Panel Discusses New Sexual Ethics for United Methodists

A new United Methodist caucus called the Liberation Project, focused on casting a radical “liberationist” vision for the post-separation United Methodist Church (psUMC), hosted a panel discussion back in April promoting the new sexual ethics they want United Methodists to accept.

This event (available online) received limited attention at the time. But as the United Methodist Church prepares to split into the psUMC, which will affirm same-sex unions, and the Global Methodist Church, which will maintain the UMC’s historic and still-official standards, this Liberation Project discussion remains perhaps the most in-depth exploration I have seen so far, from any perspective, on how the psUMC may evolve on sexual ethics beyond the narrow matter of gay weddings.

Titled, “Addicted to Purity: Sex, Shame, and Liberation,” the Liberation Project Round Table focused heavily on criticizing so-called “purity culture.” The five panelists all serve in ministerial roles in various United Methodist congregations, one in each U.S. jurisdiction.

It is easy for us conservatives to decry how these emerging psUMC leaders, who mostly self-identify as LGBTQ, provocatively framed the biblical value of purity (of which the New Testament commands church leaders to set an example) in such negative terms as an addiction, without showing such concern about pornography addiction.

But it is important to compassionately recognize how there are real problems that have caused pain in the lives of some who resonate with the Liberation Project. Such problems mentioned by the panel included graceless legalism, burdening young women with double standards, I Kissed Dating Goodbye author Josh Harris’s once-widespread anti-dating stance (which, as panelist Tyler Sit of Minnesota noted, Harris has since renounced), people feeling shame about their God-given bodies, and such cringe-worthy anecdotes as a female ministry candidate being told she was too attractive. Panelist Austin Adkinson of the Pacific-Northwest Conference had a particularly stinging (but for some situations, fair) point about men in ministry who have “done something terribly wrong” going through supposed recovery processes that seemed primarily intended to “rehabilitate their PR images.”

However, despite the occasionally foul-mouthed presentation calling for a more nuanced approach to sexuality, the Liberation Project panelists generally seemed content to demonize purity culture with an overly broad brush, without clearly defining it. 

Evangelical pundit David French defines purity culture as “the elaborate set of extra-biblical rituals and teachings that became popular in the 1990s and were designed to build safeguards and ‘strongholds’ of sexual purity in Christian communities,” including purity rings and purity balls. But liberal denunciations of purity culture are often more sweepingly aimed against traditional biblical Christian sexual ethics.

Rev. Dr. Sara Garrard of New England recalled growing up in a conservative-church context and “slut-shaming” sexually active high-school friends. “Thank God I had friends who were having sex and still loved me,” she said.

The panel also gave one-sidedly negative treatment to pressures to dress modestly.  

But shouldn’t there be some ways to tell unmarried teenagers, especially professing Christians, that their sexual activity is sinful, without being a self-righteous jerk about it? And shouldn’t there be some place for Christians to take seriously the biblical values about dressing modestly, avoiding lust, and not being a stumbling block to others—without excesses of unfairly blaming women for male sin?

The Liberation Project seemed to leave little to no room for such middle ground. 

Rev. Adkinson shared as an allegedly more positive experience how he had grown up in a more liberal Nashville congregation whose youth group had a sex education program arranged by a choir member “who worked for Planned Parenthood as an educator.”

For all of the panelists’ gleeful deconstructions of conservative Christian standards, they did not fully explain their alternative sexual ethics for United Methodists. But anyone watching hoping to silence their consciences about their own sexual sins could have found plenty of encouragement from these church leaders to continue indulging in sexual activity beyond traditional biblical morality, without much need for restraint or repentance. Such a secularized sexual ethic is a natural result of the long history outlined in the Rev. Karen Booth’s aptly named book, Forgetting how to Blush: United Methodism’s Compromise with the Sexual Revolution.

The Liberation Project offered few clear boundaries in its sexual ethics for United Methodists. The panel said no to rape and abuse. Without elaborating, Adkinson called for “build[ing] consent culture beyond the obvious.” Rev. Dr. Jason Butler of North Carolina drew a firm line against “trafficking little girls into porn industry.”

