Jack Tuell knew the law before he learned the gospel.

Following law school and two years of legal practice, he entered seminary and became an ordained Methodist clergyman.  He would eventually become a bishop, and he delivered the episcopal address at General Conference 1988, and he served as President of the Council of Bishops in 1989-90.  But, because of his prior legal training, he would also be asked to provide legal assistance to the church from time to time.  The first instance was when he was asked to draft a resolution that would prohibit gay clergy, and the infamous “self-avowed, practicing” language of General Conference 1984 was the result of his input.

Between the first and second Jimmy Creech trials of the late nineties (acquitted in the first, defrocked in the second), Pastor Greg Dell of Broadway UMC in Chicago performed a covenant ceremony for two of his parishioners.   Broadway had an estimated 40% gay membership, and Pastor Dell believed his pastoral responsibilities to his congregants outweighed restrictive denominational policies.

Though Bishop Joseph Sprague also disagreed with the denominational prohibition of covenant ceremonies, he felt the tug of episcopal duty and followed through with a trial of Pastor Dell, who was convicted and suspended.  Bishop Sprague later reduced the suspension from “indefinite” to one year.  Later, Bishop Sprague would be hounded by the same Thomas Lambrecht of “Good News”, the Methodist self-appointed gatekeepers, who would be the prosecutor in the Amy DeLong trial.  I have a luncheon date with Pastor Dell upon my return to Chicago, arranged by mutual friend, Pastor John Alan Boryk.

Back to Jack Tuell.  Bishop Sprague asked lawyer/bishop Tuell to serve as judge at the Dell trial, and Bishop Tuell agreed, but that experience would result in a change of heart.  By then, he was back in parish ministry, and on February 20, 2000, Bishop Tuell delivered a sermon to his congregation; “I was wrong,” he said:

God is ever ready to do a new thing … the God we worship is not a static God, capable only of speaking to us from two, three or four thousand years ago. Rather, God is living, alive in this moment, revealing new truth to us here, now … I believe that God is about to do a new thing among us.

[O]ur real tradition is ignorance. In another way, however, we have a long tradition of change … In the long run, we have always been able to discern when God is doing a new thing in our midst. This capacity to change is among the noblest of our traditions.

What is the role of experience in the issue we speak of today? It is the personal encounter with the anguish, the pain, the hurt, the suffering, the despair which harsh and judgmental attitudes can have on persons of homosexual orientation.

I was wrong. It was experience that showed me I was wrong … A year ago, when Bishop Joseph Sprague of Illinois asked me to come and preside over a church trial [of Pastor Greg Dell], experience made its compelling points with me. Ecclesiastically speaking, the decision was correct. As I understand the Spirit of God, it was wrong … I began to see the new thing God is doing.

It is impossible to predict what actions [future General Conferences] may take, because the Spirit moves at its own pace– “the wind bloweth where it listeth (John 3:8).” But I believe that if the delegates are listening carefully, above the competing pressures of this group and that, they will hear the still, small voice whisper, “I am doing a new thing,” and they will respond faithfully.

Amen.

A Sermon by Bishop Jack M. Tuell, Des Moines, Washington, Sunday, February 20, 2000.  Bishop Tuell repeats this story, with much more information, in the Wednesday edition of the Common Witness Coalition Newspaper, Love Your Neighbor

This early put down of speaker Mark Miller served as prelude to the begrudging welcome  GC2012 has thus far extended to gays and their allies.  Miller, an openly gay delegate from New Jersey, had been allowed to address the plenary session in response to the derisive treatment received by some gays during the holy conferencing sessions devoted to human sexuality.

“The need for authentic conversation about human sexuality is so important,” Miller said. “However, the process that we attempted yesterday failed us. It failed because of our lack of leadership and oversight, because the process did not respect people and didn’t plan for the care of those who were hurt by the process.”

When Miller asked supporters of gays and lesbians and “anyone who believes bullying should not be allowed at our General Conference” to stand, he was ruled out of order and asked to return to his seat.

