Leading Bishops Link United Methodism, Disaffiliations, Club Q Murders

In responding to the recent Club Q murders, two prominent liberal United Methodist bishops indicated what they really think of more conservative church members. In pointed contrast to the claims and hopes that the United Methodist Church could be a place of loving unity amidst diversity of beliefs, these key denominational officials insist on characterizing views contrary to their own as “eventually giv[ing] rise to violence and death.”

On November 19, a gunman opened fire in Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, murdering five and wounding many more. Such senseless violence against precious individuals loved by God and created in His image was a terrible evil. Mourning the lost lives and extending sympathy is certainly in order.

Within 24 hours, Karen Oliveto, the disputed bishop of the United Methodist Church’s Denver-based Mountain Sky Conference, wasted no time in rushing out an extended statement (later posted on her conference website) that went much further. After two introductory paragraphs noting the Club Q massacre, official United Methodist disapproval of homosexual practice, and recent disaffiliations of theologically orthodox congregations from our denomination, Oliveto insists “There is a blood red thread that runs through all this, that eventually gives rise to violence and death.”

Then Bishop Latrelle Easterling, president of the Northeastern Jurisdiction College of Bishops, quickly promoted Oliveto’s statement, and even emailed the full statement, expressing her cross-country agreement to clergy and laity in both the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Conferences. 

Of course, it is inflammatory to suggest that United Methodists somehow share blame for the Club Q mass murders.

It is not even clear that this was any sort of anti-LGBTQ hate crime, as these bishops suggest. In fact, the suspect is a member of the LGBTQ community, identifying as “non-binary” gendered and using they/them pronouns, and the motive for the murders was not immediately clear to investigators.

Just because a mass murder was committed against Club Q patrons does not necessarily mean that victims were targeted because they were LGBTQ. In 1973, a far deadlier arson attack against a gay bar in New Orleans, the Upstairs Lounge, killed 32 people. But that was never proven to have been driven by anti-gay bias (in contrast to sad subsequent behavior of police and others), and the main suspect was “a troubled and violent patron who had been ejected from the bar moments earlier after a fight.”

Even if it later turns out that the Club Q killer was somehow motivated by anti-gay hatred, it is still absurd to suggest that United Methodism—and by extension, literally billions of Christians, Muslims, and others over the centuries who have disapproved of homosexual practice—are connected by some “blood-red thread” of blame. We have previously refuted such arguments.

The awful reality is that hate crimes target all sorts of ethnic, religious, political, and cultural groups. Anyone can decry such evil acts without necessarily affirming the distinctive beliefs or practices of the targeted group. After Anders Behring Breivik slaughtered dozens of people connected with Norway’s Labor Party, agreeing with that party’s particular political platform did not become a necessary condition of genuinely decrying those murders. One can support victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes without embracing the Islamic religion (or without following Oliveto’s example of bizarrely declaring “WE ARE ALL MUSLIMS”).

These United Methodist bishops insistence on “a blood red thread” linking the Club Q murders with theologically orthodox United Methodists, and insisting that the faith of the latter “eventually gives rise to violence and death” poisons the very possibility of having a genuinely tolerant, diverse, democratic society. It suggests that disagreement necessitates hatred, even violence.

Liberal denominational officials have claimed that there will still be “a place” in the UMC for traditionalist believers. But what sort of limited “place” might this be? A preview was offered at earlier this month, when the North Central Jurisdiction (NCJ) subjected all delegates present to a lengthy, heavy-handed re-education session about the alleged evils of churches failing to embrace secular LGBTQ liberationist ideology. One clear message was that you cannot be truly loving if you hold more traditional theological and moral values.

Furthermore, Oliveto’s and Easterling’s connecting “a blood red thread” between moral disapproval of non-marital sexual behaviors with violent hatred of people is profoundly unchristian (even aside from collapsing the UMC Discipline’s crucial distinction between persons and practices). Biblical Christianity, with the humility that must come from recognizing our own desperate need of salvation, provides the surest foundation for loving others in the midst of even deep disagreements.

There are plenty of hypocrisies in Oliveto’s and Easterling’s responses.

As with the NCJ’s “LGBTQ exercise,” they talk sanctimoniously about the need for conservatives—who they accuse of failing to “lean into the complexities of another’s life as revealed through pastoral care”—to have “open hearts to listen deeply to stories” of particular kinds of sexual minorities. But when have such leaders ever sought to share or “listen deeply” to the stories of formerly transgendered individuals who have “de-transitioned,” of same-sex-attracted Christians who are committed to orthodox faith and celibate lives, or even, yes, of those who have experienced dramatic diminishments of previous same-sex attractions? These bishops also repeat the suggestion that John Wesley was some sort of early LGTBTQ liberationist ally because of his ministry with a Mr. Blair (which has been refuted here). Apparently, facts and personal stories aren’t worth acknowledging if they don’t serve the preconceived political narrative.

