NOVEMBER 2000
In the last couple of years, Hunt has been embarrassed to find himself in that sorriest of all quarrels, a church conflict. This one is made all the sorrier by the stubborn refusal of the church authorities to take a position or to explain their actions in any way. Hunt's wife, Rev. Susan Hunt, graduated with honors from Wesley Seminary in Washington and served for four years as United Methodist pastor of the Dickerson-Forest Grove charge, on the border of Montgomery and Frederick Counties, Maryland. No questions had ever been raised about her performance, nor about her actions and beliefs. In January 1999 she was suddenly told, without elaboration, that she could not be ordained an elder that year, if ever, because she did not understand the "Lordship" of Jesus Christ. Six other ministers were also rejected for ordination for similar reasons. (All of them were women and/or African Americans.)
This ecclesiastical aberration would be of little interest to anyone who was not thinking of working in The United Methodist ministry, except that the phrase used - the "Lordship" of Christ - is the catch-phrase of the Confessing Movement, a movement aiming to purge The United Methodist Church of theological liberals. Hunt therefore posts the following letter, for the benefit of anyone who considers The United Methodist Church and its numerous boards and activities to be positive forces on the American scene. A tempest in a tea pot may not be of much importance to the world at large, but if you happen to be fond of the tea pot - perhaps it was left to you by your grandparents, or it was helpful to you once in a time of trouble, or perhaps you just like its hymn book - you may want to know if something is threatening to break it apart.
The letter should be self-explanatory, as long as the reader knows that United Methodist ministers are ordained in two steps. First they are ordained on trial, and after three years of such service they are ordained as elders in full connection. Only then do they get full voting rights in their conference. The recommendations as to who will be ordained are made by the conference Board of Ordained Ministry, which in the Baltimore-Washington Conference is a committee of about 60 people.
If the Board of Ordained Ministry should change its policy of silence and would like to post a response to this letter, Hunt will be delighted to add it here or link to it elsewhere.
An Open letter to the Board of Ordained Ministry, Baltimore-Washington Conference, The United Methodist Church:
|
November 2000 Dear Friends: We still do not know what caused the discord at the January 1999 elders retreat. One third of the active Methodist ministers who went there expecting to be given full voting rights in their Conference were rejected, and some of them were told they could not reapply for at least two years. This was done in an atmosphere of tension and hostility that even most of those who passed found unsettling. We do not know what this unpleasantness was all about because no one will discuss it. The set of very reasonable questions several probationary clergy endorsed and asked me to submit to the Board was rebuffed. So were my attempts to talk with members of the Board. My previous letters sent to all 60 or so members of the Board got no response at all from any member. The Bishop has not answered my letter requesting informal mediation and pastoral inquiry under paragraph 358 of the Book of Discipline (1996). But a few things have become clear: 1. Many, if not all, of the rejection letters accused the minister of failure to understand, or articulate, the "Lordship" of Jesus Christ. This is a key phrase of the Confessing Movement within The United Methodist Church. The Confessing Movement was organized in 1994 and in 1995 issued "A Confessional Statement," which can be seen at http://www.confessingumc.org, calling for other United Methodists to join in confessing Jesus Christ as "The Son, The Savior, The Lord," and vowing to "vigorously challenge and hold accountable those that undermine this confession." Any such challenge would be inevitably contentious in the context of Methodism. John Wesley consistently stressed action and practical commitment -- "fruits," as he put it. Therefore he left us with no verbal formulas of faith to compete with the creeds. See Rebekah Miles, "The Faith Behind the Confession," 17 Quarterly Review (Methodist) 335 (Winter 1997) for an analysis of Wesley's impatience with dogmatic formulas. The creeds themselves, especially the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, were conscious, deliberate, and successful attempts to embrace a rich and broad Christology and to leave room for all forms of devotion to the one who is both "true God and true man." Jesus' question, "But who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:15) is for many the pivotal point of all the Gospels, calling as they see it for a response in the believer's life and actions and not a response of mere theory or catechismal formula. The church in its wisdom has done its best when it has assumed there will be as many answers as there are answerers. The Incarnation, in short, is a "mystery" -- something bigger than the human ability to confine it in one verbal expression. Methodists have not traditionally been constrained in their responses to this central premise of their faith. I personally would hesitate to adopt some of the things theologians have said in rebuttal to the Confessing Movement's "Lordship" concept. Professor James E. Will of Garrett Seminary, for instance, has called it "Christomonism--almost a 'unitarianism of the second person.' " See his and other critiques at http://www/ucmpage.org/articles/. If some