Our Historical Context

Historically speaking, the Methodist tradition has been plagued by trying to contain the theological problem of how to hold Calvinists (followers of John Calvin) like George Whitefield and Arminians (followers of Jacob Arminius) like John Wesley.  Charles Wesley tried to gloss over the differences by using language and frames of reference from both in his hymns.  But it did not resolve John’s and George’s disagreements over theology.  So Whitefield began his exile (my term) of preaching in America and occasionally in the British Isles.  Though George died in the colonies, he arranged for John to preach his funeral sermon in England.

The same differences in theology plague us today.  I have put together a more expansive statement on this in my personal blog at http://jerryeckert.blogspot.com. 

The evangelical fervor which led to the missionary movements in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and disrupted the settled denominations in Europe and North America (the main complaint was that the religious life and practice of the settled churches was not really Christian as far as the Calvinists were concerned).  The Calvinists focused on conversion (being saved from sin) while most other churches emphasized sanctification (becoming more and more like Christ).  The Calvinists tend toward believing in inerrancy of the Bible and the rest include other sources of revelation such as reason, experience, and tradition.  

In America, United Methodism has tried to hold Arminianism and Calvinism together.  There are deep pockets of both, hence there are large swaths of Arminian-type United Methodists, largely in the north and west and Calvinist-type United Methodists largely in the south.  In world wide United Methodism, Arminianism prevails in Western Europe and Calvinism tends to influence the mission areas (former colonial areas to Europe) in most of Africa and Asia.

Since 1972, the Calvinists in America serving as United Methodists have taken as their flag the fight against homosexuality.  Why that instead of abortion (which was carefully resolved in the 1960s in our Social Principals) or divorce (also resolved back then) or racism (on paper we’re good), is because it was controversial for the first time in the 1960s when a popular Baltimore pastor came out of the closet, throwing the denomination as a whole into an uproar, and then having a civil court stop the denomination from kicking him out.  

Homosexuality was a non-issue up to that point.  There was little real data, experience, or tradition in the church at the time so the Calvinists took the new use of the term “homosexual” as the Revised Standard Version translation of the words in their original language used instead of the term “pedophile” and raised that flag to assert their response to the controversy.  

While every nation, every culture, has among its people those who are homosexual, not all societies have had a niche for them.  The Calvinists were thrilled when an African bishop addressed General Conference in the 1990s saying the Church must deal with the problem of homosexuality.

I take this much space to remind you, dear reader, that the Arminians among us feel their tradition has been violated by the Calvinists and the Calvinists think they are the bearers of traditional Christianity and each side has lots of support and a long history in the church as it stands today, though neither’s true history extends back before 1500 A. D.  In fact, in our denominational history, until 60 years ago, neither tradition really bothered with concerns about homosexuality.  It is a mostly modern issue in the lifetime of around half of UMC members worldwide.

But it is our problem and this commentary needs to address the current manifestation of this wedge issue in the remaining decisions of the Council from February and April of 2019.

And global warming is dangerously upon us while we squabble . . . .

JCD 1375

www.umc.org/decisions/79285

The Bishops Strike Early

The Council’s Fall 2018 session pretty much shot down most of the Calvinists’ (most would say “traditionalists” but I like my terms of Arminian and Calvinist better since both have long traditions in the UMC)  petitions in JCD 1366.  There are very gifted church law people in the Calvinists’ group and they went to work to try to work around what the Council pointed out were unconstitutional in their plan.  The Council of Bishops (hereinafter the Bishops) met just before GC2019 and requested declaratory decisions related to some of the Calvinists’ revised petitions.  This request dealt with two elements of that plan, streamlining the process for dealing with allegations related to homosexuals and setting up an international tribunal for homosexuality allegations against bishops under the Council of Bishops.

The  Calvinists saw a pattern in how allegations were handled over the last couple quadrennia.  Those conferences and jurisdictions where the Arminians predominated, the allegations tended to be dropped somewhere between the supervisory response to a written complaint from a Calvinist and a trial.  

