Megan Basham’s new book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda briefly notes that the Arcus Foundation from 2013-2018 gave $2 million to the LGBTQ advocacy group Reconciling Ministries Network, which worked to liberalize church teaching on marriage and sex in the United Methodist Church. Since the church split over sexuality, she surmises the money was “well spent.” (This part of her book is excerpted here.)
As my friend Karen Booth wrote in her 2012 book Forgetting How to Blush: United Methodism’s Compromise with the Sexual Revolution, the Arcus Foundation was already giving RMN hundreds of thousands of dollars prior to 2013. In 2009 and 2011, there were grants of $300,000. In 2007, there was a $100,000 grant.
As a participant in the United Methodist wars since the late 1980s, including every governing General Conference since 1992 (except for 2024), I observed firsthand RMN’s expansion thanks to Arcus grants, especially at the 2012 General Conference in Tampa, Florida. As far as I can tell, Arcus wasted their money. There was lots of hoopla and there was plenty of noise. But the voting results were the same. Overseas delegates ate the generous daily lunches provided by RMN, listened to their speakers, and then proceeded to vote with U.S. traditionalists.
RMN’s legislative cause was decisively defeated at the 2008 and 2012 General Conferences, despite all their additional programs. I’m unaware of any Arcus grants after 2018. If they stopped the grants, it was for good reason. They were ineffective. At the 2019 General Conference, called to focus exclusively on the church’s sexuality policies, progressives were stunned when defeated.
Traditionalists, thanks to the votes of growing churches in Africa, could have continued to win legislatively, keeping the church teaching on sexuality orthodox, indefinitely, at least on paper. But traditionalists realized the official stance no longer mattered very much. The U.S. part of the denomination, in contrast to the growing African churches, was shrinking and further liberalizing.
Increasingly, parts of the U.S. church disregarded official church law on sexuality. But even more importantly, the U.S. part of the church had no interest in reversing its 60-year membership decline. It had no interest in evangelism, personal salvation or personal holiness, key themes for historic Methodist teaching. And no church can grow without believing in and practicing evangelism.
So U.S. traditionalists, having secured in 2019 the temporary right to exit the denomination with church property before the end of 2023 (with a few local regions allowing more exits this year), have done so to the tune of nearly 8,000 congregations, or 26 percent of the denomination in the U.S. This number far exceeded what both traditionalists themselves and progressives expected. Without African votes, which gained this extraordinary exit process, U.S. traditionalists would long ago have lost nearly everything.
Of course, the 2024 General Conference, after the traditionalist exit, easily liberalized church sexuality teaching. There’s little to no reason to think Arcus funds played any significant role.
United Methodism was the last major Mainline Protestant denomination officially to sexually liberalize only because of the growing overseas African membership. Without the Africans, United Methodism would likely have liberalized at the 2004 General Conference. Arcus funding for RMN did not change any minds that I ever saw across years.
Arguably, RMN played no significant role in United Methodism’s eventual liberalization. It was a loud and provocative caucus that organized colorful protests and made demands. Arguably, RMN tactics unnecessarily made enemies and even postponed liberalization.
United Methodism theologically liberalized early in the 20th century. It was theologically modernist for most of the 20th century. Process Theology was big in the 1960s and 1970s. When modernism faded, postmodern identity politics that included sexual liberalization ascended. Absent firm scriptural authority and a stress on personal holiness, there was nothing in the United Methodist ethos that could stop it. The Methodist evangelical subculture in the U.S. with the Africans delayed it.
Outside dollars played little to no role in accelerating what was already unfolding across decades. Why did theological liberalization prevail? It was thanks to unquestioning funding by conservative lay people, who mostly were not interested in the details of church governance. At any point they could have defunded the progressive church bureaucracy, but they never did. Many were proud about their unquestioning financial support for the denomination. Just this week I learned about a conservative congregation that is closing, not having even tried to exit, and many there want to give their remaining funds to the denomination.
When I entered United Methodist politics in the late 1980s, concerned about pro-Marxist Liberation Theology in the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, I began to phone churches in my community of Northern Virginia. Knowing clergy would not help, I tracked down lay leaders. Some were progressive and hostile. Some were supportive. The vast majority were indifferent. One prominent lay leader wrote to me that he had long shared my concerns but, under absolutely no circumstances, should the missions board be defunded. Paying “apportionments,” or support for the national and local church bureaucracy, was a religious rite of itself. And even evangelical United Methodist clergy were afraid to touch it, knowing it could be a career ender.
