A recent United Methodist Association of Retired Clergy (UMARC) webinar titled “Gladly Choosing To Be United Methodist” featured five United Methodist clergy exchanging views on how affirmation of LGBTQ-identifying persons might unfold across congregations in a post-separation United Methodist Church.
The Rev. Dr. Rebekah Miles, Professor of Theology and Ethics at United Methodist-affiliated Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas, hosted the Rev. Dr. Kay Palmer Marsh, the Rev. Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Rev. Will Ed Green, and the Rev. Dr. Israel Alvaran.
UMARC pursues an “inclusive” United Methodist Church (UMC), especially for LGBTQ laity, clergy, and candidates for ministry. This webinar was the third session of the UMARC series. Previous sessions examined the processes and different theologies between the UMC and the newly launched Global Methodist Church (GMC).
Bigham-Tsai, a candidate for bishop in the UMC North Central Jurisdiction, decided to be a Methodist because of the UMC’s theology of grace reaching out to people. Bigham-Tsai grew up as a Baptist; however, during her seminary education, she realized that her calling did not align with that of Baptist churches and decided to become a Methodist.
“I believe we have an approach to the Gospel that will speak to 21st-century people,” said Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas.
Hamilton was initially baptized Catholic and studied to be a Pentecostal preacher. During that training, he read the United Methodist Book of Discipline and joined the UMC.
“I thought, this is what I’ve been looking for: a faith of both the intellect and a heart…where people could have questions and a faith that called people to action to live out their faith in the world,” Hamilton recalled.
Green, who self-identifies as gay and is a former associate pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., believes that the UMC’s theology focusing on grace and sanctification suits well the critical concerns of this generation.
“I gladly choose to stay so that I can stand in the gap for the little queer kids sitting in the pews of churches…so that they don’t have to wonder,” Green exclaimed. He explained that he had fought hard to “build the church for queers”, claiming that he was expelled from a church as a candidate for ministry in 2017.
While ministers found hope in many aspects of the UMC, they pointed to what they said was a problematic lack of church conversation about inclusion of LGBTQIA-identifying persons, despite repeated discussion of the matter across decades at General Conference.
“My LGBTQ siblings (church members) have been and are experiencing trauma…I believe that this is something we’re going to have to attend to,” said Bigham-Tsai.
Philippines Annual Conference member Alvaran, self-described as the “only out gay clergy” from an (overseas) Central Conference, questioned what LGBTQ inclusion looks like: “What does all this mean for the full inclusion of all persons who are LGBTQ plus…in our church and its ministries?”
Hamilton clarified that LGBTQ inclusion is a matter of interpreting scripture and understanding the nature of scripture.
“I think if we can recognize this is about how we read and interpret scripture…there’s going to be room for us to have conversations…ultimately leads to greater inclusion,” Hamilton affirmed. He emphasized that United Methodists have to talk to each other with grace, “then, the Holy Spirit is going to lead everybody else in that direction.”
“It’s just going to be different paces in different places,” the Kansas pastor reiterated.
Bigham-Tsai claimed that United Methodists tend to think of LGBTQ inclusion as a high-level General Conference matter or a change in the Book of Discipline. Instead, Bigham-Tsai proposed that it is a fundamentally relational issue, and the change would happen at the local church, where people can engage with LGBTQ church members.
“The General Conference is going to follow the change…it is not going to lead the change,” Bigham-Tsai insisted.
Miles questioned: “What can we do to help work toward full LGBTQ inclusion in our church?”
Green declared: “We don’t need the Book of Discipline to give us permission to be the people of God…” He highlighted that the United Methodists must start the conversations about LGBTQ issues regardless of what the Book of Discipline states. “It’s not okay to keep telling us to wait or be patient,” Green urged to start the conversation, criticizing “leaders at every level of the church to remember that fidelity to the institution over the faithful gifts of queer people is causing harm…”
Bigham-Tsai conformed to having conversations about LGBTQ inclusion. However, she argued that these conversations should be based on personal relationships, not on “intellectual arguments over scripture.”
Hamilton also agreed that these issues should be solved by cultivating relationships, but he pointed out that many churches do not have a chance to encounter a queer person in their congregation. “It’s hard. It’s just harder,” Hamilton concluded.