So one petition to the GC2019 cut out practically everything from the complaint to the trial at the conference level and tried to establish a special committee on investigation on the General Conference level..  The Council jumped on that one, saying it removed the right of the annual conference to process the complaint, a violation of the constitution (Par. 33).

The other petition wanted to set up an international judicial committee of bishops under the Bishops in an attempt to get away from how Arminian jurisdictions could slow walk or drop homosexuality-related complaints.

The Council clobbered that petition because the constitution (Par. 50) gives accountability to the jurisdictions where the bishops are elected.

That ruling was shared with GC2019.  The related petitions were dropped.

Was the Council supporting the Arminians?  I do not think so.  The constitution is clear on both counts.  This was a by-the-book decision.

JCM 1376

www.umc.org/decisions/792697

Precedent rules!

At the beginning of the GC2019, a request for a declaratory decision was passed to ask the Council which has the higher authority, the General Conference or the annual conference when it comes to defining the qualifications of who can be a minister.  

The Council went back to an old ruling (JCD 1321) it had made in May of 2016 right at the end of the General Conference, right before the new Council members freshly elected were to take charge.

The “old” Council’s decision was that under Par. 16, General Conference stated the criteria for ministers and the Annual Conference under Par. 33 determined whether or not it was following those criteria.  Or put another way, the General Conference provides the words which point to traits desired in clergy and the annual conference defines those words and applies them in its own way.

At the time, there was worry that the matter should have been deferred to the fall Council session so the new members could make the decision.  Well, the new members were given a chance by the GC2019 request and they stuck with precedent.  Yep, this Council has been “by-the-book.”

JCD 1377

www.umc.org/decisions/79321

They’re Back, the Traditionalists’ Petitions

Despite serious setbacks before the Council (JCDs 1366, 1375, and 1376), the Calvinists persisted with their petitions, modifying them a little more and presenting them in hopes they would still get passed at GC2019.  They were challenged in the General Conference plenary acting as a legislative committee and presented to the Council in a fashion parallel to JCD 1366, so much so that the Council even identified the parallels.

Again, despite some more tweaking of their unconstitutional petitions by the Calvinists, the Council found few if any that actually became constitutional.

In a dissent, there was a concern that the Council was not respecting local churches who decided to leave the annual conference because the Council was maintaining that the conference had a say in their leaving too and could veto the local church’s decision if it chose.  

There was no concurring decision countering their argument so let me add my two cents worth. There are two basic points against the dissenters’ argument.  

First, the whole point of the Trust Clause is to prevent ill-advised local church decisions regarding properties established or accepted by the conference.  That “branding” of the property brought with it an authenticity and reputation of major significance which enhanced the validity of that congregation in the first place.  It also brought with it an assurance of having a pastor when a local church’s pastor left for whatever reason.

Second, the United Methodist Church is connectional and not congregational in polity.  If we were Baptist, the argument of the dissenters in this case would be appropriate.  But the center of our polity is the annual conference (Par. 33) and not the local church.  That means the final decisions are made at the annual conference level.  Disaffiliation is about a two way relationship between the church and conference, not a one way relationship.

One more note to the dissenters:  The unconstitutionality of the Calvinists’ personnel processes is rooted in the basic fact of the heart of our polity being the annual conference and also not the General Conference.  I find it interesting that the dissenters to the instant decision chose not to argue against that.

JCD 1378

www.umc.org/decisions/79922

Traditional Plan Passes Anyway

The Council was given a “present” by the General Conference.  Just like the presents our pet cats occasionally drop on us, like a dead rat.

Instead of allowing the Traditional Plan (TP) to be taken piece by piece where the Council’s rulings on constitutionality could be considered as the plenary worked through the package, the delegates apparently felt their work was going to be reviewed by the Council anyway so they put the whole TP up for a vote and let the Council sort it all out!  With friends like that . . . .

But with a penache we have all come to know and love (church law nerds, anyway), the Council introduced a new legal term to spin our brains: “the doctrine of severability.”