So for many decades conservative lay people generously funded the progressive church bureaucracy that liberalized the denomination theologically and sexually. The Arcus grants across a few years were peanuts compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars annually that conservative laity gave the progressive institution.
Even if RMN, with its several years of Arcus funds, had never existed, the final result would have been the same. The sexual liberalization was supported by most U.S. clergy, the bishops, the national church agencies, and nearly all the seminaries. Their momentum, dating back a century, did not need RMN or Arcus.
It’s more satisfying to blame outside forces. But United Methodist conservatives, loyal to financially supporting the institution across generations, underwrote the denomination’s liberalization. I think the same is largely true for other liberal Mainline Protestant denominations.
When we reflect on what is wrong with the church, we should always begin with ourselves
Comment by Jon Wilson on August 21, 2024 at 3:39 pm
Right on the money…as it were. Bishops and superintendents threatened churches that withheld apportionments: “well, you won’t get a pastor,” or “we’ll send a retired clergyperson, or a really left-wing pastor”. To clergy they said,” we’ll find charges against you” or “you’ll find out just how bad some appointments can be.” Oh yeah. I remember. Leaving (22 years ago) felt like freedom.
Comment by orter.t on August 21, 2024 at 4:11 pm
And some of us at the grassroots had no clue what was happening at the upper echelons. When things got interesting locally in 2001, which had nothing to do with the sexuality debate, I started cruising the internet listening to every UM voice I could find. I was stunned at what I heard. By the time GC 2019 rolled around my view of the UMC was cats with their tails tied together. I had no idea it had degenerated into competing factions jockeying for position and control.
Comment by MikeB on August 21, 2024 at 7:45 pm
Mark,
I appreciate your insight as always, indeed it is much easier to see the world as evil outsiders coming in to infiltrate the church in one fell swoop.
But you are right, it took decades, decades where it could have been stopped, where godly men and women allowed this to thrive.
I sometimes wonder if professors and students at seminary over the years were trying to out compete each other for an A, do not then push themselves to create and reward more and more “creative” and humanist thesis that pull further from the Word.
Because if everyone could submit the same paper, why would grades exist…
Thank you for correcting the record on this, though I do wonder if this is not targeted at the independent evangelical churches foremost.
Comment by Randy on August 22, 2024 at 12:26 am
So much falseness has been reported about Basham’s book—the publisher s considering its withdrawal—that I’m surprised that anyone who claims to be an honest observer would cite it as an authority. I recall Jesus saying something about blind guides.
Comment by MikeB on August 23, 2024 at 12:19 pm
Randy,
Per your comment I have been reading into criticism of the book.
J.D. Greear had an amazingly enlightening essay in response. But he does admit that there is often strong pressure on powerful Pastors to conform to elite society’s social expectations and talk quieter on the sin talk.
But while some people who have pushed back hard have obviously gone post biblical, even those people make a valid point that the solution is not to be wedded to a MAGA world either.
While some biblical direction is incredibly clear, such as “do not encourage homosexuality”, in other cases on Immigration, or Racial Relations, the Right Wing nationalist position is also non-biblical.
It is true that Satan pulls people out of the church from both directions.
Comment by Tim on August 24, 2024 at 11:13 am
I think this analysis of the UMC ignores the larger culture war raging in America. We are indeed becoming a post-Christian nation… but most people have left not because of Satan, but because the broader church has been reprehensible. The denominations that scream the loudest about sexual morality have been rocked with sexual abuse scandals. Prosperity theology, contempt for the poor, and xenophobia seem to be tolerated by Christian leaders. Leviticus 19:33-34 apparently doesn’t matter but Leviticus 18:22 is worth a schism over.
The story of the UMC’s trajectory is very sad. Most Methodists I know liked being the big tent church and really just want to focus on ministry and personal holiness. The people listed in this article as “conservatives supporting the liberal cause” were people trying to keep the lights on at UMCOR and trying to keep the church relevant in a world that is rightly suspicious of religion. For the most part they were responding faithfully to Jesus’s call
Comment by MikeB on August 24, 2024 at 11:42 am
Tim,
The Word of God is perfect, to any believer, if we are out of alignment with his commandments then it is we who need to change.
There is sin all over the church, that is why Christ died, we need Him, we cannot do it on our own. He sees us when we fall, and he picks us back up. The thief on the cross sinned his entire life and at the very end gave his entire being to Christ, and Christ saved him.