At the end of the webinar, Marsh, an ordained elder in the Mountain Sky Conference, said the United Methodists are in the process of discernment to make the UMC inclusive. Marsh delightedly expected that the postponed UMC General Conference in 2024 would open a path toward greater inclusion, describing it as a “Big Tent Church.”
Comment by Anthony on July 8, 2022 at 11:13 am
These people must be truly clueless as to the Gospel -Christ crucified – the Wesleyan way of salvation, any understanding of salvation. There is but one description- what they’re advocating is pure heresy, bordering on paganism. “Full inclusion” and “affirming” means but one thing – the welcoming of at least this sinful form of sexual immorality into the church, affirming it, celebrating it, and waiving repentance for this carved out sin. Yep, that’s gonna be the “big tent” where orthodox Wesleyan Methodists will be welcomed and respected. Sure thing. But, this Post Separation United Methodism will have to keep building bigger tents going forward in order to accommodate the sinful-pagan practices, some of which haven’t been invented yet, that will arrive and demand equal treatment.
Comment by Jeff on July 8, 2022 at 11:34 am
Untied Methodism: queer, queer, queer, queer, queer Queer QUEER!!!!!
ALL queer, ALL the time! QUEER!!!!! QUEER!!!!! QUEER!!!!!
Tiresome. And deadly to the soul, since with all the QUEER!!!!! QUEER!!!!! QUEER!!!!! they have left no voice left to proclaim LORD Jesus and His WORD. To this gang of heretics, Jesus is not LORD, He is just another of their worldly, queerloving pals.
There will come a time of reckoning.
Comment by Brian Evers on July 8, 2022 at 1:46 pm
The path is wide and easy to…
Comment by Tom on July 8, 2022 at 5:40 pm
So when is this separation going to take place? Enough already!
Comment by Steve on July 8, 2022 at 8:50 pm
After watching this and Adam Hamilton’s other discussion posted here last week, it has become apparent that the Progressive UMC talking points is to praise the GMC and offering “love” to those UMC churches who want to join it. (here is another UMC progressive repeating the same argument: https://um-insight.net/in-the-church/umc-future/they-will-know-we-are-methodists-by-our-love/).
They all say the same thing: (1) “Progressives/Centrists just have differing theological stances and if traditionalists (or whatever they want to call those who oppose changing the UMC stance on marriage) are more comfortable in the GMC, Progressives/Centrists should show them love and support them in leaving – even though Progressives/Centrists wish they would stay.” and (2) “The GMC will be a strong believing denomination that the psUMC could probably learn something from.” The last one is repeated frequently amongst the Progressives/Centrists UMC, especially Hamilton.
So what does this mean? It means even the Progressives/Centrists know they have no hope in the UMC unless the traditionalists leave. They know that UMC traditionalists are growing in numbers while the Progressives/Centrists are in decline. The PCA is fighting back against the woke take ver of their denomination. UMC traditionalists have the opportunity to do the same. The Progressives/Centrists know it.
Comment by George on July 9, 2022 at 12:30 pm
Accommodation encourages ultimate destruction of those “walking in darkness.” They need LIGHT! They don’t need to be told they should “embrace the darkness.” Commentators are correct that it is the lack of understanding of the gospel. This is the essential problem in the institutional church. It is ruled by “the world” and the demonic powers that infect it. “The ship in the sea is right. The sea in the ship is wrong. The church in the world is right. The world in the church is wrong.” The former produces temporal physical death and the later, eternal spiritual death.
Comment by JoeR on July 9, 2022 at 1:12 pm
UMC leadership going back close to 50 years has abdicated its authority. The Book of Non-Discipline is very clear as to actions needed to deal with those who choose to go against written policy. For whatever reasons UMC leadership took a Sgt Schultz approach of “I know nuthink, nuthink!” Rather than deal with the issues. Worthless.
Comment by Anothony on July 9, 2022 at 1:54 pm
Steve, you say — “After watching this and Adam Hamilton’s other discussion posted here last week, it has become apparent that the Progressive UMC talking points is to praise the GMC and offering “love” to those UMC churches who want to join it.”
Progressive bishops extorting money from traditionalists who want to leave the UMC is love on the one hand and praise for the GMC on the other?