To be sure, gays are tolerated as they hand out flyers outside the convention doors and when they engage in direct action by parading around the convention floor with placards or line the hallways as delegates pass by.  Yesterday, as I stood with two friends and we were identified by our rainbow scarves, a delegate leaned in close and whispered, “blessings”.  That he only dared whisper and not shout was the real message.

When I encountered a leader of Reconciling Ministries Network in the Convention hallways, her glum face and comment, “it’s dreadful”, summed up the prevailing mood.  Three luncheon speakers in the Coalition Tabernacle were scheduled to address women’s issues, but the first, Garlinda Burton, general secretary of the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, sensed the need to offer an encouraging word.

“I am a child of God, and so are each of you.  Remember that and don’t let the words and actions of others deny that or diminish you.” [paraphrased]

Yesterday, a resolution and amendment demonstrated the oppressive tenor of the plenary sessions.  At issue was a short addition to the preamble to the Social Principles.  The proposed language stated,

We affirm our unity in Jesus Christ while acknowledging differences in applying our faith in different cultural contexts as we live out the gospel.

and to that an amendment was proposed that would add,

We stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Of course, this is language based upon Paul’s letter to the Romans.   Inclusive?  Yes.  Controversial?  Hardly. Yet, it barely passed!

Because many delegates perceived this to be too gay-friendly, 47% of the delegates voted against this amendment.  This plenary action occurred just before lunch, and many delegates arriving at the Coalition Tabernacle could only shake their heads that only 53% of their peers would vote to affirm the application of the Pauline theology of grace—at least when gays were involved.

As GC2012 enters the home stretch and the more significant legislative actions come to the floor, there is always room for hope.  Yet,  the following snippet from the Coalition website reflects the gloom that hangs over the Convention halls.  Many escape to the friendly faces of the Coalition Tabernacle to have spirits refreshed.

We are waiting …

In week two of the UMC General Conference, lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgender persons continue the wait for a word of welcome from the UMC denomination. Like the Psalmist, we ask, “How long, O Lord?” — it has been 40 years since the “incompatibility clause” was added to the denomination’s Book of Discipline; the Bible tells us that 40 years is long enough. This silence is damaging our children, and our church.

Yesterday, April 30th, I arrived at the site of the UMC General Conference (GC2012).  I checked out the Tampa convention hall but then spent my time at the  Tabernacle, home of the Coalition of a handful of progressive groups.  I visited with half a dozen friends of the Wisconsin contingent and also leaders of the Reconciling Ministries Network that I visited at the Chicago headquarters recently.

Over lunch, I participated in a discussion of civil disobedience, the intentional violation of church rules as a means to “push the envelope”.  In particular, we discussed the thousand or so UMC clergy who have signed a pledge to perform a “covenant ceremony”, a blessing of a same-gender couple, if asked to do so.  It is clear that such ceremonies are widespread now, but quiet—a de facto Methodist version of don’t ask, don’t tell.  Would many of the thousand signatories do so publicly, as a group, as a statement?

There is precedent.

Following the late nineties’ trials of individual Methodist clergy (Jimmy Creech and Greg Dell), a Sacramento clergyman, Pastor Don Fado, invited his fellow clergy in California to jointly officiate at a covenant ceremony.  The participating clergy came to be known as the “Sacramento 68”, though the actual number of participants was probably greater than that.

Two of Pastor Fado’s parishioners, a lesbian couple, approached him and said “it’s time.” The pair were well-known, not only in the congregation but in the entire Annual Conference because of their involvement in the regional church. Jeanne Barnett had served as the Conference’s lay leader and Ellen Charlton had served on the Conference’s Board of Trustees. Pastor Fado sent a letter to his fellow clergy inviting others to participate, and he later reported:

We ended up with 95 from our annual conference … and another 25 from outside our annual conference, people from other denominations. In fact, we had requests from all over the country, from people who wanted to come … Some of them said, “This is the Selma, Alabama, of the gay rights movement, and we want to be there and make a statement to the country.”[1]

