JCD 1402

ee.umc.org/decisions/81528

 

General Conference’s Authority Vs Pastoral discretion

 

The Michigan Annual Conference raised an interesting question.  Is the choice to participate in a same-sex union ceremony or wedding a”distinctively connectional matter?”

 

The question forwarded to the Council does not indicate as opposed to what other kind of matter it could be.  I do not know what was in the brief of the appellants but I would have pointed to ¶340.2a(3) which says “The decision to perform the ceremony shall be the right and responsibility of the pastor.”  

 

Nothing there about intrusive laws passed by General Conference. . . .  

 

Every pastor that I have heard about who went ahead despite what General Conference imposed on the kinds of marriage pastors may perform did so because their pastoral sense of dealing with the individuals asking for a gay ceremony was to support the couple and perform the celebration.  In the face-to-face setting of pastoral care, the human needs have prevailed over church law.

 

As the number of decisions cited by the Council to nail down their ruling indicates, the matter of what was distinctively connectional has been challenged frequently over the years.  From the time when the abstention from the use of tobacco and alcohol was mandated by General Conference through annual conferences adding educational requirements beyond what the Discipline says to one jurisdiction trying to tell another what to do about a gay bishop, there have been questions raised.  And the Council has upheld the General Conference’s authority on such personnel matters.

 

The General Conference sets the policy, the annual conferences enforce them.  The pastors find “work-arounds” when the policy appears to them to be onerous.  And after each judicial testing, everyone tries to work toward what each thinks perfects the Church in love by working within the framework of church law and democratic processes.  Well, most do.  

JCD 1404

ee.umc.org/decisions/8153

 

Is the Resolution Aspirational Or a Violation?

 

The bishop of the Michigan Conference ruled a resolution supporting its Board of Ordained Ministry’s right to lament the treatment of LGBTQIA+ candidates as long as they did not act on it.  Then he’d have to step in, based on legislation passed at the special session of the General Conference held in 2019.

 

The Council supported the first part of the ruling but stated it could not support the bishop’s right to intervene.  Again the concurring opinions make clear that at least four of the Council members view the 2019 addition as unconstitutional.  According to ¶33, only the annual conference has that authority to do intervention through fair process procedures.  The whole Council does not disagree in the majority ruling but only uses that opinion to overrule the bishop’s alleged right to intervene rather than outright deciding the 2019 addition is unconstitutional.

 

What is startling in this decision is the identifying the annual conference vote in support of the resolution: 298 to 125. nearly a 3 – 1 ratio.  While the Michigan Conference is not as conservative as West Michigan, this ratio indicates a clear movement toward positively normalizing the LGBTQIA+ community.

 

That says to me that fewer and fewer churches are likely to separate when the split comes.  The dream of the conservatives who want to dominate the world of Methodism is fading faster than they want.  

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.