Comment by Search4Truth on July 9, 2022 at 2:42 pm
Something I don’t understand, if these people want to reject Christian teaching, why do they insist on calling themselves Christians? Wouldn’t it be easier to just start a new religion? L. Ron Hubbard got rich doing just that.
Comment by Loren J Golden on July 10, 2022 at 6:03 pm
S4T,
In order for a religion to work, at least according to the world’s standards, you have to possess something that people want.
Christianity, of course, does this best, because it correctly identifies the problem that every person who has ever lived possesses (namely, sin), its consequences (everlasting punishment after death), and presents the only satisfactory solution—Christ died for our sins on the Cross and rose from the grave afterward, so that all those who look to Him in faith and repentance will be delivered from sin and its penalty. There are costs associated with discipleship with Christ, of course, and Christianity is up-front about those.
Scientology, for all its hype and celebrity converts, really does not have many converts. Wikipedia reports that the “Church” (a misnomer, because the word church is derived from the Greek word κυριακή, which means, “belonging to the Lord,” and Scientology neither teaches nor denies the existence of transcendent deities) of Scientology in 2007 claimed 3.5 million members in the US alone, but a 2001 study by CUNY stated that only “55,000 people in the United States would, if asked to identify their religion, have stated Scientology.”
What Hamilton and his friends have to offer is a way to think of oneself as “Christian” without being required to believe Biblical doctrines that are offensive to contemporary society. So, if you don’t want to believe what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, all you have to do is deposit it in Hamilton’s infamous “third bucket,” and suddenly, God does not truly care what you do sexually.
It is essentially the same tactic that the Mainline Protestant Church followed a century ago, when it jettisoned the “Fundamentals” of Biblical Inerrancy, the Virgin Birth, the Substitutionary Atonement, the Bodily Resurrection, the historicity of the Lord Jesus’ miracles, and promise of His Second Coming, in what has become known as the “Fundamentalist/Modernist Controversy,” making these doctrines optional and teaching future pastors that Christians were not required to believe them. It opened the door for the so-called “Social Gospel” (which is no Gospel at all, but merely a retread of the old Pelagian heresy of works righteousness), and for nearly a half century, the Mainline Protestant Church prospered. Not so today, for all the Mainline Protestant denominations, without exception, have been hemorrhaging members for a half century or more.
There will always be a market for a “Christianity” that compromises on Biblical doctrines. The problem is that this market is to be found exclusively inside the pale of the institutional Church—nobody outside the institutional Church has any genuine interest in joining a church that compromises its foundational principles, howsoever much they might find it useful. The problem is compounded, in that the Mainline Protestant denominations are no longer the only churches that are doing this anymore—the so-called “Evangelical Left” non-denominational churches are also getting into the business of compromising on Biblical teachings regarding human sexuality, without the added Modernist baggage of denying the supernatural claims of Scripture, that the Mainline Protestant denominations are lugging along.
Further complicating matters, watered-down Christianity has no staying power. Although some folks are quite content with a “Christianity” that makes few demands of them regarding metaphysical beliefs—some of them for generations—most people (myself included) wise up and realize that the compromised church has nothing to offer them that the world does not already have in spades, albeit without the added baggage of unpopular institutional religion. Such individuals either leave the compromised churches for Biblically-grounded churches, or else they leave Christianity altogether.
What Hamilton and his cohorts are banking on, is that the more positive face they put on compromised United Methodism, the more folks will want to stay and not jump ship to Global Methodism. Hamilton’s claim that, “We have an approach to the Gospel that will speak to 21st-century people,” is, to put it bluntly, hogwash. If one can dump the Bible’s injunctions against homosexuality and transgenderism into Hamilton’s “third bucket,” why cannot they do the same with Scriptural injunctions against any other sin that they have committed, coming to the conclusion that they “never ever reflected the heart of God?” But if he can get enough Methodists to believe it—and remember, his congregation has the largest membership of any within the pale of the UMC, so he can be quite persuasive—he and his cohorts will have accomplished their goal.
But to answer your question, they cannot go outside the pale of the Church, to advocate for their new religion, because that is not where their target market is.
Comment by Anthony on July 11, 2022 at 11:56 am
Loren,
That is one of the finest descriptions of the Great Lie to date — that traditional-orthodox Methodists will continue to have a home, be welcomed, and be respected in this future big tent United Methodist Church. Thank you and AMEN!