Following the January 16, 1999 covenant ceremony, attended by 1,200 to 1,500 guests, a complaint was filed and an investigation ensued. The local bishop was put in the awkward position of defending a policy with which he disagreed. For bishops, their obligation to uphold the good order of the church is especially acute. Bishop Melvin Talbert publicly announced:

I will uphold the law, but I will not be silenced. I will continue speaking out against the law and will continue working to change the position of the church to be more in keeping with the teachings and compassion of Jesus.[2]

It would turn out that Bishop Talbert and the investigating committee would do more than mechanistically apply church law. Their advocacy moved beyond mere words and tilted toward action. Following three days of testimony and three more days of deliberation, the investigating committee (much like a grand jury) announced on February 11, 2000 that charges would not be pursued.  According to an account from the UMC press service:

It was clear at the press conference that the same-sex marriage issue … has captured the attention of the world outside the United Methodist Church. As Bishop Talbert read the committee’s decision, a bank of television cameras kept up a steady clicking, and the conference room at the United Methodist Center was filled with media representatives and observers.

The question before them, the committee wrote, was whether or not there were reasonable grounds to certify that the charge was proper for a trial.

In the Feb. 1-3 hearing at Community United Methodist Church in Fairfield, the committee heard testimony from expert witnesses on Scripture, ethics and tradition within the church and the history of the annual conference. In its statement, the committee said, “We concluded that the answer required a methodology consistent with our whole faith rather than one limited by narrow focus.”

The committee affirmed in its statement that “we in the California-Nevada Annual Conference are not of one mind regarding our church’s ministry to the gay/lesbian community.” The committee acknowledged the conference’s “need for God’s grace and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Talbert stated that, while the committee’s decision may appear to have broken covenant with the denomination’s Book of Discipline, there is “another more basic and fundamental covenant that has precedence over this one narrow focus of law.” Talbert said that the Annual Conference is the covenant into which clergy members are received, and that the committee’s decision “does reflect the longstanding covenant commitments for inclusiveness and justice” of the California-Nevada Annual Conference.[3]

As conversations evolve in the beehive of the Coalition Tabernacle, perhaps the next “Sacramento 68” will be organized.

[1]From a PBS Frontline interview. The full interview is available on the PBS website, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/interviews/fado.html.

[2] James Rutland Wood, Where the Spirit Leads: The Evolving Views of United Methodists on Homosexuality (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 105.

[3] Erica Jeffrey, Cal-Nevada ministers won’t stand trial, committee decides, United Methodist News Service, February 11, 2000.

Speeches and setting procedural rules dominated Wednesday.  One potential rule was curious, and I’ll discuss in a moment with historical perspective.  First, a couple of items borrowed from others.

Pastor Amy DeLong of Wisconsin was tried last year and received very light penalties for officiating at a “holy union” of two lesbians.  In the late nineties, Methodist pastor Jimmy Creech was “defrocked” for precisely the same thing, so there is progress even if the underlying rules haven’t changed.  Amy has posted this photo of a “chained church” on her Love on Trial website.  Apparently, many attendees of the Conference snapped photos.

Second, the largest LGBT Methodist advocacy group is the Reconciling Ministries Network.  Their blog contains an “Open Letter from an Open Lesbian”, and Amory Peck writes,

“I’d like you to know a bit about how I’m feeling as I approach Holy Conferencing on human sexuality at the General Conference. The main feeling is dread. As one of the LGBT persons who will be attending, it’s hard to head into a conversation where I’m seen as “the problem.” Where I, and the others, will be identified as the troublesome “they.”

Now to the curious procedural rule proposal.  Tampa will also be the scene of the Republican national convention later this summer, and the City of Tampa announced the designation of a demonstration free zone.  Some delegates unsuccessfully proposed a similar rule that would prohibit floor demonstrations.  LGBT advocates and allies have a long tradition of such demonstrations.  In fact, the details are usually negotiated ahead of time with the church hierarchy.

