An LGBT caucus group within the United Methodist Church is seeking to construct an ecclesial response to Trump Administration moves to end federal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
The Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) held a February 25 online seminar entitled “This Is the DEI Which the Lord has Made.”
Counting almost 120 attendees, the seminar opened RMN’s Virtual Porch series, a slate of programming designed to meet the challenges of “this moment” and address the “legislative evils” perpetrated by the Trump Administration. The event opened with an invocation by RMN Fellow Lynne Onishi:
Holy One, be with us this evening as we hear from our speakers. Stir in us as we meditate on the diversity that you have created, the equity that you long for, and the inclusion that you have called us to embody. May we keep our hearts and minds open to the nudging of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
Ophelia Hu Kinney, RMN Director of Communications, began the seminar with a discussion of the definition and history of DEI. After introducing her relevant identity group qualifications, Hu Kinney led online participants through a series of DEI-based cartoon graphics to illuminate the distinctions between equality, equity, and justice, the mainstays of most DEI training regimens. This section closed with a note that to oppose DEI policies is to oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion as concepts and an invitation to reflect on where one’s opposition to such concepts might stem.
Hu Kinney continued into a discussion of American history in terms of DEI, beginning with the arrival of Western Europeans to the continent in the seventeenth century. In this initial settlement, Hu Kinney finds the origin of a fundamental American sin: prioritizing labor over social concerns. The history lesson continued through American immigration, suffrage, and civil rights history, with an obligatory mention of the 1969 “Stonewall uprising,” billed by the speaker as a “riot… for the liberation of queer and trans people.” Hu Kinney’s remarks ended with a call to keep historical injustice at the fore in contemporary discourse and remember God’s grace towards “all of his beloved individuals.”
Mina Nau-Mahe, associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Pasadena, California, offered remarks underscoring the importance of intersectionality in the work of the church. Nau-Mahe shared from her experience in the church as a female Tongan pastor. The RMN board member continued by emphasizing that because man is made in God’s image, discrimination is a violation of human dignity and an affront to God. To best reflect human dignity, Nau-Mahe suggests “radical hospitality,” a worldview that rejects the distinction between one’s individual humanity and the humanity of others. The aim of this communitarianism, Nau-Mahe describes, is to “mobilize people to do internal work, stepping into their true embodied selves,” incorporating DEI tenets into pastoral work and personal spiritual practices.
Helen Ryde, RMN Director of Mission Impact, addressed the Trump Administration’s actions directly. Ryde read an excerpt of Trump’s executive order on DEI, EO14151, with incredulity at the administration’s use of quotation marks around phrases like “environmental justice” and “equity.” Ryde, who identifies as “agender,” also accused the administration of “erasing [them] from how the government perceives humankind” through EO14168.
To best resist these policy changes, Ryde encouraged instruction of DEI in churches, advertising church DEI groups in newspapers and radio. Dialogue with community members and staying informed on local issues were also recommended as methods of resistance.
This event and those like it emerge from a caucus amidst a process of reformation. After the pro-LGBT General Conference decisions of 2024, much of the change that the Reconciling Ministries Network historically advocated for within the United Methodist Church has been accomplished. Most importantly for the RMN, the 2024 General Conference lifted the funding embargo placed on activities “to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.”
Now that the formal cordon sanitaire around denominational funding of groups like RMN is no longer, the caucus seeks to become a more formalized extension of the UMC bureaucracy, an “LGBTQ+ Resource Development and Congregational Engagement Center” for the denomination.
Events like “This Is the DEI Which the Lord has Made” offer insight into what’s to come in the future of social witness within the United Methodist Church.
Comment by Amor on March 6, 2025 at 11:35 am
Unfortunately the UMC is now overtly political. Sure there is a need for the church to have some interest in politics but that seems to be the foremost interest of the UMC. Most of their approved seminaries have the same agenda and focus (I know firsthand). What ever happened to holiness? (Spare me the over emphasized mantra that there is no holiness but social holiness that is used to justify all manner of political agendas). What ever happened to leading people to Christ?
Comment by Diane on March 6, 2025 at 9:25 pm
So much love💕🏳️🌈
Comment by Td on March 8, 2025 at 9:59 am
It’s been quite a show watching the United Methodists embrace paganism, sin, and the occult.
Comment by Steve T. on March 9, 2025 at 9:30 am
Liberal white women. Destroying churches for 50 years. Where will they go to spread their nonsense once all the doors are locked?
Comment by Different Steve on March 9, 2025 at 9:35 am
“A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
🤮
Query to Duck Duck Go: “Nobody loves a troll”. It responded as follows:
Trolls are often misunderstood and can be seen as unlovable due to their negative behavior online, but they may act out of feelings of invisibility or pain. Understanding their motivations can help foster empathy rather than disdain.
Comment by Glen on March 11, 2025 at 8:17 am
God didn’t create Diversity. GOD created Man and Woman. Satan and man’s sin has created what is called Diversity. The UMC continues to turn away from God’s plan, in the name of sin inclusion.
Comment by Wilson R. on March 11, 2025 at 11:14 am
God didn’t create people with a diversity of skin color and facial features or a diversity of spiritual gifts? You mean, like, the DEI people did all that?
Comment by Wilson R. on March 11, 2025 at 1:32 pm
Look, as a United Methodist, I have little use for “caucus groups” and “ecclesial responses” to the current administration’s attacks on DEI programs. And as a church lay leader I can tell you that these groups and their formal statements have approximately zero effect on the life of local congregations. They’re not on the radar of anyone besides those who think it’s important to spend time in caucus groups (most of us know the type, I suspect). With only 46,000 people worldwide (by their own count) in RMC congregations or other entities, RMC is hardly “the future of social witness within the UMC.”
Given these realities, the only practical effect of a caucus group like this is to make one small group of people feel like they’ve done something meaningful and to make a much larger group of people predictably outraged about a molehill that they have turned into a mountain so they can huff and puff about it.
Comment by Wilson R. on March 11, 2025 at 4:36 pm
I also think there should be a distinction between diversity and inclusion within the church and in publicly funded institutions. They’re separate questions. With public institutions, reasonable people may disagree about the line where pursuing the generally laudable goal of diversity turns into quotas and preferences that actually discriminate against certain groups of people in a merit-based system.
Within the church, I’m not sure how anyone could disagree with the statement from the Tongan pastor that, because we’re all children in the image of the same God, then to discriminate against someone based on their innate identity is offensive to God. I intentionally sought out a racially and socioeconomically diverse church because I don’t want to be in a place where everyone looks like me — not when the kingdom of God includes people of all different races, nationalities and backgrounds. Isn’t Paul speaking of diversity when he writes about how we are one body with many parts that have very different appearances, functions, and abilities? Methodists either believe this, or they don’t. Either they believe that there can be no distinctions within the body between male/female, Jew/Greek, slave/free–or they don’t. Unfortunately, I have encountered many who don’t believe it. Maybe the UMC isn’t for them.
Comment by Rev. Dr. Kimberly Warner on March 11, 2025 at 6:54 pm
This is all very sinful. God made male and female. There are no normal other genders. Everything thing else is an aberration of binariness. No, I will never accept anything but heterosexuality and marital relationships between a biological man and a biological woman. Adultery, fornication, incest, homosexuality, bestiality are all condemned by God.
Comment by Douglas Richardson on April 19, 2025 at 1:09 am
2016 I was told by my UMC preacher that in 2 years there would be no place for a conservative in the UMC.