Actually, all they did was look at the petitions in the TP package, pull out the unconstitutional ones, and then look to see what difference that made to the rest of the package.  Easy peasy.

I know the Council had other matters on their docket and I was surprised when they only worked on two.  In trying to get inside of this ruling, I understand why they had no energy left to get to those other items.  This decision is careful and thorough and exhausting.

Thanks to Beth Capen for adding her concurring opinion in which she points out what survived.  Like her, I’m sure some of the new passages for the Discipline will be challenged back to the Judicial Council in the future.  These survived based on not being legally linked to the unconstitutional petitions struck down by the Council.  Other criteria may be brought to challenge them later.  

Among the cited surviving petitions is one that clearly responds to JCD 1374, now listing the Judicial Council as a party to appeal by a church counsel.

Also among the surviving passages are a number which require that the complainant be a part of any just resolution.  This is similar to them being able to have a greater role in civil and criminal cases, particularly the punishment phase.  (Just resolutions require confession so that all parties can work together to build a response to what actually happened.  The respondent gives up presumption of innocence once a just resolution is accepted.  In fact, even entering into just resolution may be an admission of guilt, legally speaking.)

There is one possible snag in that addition to just resolutions.  If the complainant is a Calvinist, just based on the historical record, he or she will bring to the table an attitude that is likely to be disruptive (“My authority is Scripture and if you disagree, you are wrong.”)  In the best sense of just resolution, there must always be a level of openness to alternatives between black and white in order for agreement to be reached.  Theologically, involving a Calvinist can lead to no concensus on anything but the Calvinist’s position.

JCD 1378 includes references to and following of precedent and continues this Council’s commitment to going by the book.  

The instant decision just had to put a civil law term as a concept (doctrine of severability) needed to resolve a church problem.  See p. 1373 of BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY, Sixth Edition.  I don’t know if Bishop Tuell is rolling over in his grave wishing we’d made up our own terminology or is glad to have this addition from civil law.  But we have it now and it appears to have worked.

One last word: the new passages for the Discipline cited in this decision do not go into affect until Jan. 1, 2020.  (I don’t recall seeing anything about going into affect right away.)  And as I write this, the docket for Fall, 2019 contains at least four items directly related to the TP passages that survived at GC2019.

JCD 1379

www.umc.org/decisions/79923

How to Disaffiliate a Local Church, Modified

The Traditionalist Plan (TP) was designed to let congregations leave the denomination in an amicable way because either the congregation could not tolerate the tolerance to gays shown by many conferences and jurisdictions or they could not accept the righteousness of the anti-gay church laws.  In other words, the TP is a step closer to splitting the denomination by allowing angry churches to disaffiliate.  

From what I’ve seen and read, most Arminians have not even discussed leaving whereas the Calvinists are cutting ties where they can in every conference around the country.  

The General Conference plenary, acting as a single legislative committee, asked the Council if the TP disaffiliation plan was constitutional.  The Council studied the matter with the help of a number of briefs from a variety of sources and concluded that it was not.  

As in JCD 1377, they found the TP failed to include a vote by the annual conference as a part of the process.  Besides financial and legal obligations that could be taken care of on a local level including a two-thirds majority of the congregation present and voting, the TP failed to honor the significance of the annual conference as stated above.  The Council, noted that another Disciplinary paragraph was missed in everyone’s consideration: Par. 2529.1b)(3) which disallows a charge conference from disaffiliating without annual conference consent.  That was the law expression of Par. 33’s affirmation of the centrality of the annual conference to our polity.  Hence, the TP was unconstitutional on its disaffiliation plan.

The Council cleared up (modified) JCD 1377 to only require a simple majority vote by the annual conference rather than a two thirds vote.