Yet minimizing sexual taboos to the most extreme wrongs leaves plenty of room for other sins. 

Butler opposed “habitually sleeping around with a bunch of people in the church and destroying people’s lives.” But that wording left it unclear if he would see inherent moral problems with sleeping around with a bunch of people outside of the church, or within the church with less-than-habitual frequency.

Butler, the only panelist who did not identify as LGBTQ, even said, “I’ve literally told people, it’s none of my business who you’re with, who you’re sleeping with, who you’re having sex with. Honestly, I don’t care.” When asked about his ideal sexual ethic for the church, he quipped: “If there’s two adults and y’all are consenting, and you’re not harming one another and you’re not harming the systems, then I don’t feel like I have ANY place—I’m just a pastor—I don’t feel like have any place in your life to speak into that.”

He continued: “I don’t think I can just go and say ‘hey, you slept with somebody and now, like, oooo, you harmed your relationship with God, and you harmed your future relationship with this person,’” declaring that that was not necessarily true.

This could hardly be a more radical departure from Wesleyan spirituality. While Butler’s “just a pastor” language suggests a flippantly low view of ordination and of the church itself, the very heart of the early Wesleyan movement was members caring about each other enough to routinely inquire into each other’s personal lives and hold each other accountable for all sorts of sins. Any spirituality that dismisses such biblical teachings as the need to be washed, sanctified, and forgiven from such sins as sexual immorality, greed, or slander is no longer Wesleyan in any theologically and historically meaningful sense. 

Butler was hardly alone.

Rev. Sit affirmed Butler’s above-quoted remarks. Later, both Sit and Garrard enthusiastically cheered this comment from someone watching the livestream: “the church can say: we’re never going to tell you who to sleep with. We’re going to show you how to work on yourself so that you can show up in relationships as a whole and healthy person.”

Adkinson, who uses “he” as well as “they” pronouns, shared about making a point to tell couples in premarital counseling that “I had lived with a partner before I got married.” There was no hint of repentance when Austin shared this, suggesting that his point was less about honestly confessing his own past sins than to normalize acceptance of non-marital cohabitation among church folk.

Now divorced, Adkinson remarked, “I date all across the gender spectrum.”

Adkinson was earlier part of a public panel discussion affirming Christian support for polyamory (concurrent multiple sexual partners).

Garrard’s bio touts that she lives with a lesbian partner who is also a pastor.

At times, the influence of intersectional progressive sensibilities seemed apparent. Sit declared that racist killings by police would continue occurring “until we see like MAJOR, major defunding and abolition” of police departments, and that such concerns are “super-related to the topic of purity.” Victoria Sun Esparza of North Texas claimed that purity culture somehow leads to the separate evil of able-ism.

The Liberation Project’s theological foundations were less clear.

Various panelists lamented how church people were “all tainted” by Christianity’s long history of “layers of harm and control,” how some Christian purity culture experiences encouraged people to distrust their own bodies and experiences, and how this leads to people redirecting an unhealthy degree of trust in their pastors.

There certainly are unhealthy extremes in all of these areas. But this discussion showed comparatively very little on-the-other-hand concern for how we get tainted by cultural immorality and our own sinful natures, or the pitfalls of “if it feels good, do it” ethics.

Amidst eagerly blaming the church as a main, or perhaps the main, culprit for people becoming tainted in their sexualities, a common theme observed in the panel was a failure to take seriously the reality of the Fall and its effects. The Liberation Project’s sexual ethics panel expressed little interest in such biblical teachings as the deceitfulness of the human heart or Jesus Christ’s warning against lust, or even how many United Methodist congregations regularly confess how they have sinned in thought, word, and deed.

Sit was dismissive of the possibility of sinning in thought, decrying how Christian purity culture, like “a carceral state empire,” teaches “that you have to police your thoughts and police your minds” and that there are some thoughts and desires that are unacceptable.

In an odd way, I am grateful for the Liberation Project for so openly discussing the future trajectories of liberal Methodism on sexual morality matters besides same-sex weddings. This should help clarify the options ahead as the United Methodist Church prepares to divide.