In America, there are conservative and liberal causes. To Christians, there should only be God and His Word. To be Christians we must believe in Him, and all of Him.
When Abraham went to sacrifice Issac, he did not want to, every part of his being wanted to hold that which was most precious from God. But he went anyway.
MAGA conservatives who hate immigrants are going to be continually challenged by the Word of God, and woke progressives are going to be continually challenged by the Word of God.
They both must come to God to be saved. Like it or not a awful abuser in the Church can be saved if he comes to Christ, but a nice old woman can prevent herself from coming to Christ by holding her self back in pride.
Elton John could come to Christ at anytime by shedding his pride and giving himself completely to Christ, his past does not matter, Christ died for him.
We just have to come to the cross and give our selves over to Him.
It’s something that many have a hard time coming to terms with, The Church is for sinners, The Cross is for Sinners. The church is so packed full of sinners that there are none righteous.
And Christ has called us all.
Comment by Tim on August 25, 2024 at 10:46 pm
Mike
There is nothing anywhere in scripture that vests the personal authority to judge Sir Elton John in you.
That man has spent a lifetime visiting the sick to the point of raising $600 million dollars for them, so from a Matthew 25 standpoint he’s doing better than almost anyone.
More than that, you and I don’t have the right to say (Luke 6:37.)
Comment by MikeB on August 26, 2024 at 7:44 am
Tim,
Elton John: “From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. The reality is that organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate”
I find it so curious that you hold on to a few verses like they are the most critical things in the world and yet throw away everything else about them.
Elton’s words speak for themselves, he may play with phrasing from his Anglican but he has no love of Christianity or the God of the Bible. That’s not judging, it’s taking him at his word.
Do you think God owes him something for him doing benefit concerts?
Do you think God owes us something when we take the money that we have gained with the life that he has given us and we then decide to give some away?
You like the rich young ruler keep assuming God is happy with what little you are unbothered to give him…
Elton can come to God at any time and be my brother, I hope he does, he’s a very tortured man. But he in his own words states that he goes his own way. Thinking Jesus was a nice guy is different thank knowing Jesus as Lord and Master.
Comment by Lance on August 26, 2024 at 9:02 pm
Years ago, our little church saw that our apportionments were going to left wing anti-biblical causes so we selectively sent them only to approved causes. Then, the conference finance manager said we could no longer pick and choose, so we cut off apportionments altogether. We sent a separate check to the district office for utilities, the Methodist Home and other life affirming Christ centered causes. We voted to leave the UMC as soon as we could.
Interestingly, 2553 looked like a vehicle for left wing liberals to leave the UMC. God has a good sense of humor.
Comment by Wade compton on August 27, 2024 at 1:29 am
I appreciate Mark’s comments and I feel like he has pulled back the curtain now that it’s a different world with IRD changing and good news and the confessing movement ceasing. It appears there has been great frustration with the lack of action on behalf of the lay people who are the source for all funding in the UMC. I certainly understand that frustration as one who was a UMC pastor /elder for 40 years. I followed it closely the entire time and played my part in opposing it publicly and privately numerous times along the way. However, I would disagree with Mark whom I deeply appreciate on two points.
1. The minor point. The Arcus Foundation’s millions did have an impact. Just like the Chinese water torture all the foolish and expensive demonstrations at general conferences and all the other tearing down of Orthodox Christianity continuing at all levels of the bureaucracy added weight to the crushing load forced upon the church by liberals. So the millions kicked in from secular, God-hating sources played a part in the collapse of the UMC. It was not horrendous but it was not insignificant either.
