffered an even more dramatic blow with the recently announced exoneration of the aforementioned Mr. Talbert, a settlement whose glaring hypocrisies I have already noted. It is hard to argue that this joke of a “resolution” does not at all reflect upon the entire Council of Bishops.  After all, a key person for bringing it about was Bishop Rosemary Wenner of Germany, who was both elected by her fellow bishops to serve (until recently) as their president and who was also selected in 2013 by most of our active bishops as someone they trusted to take a leading role in pursuing the complaint against Talbert on behalf of the entire Council.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me be clear that we do have some good individual bishops on the Council.

At the November meeting, a task force, formed to respond to recent, growing calls for term limits for U.S. bishops (who are currently elected for life), reported that, unsurprisingly, the bishops involved in such discussions were generally opposed to such a curtailing of their own power. Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa of Zimbabwe arose then to remind his colleague bishops that such a limitation had enjoyed majority support at the last General Conference (though not the super-majority it needed to be adopted), urging them to ask why bishops and other leaders “are not in sync” and to avoid “heighten[ing] the divide.”

It is not clear how much collective willingness there is among the Council of Bishops, as a whole, to listen to Bishop Nhiwatiwa’s wise words. Or how much understanding, let alone concern, there is for how dramatically they are choosing to allow trust in themselves to be eroded.

  1. Comment by ConfessionPastor on January 24, 2015 at 5:06 pm

    If they can eliminate this part of The Discipline then they can remove the entire discipline. Because the minute you can refuse to follow that which you vowed to follow then nothing will stand. Toss out The Book of Discipline at that point it will mean nothing!!!!! Could this be their true motive????

  2. Comment by Dan on January 24, 2015 at 7:08 pm

    John, you pretty much just made the case for why orthodox UMC members who take their faith and salvation seriously must leave the UMC. At this point it is irreformable, absent a miracle from God, and I would not bet that He is favorably disposed towards one.

  3. Comment by Pudentiana on January 24, 2015 at 10:53 pm

    John has made the case for why faithful United Methodists must act to gain the attention of these prodigals and help them understand that they are accountable to God for the abuse of power which they consistently wield. There are so many passages in the Scripture about unfaithful shepherds and the judgment upon them for lording it over their flocks, biting them and trodding down the good pasture, taking the best for themselves. I sometimes wonder if they consider the UMC to be a stew and they are the large pieces of meat, to cite another scriptural reference. These prodigal bishops are forging their own chains as Christopher Marley did. Would that 3 spirits might have visited them on Christmas Eve and give them cause to repent! I say repent.

  4. Comment by Danielmormon on January 29, 2015 at 1:20 pm

    I am a former Methodist, and I weep over the wolves that have crept into the flock teaching the doctrine of devils that has the smoke of hell clinging to it! I am now LDS,and I can promise the campus at BYU would not tolerate this kind of lifestyle from an instructor, or the teaching of such gross garbage as same sex marriage.There are standards, no, there are EXACTING standards that we will NOT compromise on!

  5. Comment by John S. on January 30, 2015 at 6:24 am

    This sentence shows the Bishops trouble: “help them understand that they are accountable to God”. That they get that, especially the ones who doubt God existance or attributes. They will take God’s view under consideration but the laity has no say in the Bishops conduct, except to finance it.

  6. Comment by OhJay on January 25, 2015 at 12:13 am

    I’m not a member of UMC, and I wish someone could clarify a point I do not understand.

    Two of my great spiritual mentors were a husband-and-wife team of Methodist pastors. They were incredible spiritual and religious leaders, and they were inspirations to our somewhat rural community, which tends to be dominated by the SBC.

    To the best of my recollection (I don’t want to put words in their mouths), they both claimed that gays were welcomed into the church and loved once within it. There was no realistic prospect for ordination or marriage of gays in UMC at the time I knew them (15-20 years ago), and even though I had a lot of pastoral conversations with them, the subject of marriage/ordination never came up. I interpreted their view as being accepting of gays in the congregation, but noncommittal on gays in leadership or on the issue of gay marriage – again, something that was difficult to imagine at that time and thus didn’t merit much conversation.

    People here seem to be in the loop, so I am interesting in understanding whether the UMC is (1) welcoming to gays, (2) welcoming to gays predicated upon an idea that gays can be either celibate or else straightened out, or (3) just generally unwelcoming. Maybe my understanding of UMC’s attitude has been wrong. I don’t expect that I ran into the most lefty-liberal ministers in the church out here in podunk rural NC, but it’s possible. What is the UMC’s actual position?

