Dorothee Benz

Dorothee Benz: “Stand Firm” Against Conservative “Persecution” in UMC

on June 7, 2016

Lesbian LGBTQ activist Dorothee Benz has called on progressives to “stand firm” against alleged persecution by conservatives in the United Methodist Church (UMC). She also challenged the denomination to liberalize on sexuality, allowing homosexual clergy to serve in the church and to permit clergy to perform same-sex weddings.

Benz made the comments on Sunday, June 5, at St. John’s UMC in Austin, Texas, during a sermon based on Galatians 5. She began her remarks by focusing on the UMC’s recent General Conference (GC).

“All the efforts to undo one iota of the church discrimination, against the ordination of LGBT people, against marriage, against using church funds to defend our human rights, all of these efforts were revoked,” Benz said. “The compromise proposals that so many moderates and institutionalists had set their hopes on went down in flames.”

She also addressed the special commission on sexuality recommended by the Council of Bishops (COB). GC agreed to delay votes on resolutions pertaining to sexuality until the commission makes its recommendations, perhaps at a special conference in 2018 or 2019. She said that “worse things would have happened” had GC actually voted on sexuality. Yet she continued that “a quick look at the history of the three previous commissions set up to study the issue should put to rest any hopes that the outcome will be different this time.”

She argued that the LGBTQ community was not the only one that lost at GC. She noted that advocates for women’s reproductive choice, fossil fuel divestment, BDS against Israel, countering Islamophobia, Black Lives Matter, and immigration all suffered defeat as well.

“And when it was all over, the Southern Baptist church issued a press release praising the UMC,” she said. “What more is there to say really?”

Benz went on to issue a strong challenge to the UMC, whom she portrayed as legalistic when it came to sexuality. She suggested the Book of Discipline was currently in conflict with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul, whom she seemingly proposed would give greater allowances to the LGBTQ community:

“So what’s it going to be, United Methodist Church? Are we going to love our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer neighbors and offer them pastoral care? Let our ministers officiate their weddings? Let them follow their call into ministry? Defend their rights in our society and in our world? Or are we going to stand on some crusty old piece of the Book of Discipline that says we can’t do anything? Jesus’ answer seems pretty clear, and so does Paul’s.”

She said love was more central to the message of Methodists and Christians than obedience to the minutia of the law. “What makes us Methodists, let alone Christians, isn’t that we follow every dot and tittle in the Book of Discipline,” she said. For Benz, these dots and tittles included rules against clergy living in same-sex relationships and performing same-sex weddings.

Later, Benz called out the Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) and other renewal advocates for their alleged role in persecuting LGBTQ people.

“I don’t care how many times Good News, and the IRD, and Bishop Scott Jones say the word ‘covenant,’ and say that we are breaking the covenant, when queer pastors speak with authenticity or straight pastors offer ministry to LGBTQ people,” Benz said. “They have no idea what the word means.”

She continued:

“Covenants are about relationships. And relationships are about how we treat each other. And the Bible tells us over and over, we are supposed to love one another. Denying people like T.C. Morrow the chance to answer her call to ministry isn’t about the covenant, nor is hounding people like Cynthia Meyer out of her pulpit. That’s not called loving your neighbor. It’s called persecution.”

Benz also denounced conservatives in general during her sermon. She said they opposed progressives in the “fight for the soul” of the UMC. She compared theological conservatives in the UMC to Catholic officials who opposed Galileo. She argued that conservatives’ supposed denial of “modern science” about LGBTQ people was similar to denying the heliocentricity of the solar system:

“We are in the middle of a fight for the soul of the United Methodist Church. And on the one side in our fight are conservatives, desperate to hold onto an archaic view of human sexuality, rejecting all modern scientific and medical knowledge of how sexuality actually works, and insistent on prosecuting and punishing those of us who understand that the Bible is in fact not a textbook about biology, any more than it is a textbook about astronomy. It took the Catholic Church 364 years to admit that Galileo was right, and I admit that that’s necessarily a very hopeful sign. But now the conservatives have church law on their side, and they have insisted that legalism is central to the vision of who we are as a church.