2. The major point.
The failure of the lay people not rising up indicates more of a failure in leadership of the renewal organizations than it does the lay people. Though the lay people certainly are not blameless because the information about the apostasy was out there for anyone willing to do a little bit of research. What the renewal groups never understood was lay people are much like a Missouri mule. You have to hit them between the eyes with a 2×4 to get their attention. The mistakes of the renewal organizations would be hard to number. From the foolishness of the wasted years on the deceitful, obvious delaying tactics of the liberals which the renewal groups willingly participated in again and again and again to their unending naivete about the deceit issuing from the mouths of liberals. For just one example, have we forgotten all the wasted time of evangelicals writing papers and position statements for that last farce called “The Commission on the way Forward”? (And this was AFTER the apostates elected the lesbian bishop whom the Judicial Council ruled was null and void AND the founding meeting of the WCA in Chicago in 2016.) This historic Christian position was supposed to be presented to the 2019 special general conference in St. Louis. Our Evangelical representatives wasted all this time putting this stuff together with nine, yes NINE international gatherings. Then the bishops tried to prevent it from even being completed OR presented. It took the Judicial Council to require the bishops to let the majority position be presented! (One example in an innumerable list of lies, deceit, moving of goal posts, obfuscation, and disassembling.) Then they go to St. Louis, where all of this is supposed to be “decided”. Once again, the trusting, believing all will be fair conservatives brought voting ballots to a gun fight. ( united methodistabsurdity.com. ) The conservatives for the most part sent bespectacled academicians to a street fight. The result was what you would expect, bloodied academicians.
The lay people could have been aroused from their dogmatic slumbers by organizing at a grassroots level that far exceeded the grassroots level that was used. If this had been approached in a district or even in some cases, sub-district level piece by piece all over the country we would have been much more effective. By sending a few thoughtful people armed with the irrefutable facts to organize laity to come to neutral meeting sites, where the details and the proof of the apostasy was put point blank in front of their face results could have been different.
If shown clearly they could realize how their dollars given in faith and trust were being used against them…that could have turned the tide. The money would have dried up and of course the people organizing these truth telling events would have been crucified in every way possible by the liberals. However, it would have had its intended effect. Separate a liberal from his dollars and they become toothless, clawless, pacified and obedient.
So yes the lay people have their blame because they were lazy and did not seek out the truth. That simply is humanity everywhere and at all times. But once it was put in front of their faces and they were organized, I feel certain we would have won this war.
So the greatest failure was not with the lay people but with at times, fearful and inadequate leadership in the renewal movements.
Well written newsletters and magazines from Washington, DC or Wilmore, Kentucky just won’t get it with this kind of overwhelming, power structure. You have to take it to them at a much closer level.
It was the same situation with the Evangelical bishops we worked so hard to elect. Had just one of them been willing to be crucified for Christ (and they would have been crucified) and stood up and said I am pulling the curtain back and sounding the alarm to the lay people to let them know how bad it really is, that ONE Bishop could have started a movement and could have changed everything.
No doubt the renewal groups did a lot of great work. They certainly delayed the defeat by many years. But still it was a defeat.
Now whether God wanted us to win that war or come out from among them, I cannot say. In the long run this may have been God’s path. But it would have been a wonderful sight to have seen it tried.
Comment by Tim on August 27, 2024 at 6:27 am
Mike
The problem with you judging Sir Elton is that you are not God. You are in no position to decide who God extends His grace to. If God wants to use a person to do good works, it’s God’s business whether that person is saved, not mine or yours.
Wade
I’ve been all over this country and met United Methodists in many conferences and jurisdictions. If I was traveling on a Sunday morning and someone was having church I stopped. I was universally met with kindness, empathy, and great conversation about how we could all best serve God together. Methodists are not perfect, but we try real hard to get better. In every bump on the road, there are (or were) Methodists trying to help every last soul also on that bump.
If you think such people are like a mule that needs to be beaten to change their path, then I think you’re the one headed in the wrong direction. Methodist laity work hard to discern God’s calling. God didn’t cause this schism.
Comment by roger mobley on August 27, 2024 at 9:29 am
as a Local Pastor at the turn of the 21st the century I expressed concern to my DS about some same/sex marriages performed in at least one Houston UMC (with no repercussions ).
My DS told me “I’m retiring in a few years and the queers can have the church then.”
Comment by Randy on August 27, 2024 at 2:21 pm
What is so striking to me when I read these comments is that they paint a picture of a religion that is increasingly defined by just one issue. And it’s not even an issue that the gospel writers record Jesus as ever talking about. It’s not about the issues that Jesus describes as “the weightier matters of the law—justice and mercy.” And, very arguably, it’s an issue on which the brief mentions by Paul have been badly understood in terms of their first-century cultural context.
Is this really how you want your Christianity to be defined? A syncretism that accommodates itself to the false god of materialism (a subject, lest we forget, that Jesus covers at length) but is ready to die on the hill of anti-LGBTQ?