  7. Comment by Dan on January 25, 2015 at 6:03 pm

    The UMC, as should any other church, welcomes sinners. Unlike other churches, however, the UMC is rather trendy in which sins it condemns (exclusion, war, capital punishment, etc.) and the ones it excuses (same sex acts, abortion for any reason, etc.). Other sins, such as adultery and sex outside of marriage, are more problematic since even orthodox Christians have tended to let these slide. UMC positions tend to mirror the Democrat party platform and sometimes even tend to the silly; e.g., against bleached paper, private ownership of handguns should be banned, collective bargaining is a fundamental right, etc. I think Mark Tooley’s term of “coercive collectivism” correctly defines the UMC hierarchy. They want to remake society into their version of what God wants, and if their preaching alone cannot do it, then they are happy to use the coercive power of the state to achieve it. One of their most glorious failures has to be Prohibition, but they don’t seem to have gotten the message.

  8. Comment by ken on January 25, 2015 at 10:06 pm

    My answer is, it depends entirely on the congregation. The UM is huge (albeit shrinking), and any given church might be far left, middle, or conservative. I have family members who attend conservative UM churches and are very happy where they are. They are aware, however, of just how loopy lefty the UM national agencies are.

    Regarding the word “unwelcoming”: No congregation on earth is “unwelcoming” to gays, despite the ad campaign of the United Church of Christ which showed gays being literally ejected from “unwelcoming” churches. that does not happen. In my experience, conservative churches follow a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. If Joyce and Ann share a house and have been living together since their college days, people will probably assume they are a “couple,” and probably would be correct (if it’s two men sharing a home, they would definitely be assumed to be a gay couple), as long as they don’t get “in your face” about it (“We’re gay – you got a problem with that?”), no one makes a fuss. I think even the most conservative churches probably have some gay or lesbian members, and why not? Every church probably has adulterers too – BUT the Big Difference exists between the churches that openly tolerate and even celebrate homosexuality and those that do not. Churches will always be full of sinners, because we are all sinners. But telling people “Don’t worry, what you’re doing is not a sin!” is just wrong. Now the liberal churches have taken it a step further, actually blessing these faux “marriages.” Technically, the UM does not (for now) condone homosexuality – but in practice, many UM congregations do. So, to answer your question “What is the UMC’s actual position?” I go back to my original statement: it depends on the individual congregation.

  9. Comment by Danielmormon on January 29, 2015 at 1:45 pm

    I am LDS and we have Twelve Apostles and the President of the church, Thomas S. Monson, who is the Lords Prophet upon the earth today. President Monson also has two other men who preside with him, and collectively they are called the First Presidentcy.
    The Lord has made it clear to our leaders that while there is to be compassion and love shown to those who struggle with same sex attraction, sexual relations between two people of the same gender is a very serious sin,just as adultery or fornication are equally serious and will result in misery unless repented of, and that marriage has one definition not several definitions!
    In other words, we are not dependent upon local congregations for doctrine or decisions on doctrine. We believe in modern, direct revelation from God to his appointed Prophet and Apostles, and they in turn reveal the mind and will of the Lord in relation to issues of primary importance to us as a people, exactly as the New Testament Church was organized.
    We minister to all types of people and love them but there are eternal moral standards and we will not compromise one inch on that.

  10. Comment by Pudentiana on January 30, 2015 at 3:51 pm

    Hey Dan, what is your view of the Trinity?

  11. Comment by OhJay on January 26, 2015 at 10:09 am

    Thanks to Ken and Dan for the replies. I appreciate it.

  12. Comment by Kay Glines on January 26, 2015 at 11:17 am

    I am an ex-UM (one of many thousands, btw). I attended a UM college, where one of the professors was a lesbian (a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation – everyone knew, it just wasn’t “official”) who shared an apartment with a lesbian companion her own age (both early 40s). She had a fling with a lesbian student (who was studying for the ministry), dumped her companion, moved in with the student (young enough to be her daughter), and the entire college knew about it but just ignored the whole thing. Today, that lesbian student is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ (it’s losing members even faster than the UM), and also teaches at one of the UCC seminaries (also in decline). It was my experience at the college that started me wondering about this denomination I had grown up – I wondered, don’t they have ANY standards at all? This lesbian professor was a deaconess in the UM, just one step removed from ordination, and it was understand that the student was preparing for ministry in the UM (and no loss to the UM that she moved on to the even more liberal UCC).