The first floor demonstration was at the General Conference in Louisville in 1992.  Holding aloft a thirty foot banner that read, “The Stones Will Cry Out”[1], thirty or more gay supporters proceeded to the dais, singing and encouraging others to stand. At that time, the visitors in the plenary hall probably outnumbered the delegates, and they nearly all rose to their feet in support.

There is a conservative “gatekeeper” organization that should be mentioned.  It is not specifically Methodist and also lobbies within the Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church, and the UCC.  It is called the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) and has been around since the nineties.  There are some who suggest this organization is primarily political but uses religious “wedge” issues to drive an essentially economic agenda.  By frightening folks in the pews over gay issues, their underlying goal is to mute the otherwise progressive impulses of the church regarding economic justice issues.

… the work of the IRD is to intensify suspicion of the Christian integrity of denominational leadership.  The goal of its donors is not the strengthening of united witness but the weakening of any resistance to the rightward swing of American politics, especially on matters of economics.

For them, changing the leadership and public voice of the mainline denominations is part of a broader undertaking to silence all effective forms of progressive opposition to the right-ward turn in national policy.[2]

In any case, IRD is there to offer counterpoint to the “universalism”, “pansexual agenda”, and  “the hotspot of revisionist activity” that it perceives in the gay advocates (from the IRD blog).

[1] You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life. The very stones will cry out from the wall, and the plaster will respond from the woodwork. Habakkuk 2:10-11 (NRSV).

[2] John B. Cobb, Jr., professor of theology emeritus, Claremont School of Theology, quoted in Hard Ball on Holy Ground, a collection of essays exposing this suspicious organization. One of the hallowed founders of IRD was the exceedingly rich, exceedingly right-wing, deceased political columnist Robert Novak, an ardent Roman Catholic.

After the opening of the UMC General Conference (GC2012) yesterday, the plenary today begins with the traditional “episcopal” address.  This is a collective message from the bishops to the church, with a designee to deliver the address.  Seldom is the process controversial, but it was back at the General Conference in 1980.  At that time, the episcopal address included affirmation of the “incompatibility” clause from General Conference 1972—which has undergirded Methodist policy toward gays ever since.

We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice to be incompatible with Christian teaching.

The episcopal address of 1980 became controversial when Bishop Melvin Wheatley of Denver objected, vigorously and vociferously, to the affirmation of the policy and the language.

I will not accept [this statement]. It states as an absolute fact what is an insufficiently documented opinion: that gay persons can’t be Christians … I personally know not one, but at least 50 gay men and lesbians who are Christians…I take Jesus Christ very seriously in making judgments, and the more seriously I take him the stronger is my feeling that this statement is an inadequate representation of Christianity.

In the next several years, Bishop Wheatley came under fire from conservatives.  Charges were filed against him, but they were dismissed.  His actions included ordination of an open lesbian in 1982.  So far as I can tell, this remains the only ordination of an out gay person in the UMC.  He also assisted an ordained pastor who had been outed and fired by his congregation (see below).

At the next General Conference in 1984, the UMC enacted a resolution that stated unequivocally that gays could not be ordained.  Many left the ministry at that time and other candidates were dissuaded.  An anonymous Methodist seminarian spoke to the chilling effect of GC 1984’s overt rejection of gay clergy on his own career plan as well as others.

There were all kinds of possibilities until 1984 when the church said, “We don’t want you.” It was then when I began to reconsider whether I would seek appointment to a local church … It also affected other people who had to decide to keep in the fight or to look in other directions; and it affected, I think, whether a lot of gay/lesbian folks considered going into ordained ministry or not and said, “It’s just not worth the fight. (quoted by Gary David Comstock, Unrepentant, Self-Affirming, Practicing: Lesbian/Bisexual/Gay People within Organized Religion)

The gay pastor befriended and assisted by Bishop Wheatley in the early eighties was Julian Rush.  His story has been told in Julian Rush–Facing the Music a Gay Methodist Minister’s Story by Lee Hart Merrick.  Before his ouster, Pastor Rush had great success as a youth leader.  His youth groups often performed religious musicals written and directed by Rush.  Often, they took their show on the road with great success.  The following are lyrics from one of Pastor Rush’s musicals.