The great majority of Americans, including most under 40, have realized from personal experience with others that homosexuality is not some lifestyle choice but an inborn orientation. And applying reason and experience (both applauded by John Wesley), they conclude that if God created certain people that way, in God’s image, then it cannot be a sin if these children of God seek to live in loving, monogamous relationships. Moreover, they know people in such relationships through whom they see loving God and neighbor as they seek to follow Jesus.
In response, the church needs to be able to say something more to our society than shouting about heresy and blasphemy. At the very least, the church needs to remain in dialogue with LGBTQ Christians, even if we don’t all agree.
And the church should have the humility to remember that those who endorsed slavery once split from the church. Those who favored racial segregation once drove Black brothers and sisters in Christ away. Those who cited scripture to block female clergy (while conveniently ignoring the weight of other scripture) once ruled the denomination.
And withholding apportionments because the money went to “radical” causes? Yeah, I’ve seen that. In the small-town Methodist Church my father pastored in 1960, the treasurer refused to pay any apportionments because Black people might benefit—an idea many once thought of as subversive.
The human-damaged church has enough of a record of doctrinal error that it should be cause for reflection instead of final judgments. It should cause us to ask the question that Cromwell once posed to the Scottish Kirk: “In the bowels of Christ, consider it possible that you might be mistaken.”
Comment by Tim on August 27, 2024 at 3:37 pm
Amen Randy. I could not have said it better.
Comment by MikeB on August 27, 2024 at 6:07 pm
Tim
You quote Matthew 7:1 but what about:
How Matthew 7:5 ends: “and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Indeed I must see my own flaws, but I am commanded to bring warning to you.
Your pride is so great that you will keep your beam no matter what.
Or read a few lines more to 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
Indeed you have said that you wish to waylay others.
Why to I repeat this to you? Because I do warn you as you would know if you finished the chapter.
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Indeed your ego separates you from God, you reject him and are willing to blaspheme Him and support that what he finds abhorrent.
This is your words, one cannot claim that you are being judged when you admit that you refuse to follow God’s word. We don’t judge you but we warn you and call your words out as false and prideful.
Comment by MikeB on August 27, 2024 at 7:38 pm
Randy,
You flip truth into a lie.
The church is a place where sinners can come to the Cross.
We treat all sinners as Christ commands us to, as those in need of Christ.
Your problem is not that Christians treat any sin as special, but that we treat all sins as equal.
Indeed, we all sin and fall short of the Glory of God.
But no, unlike other sins, you demand not just that we treat you sin as special, but that we praise it as good, you demand we throw away much of the Word of God that disagrees with you, that is not acceptable, your fake references to Paul’s cultural references are self serving circular reasoning without any data, your unscientific argument that homosexuality is inborn. All of this is you insisting that you are the special child who needs no God.
You are not a special sinner, you are just like us, we would reject your attack on God’s word and authority no matter which sin you love.
To quote a sermon from J.D. Greear:
And that means that repentance for the gay or lesbian person looks fundamentally the same as it does for the straight or religious person.
“God, I’m sorry for elevating my desires over your will.
I’m sorry for attempting to define my identity apart from your design for me.
I’m sorry for taking on myself the authority to declare what’s good.
I’m sorry for seeking satisfaction in self-fulfillment rather than from giving glory to you.
I recognize Jesus is Lord and turn over control to him.”
Comment by Randy on August 27, 2024 at 11:34 pm
Well, Mike, I didn’t see an argument in there, brother—just a bunch a name-calling and accusations. Just to clear up one apparent misconception on your part, I’m about as heterosexual as they come. Carry on.
Comment by MikeB on August 28, 2024 at 12:12 am
Randy,
You are too proud to be ashamed of your mocking of the church and peddling of falsehoods.
You are a prideful individual with a certain amount of disgust for the church, that your words make clear, shockingly I do not assume more than you tell me you could have read my post as attacking your misplaced pride.
But no, no one cares what your individual sins are, you would have to actually read to realize that, we are all sinners, and you need to come to Christ as we all do.
Comment by Randy on August 30, 2024 at 9:17 am
My experience with Biblical inerrantists has been that they mostly just pay lip service to the idea that all sins require repentance. In practice, some sins get way more attention than others.
For example, I never hear conservative Methodists denounce those who exploit the poor the way they get animated over homosexuality. Adulterers who divorce and remarry inside a conservative church would find that their sin is not treated with the same degree of seriousness as a same-sex couple.
When I see “conservatives” treat payday lenders the way they treat LGBTQ people, then they will have more credibility with me when they talk about sin.