It was a bit jarring to see Easterling introduce Oliveto’s statement by touting the values of “hold[ing] life in the highest regard” and “stand[ing] for the recognized humanity and right to life of all people” when both bishops have forcefully defended dehumanization and abortion violence against developing babies, in rather unqualified ways (see here, here, here, and here).

Christians of all stripes must extend compassion to people experiencing same-sex attractions or gender dysphoria. Progressive Christians do not have a monopoly on love.

But Oliveto and Easterling insisting on “a blood-red thread” connecting the Club Q murders and the United Methodist Discipline, painting biblical values on sexual morality as “eventually giv[ing] rise to violence and death,” using such rhetoric as “If lgbtq+ persons are truly of sacred worth, there can be only one answer” serves to shut down genuine dialogue and critical thinking.

These United Methodist bishops even talk about how truly valuing the lives of members of the LGBTQ community “requires us” to not just acknowledge that all people are created in the image of God, but to go much further by agreeing with their unbiblical and theologically universalist language of seeing all people as automatically “children of God.”

At one point, Oliveto and Easterling particularly target conservative congregations “that have chosen to leave The United Methodist Church” with judgmental questions, asking if they will really be compassionate towards hurting LGBTQ+ members after this massacre. 

Oliveto and Easterling may offer an instructive window into the motivations of many liberal United Methodist officials. If the faith of orthodox United Methodists and the Club Q murders are really closely connected by “a blood red thread” and if the former truly “eventually gives rise to violence and death,” then the religion believed and practiced by traditionalist Methodists is necessarily, inherently evil, harmful, and dangerous.

At the 2019 General Conference, Oliveto and Easterling’s now-fellow Bishop Tom Berlin (the first choice in recent bishop elections in the previously conservative-leaning Southeast) infamously characterized traditionalist values of biblical morality and Wesleyan accountability as like a sickening “virus” like Ebola that would harmfully spread and sicken the church (see page 64/488).

And what do you do with a virus? You do not, in the analogy of “big tent UMC” propagandists, relativistically support those who choose infection and celebrating their thriving alongside the non-infected. No, you seek to eradicate the virus!

If it is a potentially deadly virus, you may take extreme measures to forcibly isolate the infected until you make sure they are “cured.”

And if you find anyone intentionally spreading a sickening virus, you punish them, harshly.

With such rhetoric from Bishops Oliveto, Easterling, and Berlin, along with such heavy-handed re-education efforts by the NCJ leadership, how can anyone really expect the liberalized UMC to indefinitely welcome traditionalists into leadership, tolerate our spreading orthodox values, and give up on converting us?

From the outside, many have wondered how such liberal United Methodist officials can justify their behavior. Regardless of their family history, how can they justify infiltrating the leadership of a denomination whose official doctrine and morals they now reject, and then using their positions to divorce the UMC from its historic teachings and bully those who disagree with this agenda? How can they justify taking over all of our denomination’s assets? Extracting such major, painful, and unfair concessions from traditionalists and then, after those concessions were secure, betraying their promises to honor their end of the bargain? Being so needlessly punitive in mistreating disaffiliating congregations (with Oliveto and Easterling being two of the worst offenders)?

But now liberal officials have made clear their belief that traditionalists cannot possibly be truly loving and compassionate. Oliveto and Easterling say they are still very concerned about what congregations who have already decided to disaffiliate from United Methodism believe and do, because they are connected by “a blood red thread” to the Club Q mass murders. When bishops tell us that they really see traditionalist Methodists as spreading a harmful virus that “eventually gives rise to violence and death,” we should believe that they mean it.

Liberal United Methodist leaders tend to live within self-reinforcing ideological echo chambers. So these officials can keep telling themselves that they are the ones advancing justice, their goals justify their means, and those who complain of mistreatment are not worth listening to, because those people are on the side of injustice and must be constrained in their ability to spread evil.

It is bad enough when United Methodist leaders characterize those with different views as promoters of evil, dangerous menaces to church and society, and morally culpable in mass murder.

It is made worse when such church leaders’ theology has secularized to the point of effectively abandoning important biblical truths. Failing to acknowledge the activity of the devil and demons (or in Oliveto’s case, not seeing demonic activity as inherently bad) easily leads to demon-izing human opponents, seeing these people as primary sources of evil. Not believing in the need to leave room for the very real wrath and judgment of God easily adds an extra fierceness towards how one treats people perceived as evildoers. And failing to see oneself as a sinner in no less need than others of unearned forgiveness through the blood of Jesus easily leads to hateful judgmentalism.

In our denomination’s slow-motion separation, we have the ingredients for an increasingly nasty, bitter divorce.

God help us.