Being down is like down on the ground

With nobody, no place to go;

When the big creatures push you around,

And they make you feel … Oh, I don’t know,

It’s a feeling that’s more like a pain in your heart,

And you feel like … you feel like … a worm.

Now an ant is an ant

And a worm is a worm

But an ant has to crawl

And a worm has to squirm,

So an ant shouldn’t bother

Befriending a worm

Since a worm cannot crawl

And an ant cannot squirm

We’re different and different we’ll stay,

It’s just God’s will.

It’s just God’s way.

From The Resurrection Thing by Julian Rush

Will this be the year?  Of the five principal mainline denominations, the Methodists are the last to allow gay clergy.  Next week, the General Conference begins in Tampa, and I present three views from around the blogosphere.

First, my own slice of history.

In 1972, a gay Methodist pastor, defrocked by his own conference in Texas, took his case to the General Conference.  He was rejected there also, and the tired delegates late in the session enacted a resolution that has haunted Methodist policy ever since.

We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice to be incompatible with Christian teaching.

Subsequent Conference actions over the years “piled on”.  In 1976, a “no-funding” resolution was passed that prohibited use of national church funds for …

any ‘gay’ caucus or group, or otherwise use such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

In 1984, after a Denver bishop had ordained a lesbian, a General Conference resolution responded,

Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.

In 1996, clergy were prohibited from performing covenant ceremonies, and in the late nineties, Pastor Jimmy Creech of Nebraska was defrocked for doing so and Pastor Greg Dell of Chicago was suspended.  I will be having lunch with pastor Dell next week.  In 2011, Wisconsin Pastor Amy DeLong was also convicted of performing a covenant ceremony, but her punishment was a mere slap on the wrist compared to the Creech and Dell cases.

Here’s a link to the first blog post, which is actually on the UMC official website.  It doesn’t take a position but goes into greater detail about the past history.

Traditionalist Tim Tennant, President of Asbury Seminary (an independent, evangelical seminary that trains many Methodists), suggests the Methodists need some “old time religion”.  His post offers three suggestions that may be summarized as imposing a conservative litmus test for seminarians: a) the UMC “must insist that all United Methodist Seminaries (official and approved) embody a truly Wesleyan ethos and theology which is faithful to our history,” b)  “the bishops must certify that all pastors are historically orthodox,” and c) “the Seminaries who train United Methodist clergy must reclaim biblical preaching.”  There’s more, but you get the drift.

Finally, here’s a link to back issues of Katalyst, the quarterly newsletter of the Reconciling Ministries Network.  Here’s a sampler from the last newsletter from an article written by Bishop Melvin Talbert:

For forty years, ten quadrennia, our church has continued its discriminating and hurtful language in our Book of Discipline. How long will it be for our church to become the shining light of justice for GLBTQ people in our midst? Our church will not glorify God by its witness as long as we deny the full inclusion of all persons, specifically GLBTQs, in all aspects of our life together. The world is watching, and so are our daughters, sons, granddaughters, and grandsons. We are called to love our neighbors. Is that too much to ask?

Since the UMC meets as a national body only once every four years, their quadrennial conferences stretch over two weeks.  The first week centers around committee meetings and hearings, and the actual plenary sessions take place the second week.

I will be there for the second week and plan to post frequently.

Last week, I posted about a Reconciling Congregation (Foundry) in D.C. that has prepared a series of personal stories captured on video.

Since I will have no official status (press?), I will move around a lot at the Conference, but I plan to hang out at the Common Witness Coalition Tent.  “Common Witness” is a coalition of progressive organizations that pool resources at the convention.  I look forward to seeing some old friends and meeting many new ones.  Here’s a link to their website, and the video embedded below is their production.