Comment by MikeB on August 30, 2024 at 11:00 am
Randy,
I agree that a same day lender in the church should be taken to task.
But Caesar has declared it to be legal, but I have not noticed a swarm of same day lenders trying to get the church to say they are not sinful.
I fully agree that the divorce and remarriage issue is swept under the rug in churches. Divorce was granted in the Bible due to the hardness of hearts, I feel as a way to protect women from abusive husbands, it has never been a part of God’s plan.
The Adultery and remarriage thing I agree should be treated the exact same way. I have seen many in the church cheat, get divorced, get remarried to the person they cheated with, and then act indignant when the are called out.
One church I attended, the worship leader had an affair with his best friends wife, he claimed that because his own wife was Catholic and refused to let his own kids go to a protestant church that the marriage was dead.
He and the woman he was having the affair with govt divorced from their spouses and were so insulted that they were no longer part of the worship service and that the pastor was insistent on counseling them. They left the church (the divorcing woman’s husband just stopped going), then found a new small church where they got married and he became worship leader again.
So yes, the church has a huge affair and divorce problem inside the church, no less of a problem than LBG issues, in both places people put their own desires and wants over those of God, God who can heal them and restore them.
But no, political issues like non Christian payday lenders are not the same as adulterers in the church expecting to never have to change their behaviors and seek forgiveness from Christ. But maybe your church has more people involved in payday lending than any I’ve been in.
But more than that many churches are indeed full of holier than thou people who look for any reason to reject someone who is in sin. We as Christians need to embrace the sinner and try to restore them to the fold, because we are all sinners. No person who struggles with gay desires is in any way worse than I am. We both need Christ we both need to follow Christ.
Comment by Randy on September 1, 2024 at 5:27 pm
Here’s the thing. A payday lender never would have to come ask to be accepted into the church because the church never excluded him in the first place, nor did it ever make his repentance a condition of his being accepted. You don’t hear sermons (or read blogs) about this type of sinner the way you read about homosexuality. A slumlord who exploits the poor would not be made to feel unwelcome. A medical debt collector would not have to ask for acceptance. An employer who makes people work on Sundays doesn’t have to ask for acceptance. I could give lots of other examples. If the “sin” of homosexual living is no greater than these other sins, then why are those who commit them not treated the way LGBTQ Christians are?
But the example of divorce is perhaps a better example for the church to follow. Though the gospels record no words from Jesus on the subject of same-sex relationships, he is unequivocal about divorce. He says it is a sin for anyone to divorce and remarry except in cases of infidelity. No ifs, ands or buts. But of course we do not follow this rule, nor do I think we should. That would mean we’d be saying that women who escaped an abusive husband shouldn’t be allowed a chance to remarry and be happy with a new partner. Our churches are full of couples who found each other after an earlier marriage ended in divorce that happened for reasons other than infidelity. We may lament whatever circumstances caused the earlier marriage to end, but we don’t treat these couples as adulterers because they remarried, nor should we. Yet if homosexual relationships are a sin, these remarried couples should be treated as even greater sinners since Jesus himself speaks against them. Instead, we mercifully apply reason and experience in refusing to condemn these couples simply for remarrying after a bad relationship ended.
The question then becomes: If we are willing to set aside the literal words of scripture for divorcees who remarry, why do we apply a different rule to homosexuals who are in loving, stable partnerships?
Comment by MikeB on September 1, 2024 at 6:08 pm
Randy,
Are you drunk? Or have you not been to an actual Bible believing church in your life?
Of course a slum lord would be taken to task by the pastor if he admitted it. I guess liberal churches literally have no sins.
No one writes these articles, because they are not something people brag about in Bible believing churches. Get off of reddit and actually visit some biblical churches. You would not hear anyone bragging about being a slum lord in a church. The articles are written because literal false prophets are trying to get the church to allow sin.
Those couples have sinned, they need Jesus. Shockingly following Christ is impossible, hence why we need to come to Christ.
You are free to reject Christ as not fair, but that what He has decided, He made us, He shaped us, He died for us.
There is no question about setting aside any jot or tittle. All sinners must come to Christ or take the broad and easy way to destruction. I do reject your false equivalency as blasphemy.
Homosexuality is as much of a sin as adultery, you and other false speakers act like only some parts of the Bible are more important than others, that is a lie filled with evil.
You indeed dress your words as a false shepherd, one who comes only to lead off the sheep into captivity. God will judge, of that have no doubt, one day, you and I will stand before Him and his Glory.