It seems to me that pastors of churches seeking disaffiliation tend to be congregational in polity, tend to be charismatic in the general sense of that word (that is, personally influential as long as he or she is around), and tend to be Calvinistic.  Unless the superintendent actually gets to know the local church and unless the Board of Ordained Ministry actually gets to know the pastor it is turning over to the bishop for appointment, there is the distinct possibility that pastors with a “party spirit” (Galatians 5:20) will take over a congregation and lead it away from the United Methodist Church.  So it is wise that the annual conference be in the loop toward disaffiliation to protect the local church from manipulative pastors.  

This decision (JCD 1379) does not, nor was it called upon, to go further in its analysis and decision.  But certainly one of the “effects” of the decision is that annual conferences must be ready to spot disaffiliation considerations long before they get to that point, be able to evaluate if it is truly conscience or “party spirit” in operation in that church, and either move the pastor or consider bringing him/her up on charges (such pastors tend also to think of their churches as their own kingdom and fail to follow appropriate financial practices or use other serious bad actions).

Concluding Thoughts on the Spring 2019 Sessions

I have characterized the split in our denomination as between two theologies, Calvinism and Arminianism.  Others have used phrases like Modernists v. Literalists, liberals v. conservatives, One Churchers v. Traditionalists.  I have found these inadequate because they point only to some of the characteristics of the two sides.  And in the case of the term “traditionalists,” I’m an Arminian traditionalist and my friends on the other side are Calvinist traditionalists and we have lived and served God side by side since the time of John Wesley.  But let me offer the one key trait among the differences that distinguishes the two theologies for you to ponder:  Arminians are necessarily self-critical and Calvinists are not.  And that makes all the difference.

Ponder that.

To summarize these two sessions of the Council, it is clear to me that the Council settled everything by careful adherence to law, both precedent and written law.  They were, as I said several times, “by-the-book.”  As much as people may have been unsatisfied with the overall results, no matter what their respective viewpoints, the high court did its job.  It took its pieces of the problem and resolved them in a coherent way (new terminology aside!) that showed its grounds as it went.  That is a terribly important responsibility in the time of crisis.

The most common myth about courts is that they are concrete and steel edifices that use vague and clunky processes to tell people what to do or to tell people who is right or wrong.

Let me demythologize that for you (my seminary advisor was a Bultmann scholar).  Courts are a form of conflict resolution using techniques intended to slow down and separate out the elements of a conflict so that the involved parties can have a safe and organized way to present their respective arguments and in turn, have an arbitrator (judge or jury – a group of arbitrators) compare all the facts and opinions with the rules (or laws or regulations) and provide an independent decision unbiased toward all of the parties.

Courts are far better than duels or wars or bigger weaponry to resolve conflicts.  Courts are far better than vigilantes or KKKs or hip-slung six-shooters to handle personal problems.  They keep “an eye for an eye” from turning their society into a bunch of blind people.  (I think Mark Twain first said something like that.)

Courts work best when they are respected as having the last word over the conflicted parties.

Courts work best when they have a body of rules (law, regulations) that have been developed in a reasonable way by the whole society (or its representatives), rules open to review and refinement or change as experience shows is in the best interests of the society.

Courts work best when they can show for all to see which of the laws they are depending on to support their decisions.

Courts work best when they pay attention to precedents set by their predecessors, point out openly which they are citing, and only deviate from those precedents if the experience of the society warrants it.

Courts work best when they are consistent and apply the laws even-handedly.

Courts work best when they do not answer questions they are not asked.

You can have whatever opinion about my degree of even-handedness but I hope you share my opinion that the Judicial Council did its job as our high court.  

The Way Forward Commission, the Council of Bishops, the Wesleyan Covenant and Good News, MFSA, Church and Society, and all the others have worked for the past decade and more on these issues and the scary prospect of a schism.  They dumped all that in the lap of the Council who systematically cleared up some things that were within their jurisdiction and gave hope that, by following the Discipline and its constitution, we and they can better define our future, hopefully together.

Now, if the Council and some of the rest of us can get people to stop asking for a “request for a judicial ruling” and learn how to use questions of law and requests for declaratory decisions properly, that would sure be great.

And find ways to keep bishops from straying from their lanes . . . .