“On the other side, we have a different vision, one that accepts modern science, rejects selective biblical literalism, but more importantly one that believes that the essence of the law is the commandment to love our neighbor. It’s a vision of a church that is dynamic and changing, a church that responds new knowledge and new circumstances with a new paradigm that is rooted in the foundational understanding of our faith as centered in love.”

Concluding her sermon, Benz exhorted progressives in the UMC to “stand firm” in their “freedom” against persecution. She said Methodists faced a choice: “Stand with the oppressed, or placate the majority.”

  1. Comment by ConfessionPastor on June 7, 2016 at 5:00 pm

    So, I guess she is saying we can live any old way we want, right? Because of grace? Has she read the book of Romans, and seen what Paul actually said? I don’t think so. But the Bible like the Book of Discipline is really just useless material?

  2. Comment by Mikey R on June 7, 2016 at 5:31 pm

    Perhaps she should check out what Jesus said before she rants about 21st century liberal causes. He was very clear on marriage, gender and the sanctity of life. I’m going to stick with the Son of God on these.

  3. Comment by Philip on June 7, 2016 at 5:43 pm

    Sounds like a good basis for a new denomination. Oh, I forgot, humanists don’t participate in organized religion.

  4. Comment by Puddleglumm on June 7, 2016 at 10:00 pm

    I agree with Philip, Mike R, and Confession Pastor. The problem is that we have pastors in the UMC who aren’t even Christians. They are total apostates as described in Jude and elsewhere. Some UMC pastors sound more like Unitarian Universalists than Methodist Christians!

  5. Comment by Nat Alee on June 8, 2016 at 8:15 am

    She should probably join the Episcopal Church and be done with it. She’d be much happier in a church that doesn’t believe in anything.

  6. Comment by odot1 on June 8, 2016 at 8:24 am

    Thank you for your reporting on this issue. Normally I do not read these news items, since they concern a denomination I long ago left because I could see the writing on the wall. Still I am saddened, profoundly so, to read Benz’s words, which are so patently angry, vitriolic, and accusatory against orthodox Christians like me who engage in a pastoral care of all of God’s creation without abdicating to militant sexual deconstruction. Nor, however, do I take any joy in seeing the fruits of the lassitude of Methodists since the turn of the LAST century which I consider to be largely responsible for producing this kind of apostasy and for giving it a platform today. Still, when you adopt a “Christ as (or “of”) culture” model, you may end up with the Deutsche Christen movement, or you may end up with this, but to both orthodox Christians must simply say “Nein”, stand firm, and let God act in His time.

  7. Comment by Dan on June 8, 2016 at 10:52 am

    Antinomian heretic! Probably a Pelagian heretic too 🙂

  8. Comment by The Dove on June 8, 2016 at 11:32 am

    There is no “persecution” at all, they’re just peeved because the other mainlines are openly ordaining gays, while the UMs continue to be hypocrites about it – they accept it, just not “officially.”

  9. Comment by Joan Watson on June 8, 2016 at 1:24 pm

    I read her rambling rant on one of the liberal/progressive websites shortly before GC–she is such a lost soul in desperate need of God’s saving grace. Problem is she has alienated herself from those who could help her get there. She obviously does not have a clue what a covenant is. I find her gauntlet about “Stand with the oppressed or placate the majority” interesting–possibly an unintentional acknowledgment of the lostness of the cause she has vested herself in.

  10. Comment by eric pone on June 9, 2016 at 5:59 pm

    There appears based on the article and comments no middle ground. There is going to be a splitting of the baby. Has anyone considered though people in the middle who would leave the church and just stay home?The extremists on both sides seem to feel like the mushy middle will just go along with whatever they put on us. That is not correct. Many of the nones are people who could care less about either a conservative or a liberal mindset. They just want to experience God. And both sides have chased them to their homes, coffee shops, restaurants, golf courses etc and closed their ears and hearts to the church. It is sad that in many ways Jesus isn’t being exhorted to them because we are wasting energy and capital over how to split the baby. If either side “wins” the church dies in the US. Do folks realize this or are they just so set that allowing the it to whither is an ok propsition.

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