Methodists, or others, want to stress the divinity of Christ even to the point of Docetism and monophysitism, I have no complaint. My problem lies in ecclesiology, not Christology. The Confessing Movement could be for some a vehicle for revival and renewed commitment. But such movements become dangerous when they swerve from the positive to the negative, when the confession of an aspect of the faith degenerates into a weapon of exclusion. It is not clear how much the Confessing Movement is a purely devotional attempt to reaffirm an aspect of the faith and how much it is part of the interdenominational movement to carry into the mainstream churches what some people perceive as the "culture wars." The organization and funding of this movement is well documented by Lewis C. Daly in A Moment to Decide: The Crisis in Mainstream Presbyterianism (New York: Institute for Democracy Studies, 2000 - available from the Institute at 177 East 87, suite 501, New York, N.Y. 10128 for $25). Most of us agree that the church must from time to time set its face against the teachings of the world. But problems arise when the world turns out to have no interest in what the church has to say. Then reformers may turn in frustration against their colleagues and implement the familiar philosophy, "If you can't reach your enemies, beat up a friend." It is clear that the Confessing Movement's concept of "accountability" extends to expelling ministers from The United Methodist Church for failure to embrace the Movement's theology. The leading theologian in the Confessing Movement, Professor Thomas C. Oden, has said that this should be done quietly, without open discussion, to avoid giving a public forum to those being expelled. See his After Modernity, What? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), pages 170-171. The stony silence that has greeted my own attempts at dialog fits this approach. The danger of "witch-hunting" is neither speculative nor metaphoric. See http://ucmpage.org/news/wicca_story6.html for the charges of witchcraft brought against some United Methodist clergy, all of them women, because they showed an interest in the feminist side of the pre-Christian British nature religions. The use of the phrase "Lordship" of Jesus Christ to dismiss ordained ministers who had been preaching from United Methodist pulpits suggests that what we saw at the 1999 elders retreat was the Confessing Movement turned sour and run amok. None of the rejected ministers denied the divinity of Christ or any other article of the creeds. But when you deny people notice of charges or a forum in which to defend themselves, results tend to become random. 2. I understand that many members of the Board were excluded from the 1999 retreat because they had been unable to get to a preliminary meeting. These members were African American and their inability to get to the preliminary meeting was because it was scheduled at the same time as an important conference of interest to African Americans. Some felt that this at least partly explained the high failure rate for African Americans, twice that for Caucasians. Any such exclusion with a disparate racial impact was at least insensitive and was bound to create bad feeling. 3. Many aspects of the Board's structure and procedures are either exploitative or subversive of the Church's goals. No serious organization can afford to delegate its personnel decisions to an ad hoc assembly of 60 people. Organizations, such as large law firms, which contrive for substantial attrition of people who have invested in a professional education and have served the organization for several years are generally denounced as hierarchical, anti-family, and parasitical. The Church harms itself as well as its rejectees when it adopts such an approach. People who have served in any job for three years or more should be judged on their performance, and not by an "examination event." Above all, there must be some room for a sober second look at the Board's decisions after a retreat is over. This is especially true after a disaster like the 1999 retreat, where all the persons rejected were either female or minority. In any event, you will meet again in January 2001 to dispose of the services of several junior ministers of your Conference. It is hoped you will grant all of them full voting membership in the Conference. Do not indulge the fantasy that rejection of a candidate is meaningless because he or she can try again in the future. At least three of the seven ministers rejected at the 1999 retreat have gone on to other denominations or other callings. And it is no more morally right to delay someone's right to vote in the Conference than it is to deny it altogether. As for those rejected in the past, the Board has sub silentio made it clear it will not make amends. But perhaps America's legendary religious creativity will not fail us. The Rev. Gregory Dell and his organization In All Things Charity, of Broadway UMC in Chicago, is organizing a movement to defend traditional Wesleyan liberalism within The United Methodist Church if possible, outside it if necessary. My hope is that that movement will ordain some of the ministers rejected by this and other Conferences. If so, we may soon select, from among these stones the builders rejected, the cornerstones of a new edifice. Perhaps it will not be as monied and propertied as the old, but it may be freer to worship from the heart, with less of the burdens of Old Scratch's favorite features of church life - politics, exclusivity, and divisiveness. If the Board cannot do any reconciling, let us hope that at least the January 2001 retreat is not as divisive as some of those in the past.
Yours faithfully,
Gaillard T. Hunt |