JCD 1406

ee.umc.org/decisions/81532

 

An Attempt to Make Doctrine into Law?

 

In 1998, Rev. Jimmy Creech was put on trial for conducting a same-sex union celebration and the Trial Court did not punish him for it.  Since the Church as prosecutor could not appeal, the South Central Jurisdiction’s College of Bishops asked if a paragraph in the Social Principles made such a celebration in the church illegal.  They wanted to know if something in the Social Principles was actually law and not just a prophetic call for instruction and persuasion (see the preface to ¶160) as the Social Principles described themselves.  In effect, the Bishops were appealing the Creech trial, but using the Social Principles instead of the list of chargeable offenses which at that time did not include conducting homosexual union celebrations.  In fact, the 1996 General Conference voted down including them among the chargeable offenses.  See JCD 833 for a detailed recitation of what happened that year.

 

I went to Dallas, TX, for the hearing and came early to sit where I could hear and see everything.  At the time, the Council president and I were not on good terms on a personal level for a variety of reasons, mainly because I had deprived him of his being parliamentarian of his annual conference and had challenged the personal relationship of a prominent bishop and a key member of the Council.  So when Rev. Creech and his counsel sat right in front of me, I had a feeling the ruling would go against Creech somehow.

 

You may agree with the Council’s JCD 833 or not, the only use of the Social Principles so far as church law was in that instance.  

 

So when a member of the Michigan Annual Conference challenged an aspirational resolution on setting aside the concern about LGBTQIA+ laws in the Discipline by arguing that doctrinal statements from Wesley’s Notes on the New Testament and the Articles of Religion carried weight on legality, I thought, “Here we go again!”

 

In fact, as JCD 1406 notes, the bishop took considerable space in his response challenging the use of church doctrine as church law.

 

I am grateful that the Council did not even take note of the misuse of doctrine as law by the one raising the question of law.  The bishop’s response clearly took care of that argument and the Council’s affirmation of the bishop’s response may be sufficient.

 

I agree with the non-concurrence statement that the last section about not spending money on trials and investigating the sex life of candidates was also aspirational contrary to the Council’s majority opinion that it was not.  But practically speaking, aspirational or not, the conference would not be changing their budget to reflect their aspiration until and only when church law was changed.

 

One more thing:  The clergy vote was three to one in proportion on a similar matter during the executive session of the conference and just a little over two to one in the plenary where the lay members voted too.  That reflects the reality that in most conferences, the clergy tend to be more open than the laity is on these issues.