(NOTE – your post needs to be posted across all orthodox Methodist websites from Good News across the rest.)
In worshiping yesterday with Mt Bethel Church, formerly Mt Bethel UMC, here in the besieged North Georgia Conference of the UMC, that worship service shed the chains for that congregation of the North Ga Conference bishop, the liberal hierarchy of the general church, and this Adam Hamilton heresy by celebrating the official departure of Mt Bethel from the UMC — announced to a standing ovation followed by a powerful, uncompromising Wesleyan Gospel sermon by Rev. Jody Ray.
Rev. Ray, who has uncompromisingly defended orthodox Wesleyan Methodism and the faith once for all handed down to the saints these past 30+ months, also said that Mt Bethel would remain Methodist but process through several months of healing before deciding on a future Methodist affiliation. Praise God, what a glorious day it was!
All traditional Methodists across the globe owe Rev. Jody Ray our deepest gratitude – even as he repeatedly says this is not about him.
Comment by Loren J Golden on July 11, 2022 at 7:45 pm
Thank-you for the word of encouragement, Anthony.
Comment by Loren J Golden on July 11, 2022 at 10:19 pm
“(Adam) Hamilton clarified that LGBTQ inclusion is a matter of interpreting scripture and understanding the nature of scripture. ‘I think if we can recognize this is about how we read and interpret scripture…there’s going to be room for us to have conversations…ultimately leads to greater inclusion,’ Hamilton affirmed. He emphasized that United Methodists have to talk to each other with grace, ‘then, the Holy Spirit is going to lead everybody else in that direction.’”
The only part of that statement with which I agree, is the statement that all Christians need to talk with one another, and with others, with grace. But not with grace alone.
“Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (Col. 4.5-6)
And again, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. … For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (Jn. 1.14,17)
And perhaps more to the point, “(The Lord Jesus) gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up into him who is the head, into Christ.” (Eph. 4.11-15, emphasis added)
What is the purpose of the grace of God? For what purpose does He show grace? Is it so that we should “continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom. 6.1-2) Is it that we should “sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom. 6.15-16) And make no mistake: homosexuality, transgenderism, and the like are wicked slaveowners that will bear their willing and obedient slaves to the grave of eternal punishment after death—no less so than adultery, viewing pornography, and all other forms of sexual immorality. “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Rom. 2.3-4, emphasis added)
The grace of God is not meant for the Church of God to include in her pale “LGBTQ persons” who find their identity in being L, G, B, T, or Q. For such persons find their identity in their sin! But the Lord Jesus died on Calvary’s Cross to atone for sins like L, G, B, T, and Q, so that those who commit them might repent of them and find their identity instead in Him!
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality (Gk. μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται, the passive and active partners, respectively, in male homosexual intercourse), nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers (including revilers of “LGBTQ persons”), nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (I Cor. 6.9-11, emphasis added)
The grace of God is not found in an uncritical acceptance of sinners in their sins, but a knowing love for sinners despite their sin, and a deep yearning for them to be free from enslavement to sin and death. For the Son of Man said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Mt. 9.13, Mk. 2.17, Lk. 5.32) And again, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Lk. 19.10)
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather than he should turn from his way and live? … Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.” (Ezek. 18.23,30-32)
Comment by Jeff on July 11, 2022 at 10:54 pm
Loren,
Your posts on this comment thread and other posts of yours are good stuff. This in particular is profitable to consider:
“The grace of God is not meant for the Church of God to include in her pale “LGBTQ persons” who find their identity in being L, G, B, T, or Q. For such persons find their identity in their sin! But the Lord Jesus died on Calvary’s Cross to atone for sins like L, G, B, T, and Q, so that those who commit them might repent of them and find their identity instead in Him!”
As Anthony suggested, why don’t you try to write for a publication with wider readership than the comments section of JE?
In addition to Anthony’s suggestion, please consider stream.org and also firebrandmag.com.
Blessings
Jeff
Comment by Steve on July 14, 2022 at 4:05 pm
Anthony,
You are aware that the GMC also requires payment to disaffiliate right? They just place a lien on church property rather than a trust clause. It’s in their traditional BOD under disaffiliation.