Comment by Randy on September 1, 2024 at 6:47 pm
Mike:
Not drunk. Never been on Reddit. Don’t do Twitter or Facebook either. So I’ll have to take your word on what you might find there.
If you’re ever in Nashville, I invite you to come worship with us and judge for yourself if we’re Bible-believing. McKendree United Methodist. It’s right downtown near the tourist hotels. Sunday worship is at 10 a.m.
I have to leave and feed some animals but will give a longer response later. Peace.
Comment by Randy on September 1, 2024 at 7:44 pm
Mike:
Let me put a hypothetical to you:
A new couple comes to your church. They’ve been dating for a while. They’ve both been previously married. Both marriages ended in divorce for reasons that did not involve infidelity. The couple join your church. They want to get married in the church and want your pastor to perform the ceremony.
The Bible says they’re adulterers if they remarry under these circumstances. Should you recognize their marriage and allow the ceremony in your church?
Comment by MikeB on September 1, 2024 at 8:57 pm
Randy,
So you are asking if being nice (in a 1900s American way) is more important that following the Bible? People should not put their own desires before the Word of God. Why would they want to get married before a God who tells them what they are doing is wrong? Seriously, why?
They already decided that their own happiness is all they are interested in.
It may be hard for you to understand, but we follow God, not because, well it makes other people like us more, or that we can make them feel better about themselves, but because He Is The I AM.
It may be hard for you to think of God as real, as one Who is our maker, Who formed the very foundations of quantum matter and the fingerprints of every child.
But HE is God, not in some cuddly inspiring way who is an indulgent parent, but as THE I AM.
You have no fear of God, yes, He loves us, but this is about your theoretical couple not loving Him. They are not struggling with their sin, they are embracing it.
You act as if sin is one dimensional, it is, it is us deciding that the ways of God are not what we want and doing our own thing anyway. Yes, we all sin, we all have weakness, and then we come to God, we don’t walk into his Church and flaunt our sins.
Comment by Randy on September 2, 2024 at 9:34 am
I think you are saying that the kind of marriage ceremony I described would be sinful, but I want to be sure.
So let me ask again with a slightly different scenario: a woman was in a marriage where her husband was emotionally abusive. She divorced him. Later she met a man she fell in love with, and they have been happily married for years. Did they commit adultery by getting married?
Comment by MikeB on September 2, 2024 at 10:32 am
Randy,
You have lost the point, neither I, nor you, nor the UMC, nor the United States of America get to determine what is a sin.
Matthew 5:32 But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.
Again neither you, nor, I, Nor the UMC, nor the United States have the ability to marry anyone in the eyes of God. Marriage comes from God, just because you or I say someone is married, does not mean God has joined them. The US Government and the UMC say that abortion is not murder, they deny God, but they cannot change the laws of the universe anymore than they may deny gravity.
If you take it upon yourself to deny God, it is as if you deny gravity. You or I can declare that a man and a goat are married, or a woman and a dolphin, our words do not make it so.
Comment by Randy on September 2, 2024 at 11:19 am
Okay. So you affirm that scripture here trumps human practice and that remarriage in the scenario I outlined above is sin, just as you affirm that a same-sex marriage is sin.
So now we can come to the question: Why is there no outcry from “Bible-believing” churches over divorcees remarrying the way there is over same-sex marriage? Both liberal and conservative churches are filled with divorcees who remarried, and they are never confronted from the pulpit or by fellow believers about their “sin.” How can churches say they are Bible-believing when they let remarried divorcees slide? How can they say they treat all sins equally when only homosexuality draws their ire?
Comment by MikeB on September 2, 2024 at 12:14 pm
Randy,
Sins are washed in the blood, you forget that we are indeed saved.
I know divorced people in church who remarried before being saved, this is something they come to Christ about, none of them are proud of it and claim that they are sin free. Again I tell you, we ALL sin, none of us tell the church that it needs to change to accept our sins, none of us have pride in our sins.
I think you over estimate the number of divorced people getting married in conservative churches, I cannot think of a single pastor that I know who would not counsel against that, those people usually get civil marriages then expect the church to put up with them. I also have stated that those churches do have the same problem as churches that celebrate gay weddings. Both deny scripture.
The current gay pride movement in the UMC is openly declaring sin to not be sin, if you cannot see why that is different in visibility than the divorce issue then you are remaining willfully ignorant.