  13. Comment by Danielmormon on January 29, 2015 at 1:12 pm

    May God help us! The woman should have been warned that her behavior would lead to excommunication, and she should have been terminated from her position as an instructor at once, if she refused to recant her views and repent of her poor example.When we openly welcome sin we allow the devil to decide the content of the what is to be taught.

  14. Comment by MarcoPolo on January 29, 2015 at 11:09 pm

    “Sin blessing”, now THAT’s a new twist of lexicology!

    Aside from the archaic tenets of hegemonic religions, the expansion of the physiological and psychological knowledge of the human being is being challenged. And it seems, there will always be those who dig their heels in for old times sake, holding onto a prejudice that only serves them, and not the Greater Good of mankind, or the love of God!

    Yes, I clearly disagree with the idea and practice of denying fellow human beings the right of a blessed marriage, be they heterosexual or homosexual.

    Namaste!

  15. Comment by Pudentiana on January 31, 2015 at 1:09 pm

    When all is said and done, the real question is whether you consider the Bible to be inspired by the Creator. Science is only a revelation of what is physical. All people have a sin nature which is comprised of many characteristics to include sexual sin, lying, lying to oneself and lying to God.

  16. Comment by MarcoPolo on January 31, 2015 at 3:05 pm

    I agree with everything you stated as true and sound in regards to human beings and their innate natures (excuse the redundancy).
    And those “demons” assigned to visualize those natural tendencies pervade our historic records. The Bible being one of those records, though less Historical by content, it’s certainly pertinent in it’s intent, to describe vices worth avoiding!

    Holistically, I agree that the Bible and other Holy Literature was inspired by the Creator.

    People lie to themselves almost all the time. Subconscious efforts go unnoticed by the individual who participates in this human folly… but one cannot escape the Truth forever, and the “Final Judgement” often comes before the “Awakening”, leaving many a soul in peril.

    Buddhists figured it out very simply, and it doesn’t involve too much Patriarchy to get the message. So I kinda lean toward that Philosophy/Faith.

  17. Comment by Pudentiana on February 2, 2015 at 9:29 am

    The afterlife is a large part of Christian theology. Buddhism leaves me cold on that note. It does have many beautiful tenets though.

  18. Comment by MarcoPolo on February 2, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    Reincarnation isn’t too big a step away from the afterlife you refer to.

  19. Comment by Pudentiana on February 2, 2015 at 9:25 pm

    I know who I am. I don’t need to go through reruns. God is the one who perfects that which concerns me. I am in a personal relationship with my Creator. I am a real person, not an idea.

  20. Comment by Danielmormon on February 19, 2015 at 5:15 pm

    You dare not bless what God has cursed!

  21. Comment by MarcoPolo on February 19, 2015 at 6:27 pm

    I was actually quoting from one of the comments where the term “Sin Blessing” was used. However, I’m not seeing it currently in this thread.

    As for blessing something that God has cursed.
    I have the autonomy as a secularist, to bless anyone I deem deserving, so it wouldn’t be prudent to dare me.

    I do respect those like yourself who have adopted certain
    religious restrictions regarding the relationship between God and Man, and I don’t wish to irritate anyone by being disrespectful, so please don’t think I feel that you (or anybody) should alter their beliefs just because they are different than mine.
    Just don’t assume everybody sees it the same way.

    I do believe the Church will have to undergo a schism in order to accommodate the diversity among Methodists.

    Bless you, Sir.

  22. Comment by John S. on January 30, 2015 at 6:21 am

    The question of what they would do was not left unanswered. Anytime some stage managed gesture is used in place of real action the point is clear. Nothing will be done. The reprofession was not about credibility, it was about keeping the sheep in the dark and the money flowing to the Bishops.

  23. Comment by dogged on February 12, 2015 at 8:04 pm

    Leave it to the ecclesiastical trailblazers at the once-mighty UMC: Beginning with the swinging 60s, they spearheaded the decline in mainstream Protestantism with an unabashed embrace of modern theological and political Liberalism. The result was a stampede of members—straight out the door.
    They haven’t learned much since then. Sad.

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