(A post from Jeff Sturgeon, lay member of Travis Park UMC in San Antonio, following the General Conference report at the SWTX Annual Conference last week.)
Bishop Dorff, brothers and sisters of the annual conference... I stand before you as a United Methodist with a long history with the Church. My grandparents, parents and siblings are Methodist. My neices and nephews are forming their own identies within the United Methodist Church. I graduated from a United Methodist related university. I have served my local church in many ways. This history has shaped who I am.
I stand before you hurting... smarting from pain, frustration and confusion that was General Conference 2012.
And I stand before you as a gay United Methodist.
I know my pain is not unique; many feel battered and bruised that yet again our General Conference has failed to advance to full inclusion in the church of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.
This hurt comes from several directions:
It hurts me personally that because I am homosexual, the full life of the church is not available to me.
It hurts me that because I am in a same gender loving relationship, the value of that relationship can not be affirmed.
It hurts my family and friends to see the United Methodist Church respond to me in this way.
And it hurts the Church. It hurts the vitality of the church when GLBT members and their families leave the church. We can not create a culture of growth when certain people are excluded from that growth.
It hurts the church when we cann't even agree to disagree on divisive, hard issues and every one takes opposing sides.
My friends have asked why I stay in the church. Quite frankly, I did leave. But God didn't leave me alone and has continued to call, push, pull and shove me back into the fold.
And it hurts the mission of the church. We heard yesterday from Rev. Rendle that the culture around us has changed! The mission field has changed! And they are watching us. Those who are under thirty, see the church's position and behavior as "mean-spirited", not spirit lead.
I was inspired by Rev. Rendle's use of the quote from St. Augustine that hope has two daughters, anger and courage. I can not stay only in anger and neither can the church. We must, with God's power and the example of Jesus, move forward in courage.
I know that the annual conference can not change the policies of the United Methodist Church. But I know that each person here knows someone in your local church who is like my grandmother, my parents, my brother and sisters, my neices and nephews... like me because all of us are in your churches. How will you express God's love? What will be your Christ-like response to my family and those like me? Thank you, Bishop
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Searching for Jesus on Wall Street
So what do you make of the occupation of Wall Street by thousands of protestors in the last half of 2012, and the sympathetic rallies in many cities around the country, even around the world, including right here in Austin, Texas?
If you listen to some of the talking heads, this is an inchoate group of young people who could be working but aren’t and instead are breaking the laws and calling for an end to corporations, the very entities that might be able to provide them with jobs.
My sense is that we avoid engagement with the occupy movements at our peril. Yes, the issues are all over the map, but there are several central themes that can be teased out. Sadly, they’re themes that are central to Christian theology, themes that most of the church has been sitting on for years and has either been silent or contrarian.
At the center is the call for a transformation of values, a shift away from global capitalism and the power of multinational corporations toward the values of community, local economies and real democracy. It’s a radical shift that Dr. King described in a speech where he broke silence and denounced U.S. involvement in Vietnam. King said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
The income inequalities that exist in our country, that are described in the occupy signs stating that “We are the 99%,” are at the highest levels since right before the Great Depression. Turn to almost any prophetic book in scripture, and it’s crystal clear that God is also concerned about inequality between rich and poor. Inequality quickly has quickly turned to injustice as those who have enormous fiscal resources have squandered their wealth on speculation, creating a veritable wasteland for everyone else.
If the Occupy movement has done nothing else, it’s brought the discussion of social and economic justice out of the closet into the open. It’s adopted values of nonviolence and hospitality and has sought peaceful relations with local authorities, surely values that are right out of the gospels.
Over the last few months, the list of what the occupiers are against has grown from moral outrage against the system to include: the funding of college education through student loans, unemployment, lack of healthcare, outsourcing labor overseas, abuse of police power, predatory banking and the sellout of government power to the highest bidders.
How has this happened? Harvey Cox, in what has turned out to be something of a prescient essay, named it: the market has become our God. That’s right—good, old-fashioned, Old Testament-style idolatry. The market has been worshipped as unassailable, which means that to criticize free market capitalism, to suggest that regulations on banks are necessary for example, has been seen by market defenders as sacrilege.
Lost in all of the back and forth is the notion that there is an economy given by God long before Wall Street, an acknowledgment that there is enough for everyone. Only when we return to some sense that we can all live out of the abundance that God has given us, will there be the moral will to take on the challenges of changing the structures that create such destructive inequalities.
I’m thankful for the Occupy movement, for the issues they’ve bravely raised and for their outrage at greed. What do you think? How should the church respond to the Occupy movement?
If you listen to some of the talking heads, this is an inchoate group of young people who could be working but aren’t and instead are breaking the laws and calling for an end to corporations, the very entities that might be able to provide them with jobs.
My sense is that we avoid engagement with the occupy movements at our peril. Yes, the issues are all over the map, but there are several central themes that can be teased out. Sadly, they’re themes that are central to Christian theology, themes that most of the church has been sitting on for years and has either been silent or contrarian.
At the center is the call for a transformation of values, a shift away from global capitalism and the power of multinational corporations toward the values of community, local economies and real democracy. It’s a radical shift that Dr. King described in a speech where he broke silence and denounced U.S. involvement in Vietnam. King said:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
The income inequalities that exist in our country, that are described in the occupy signs stating that “We are the 99%,” are at the highest levels since right before the Great Depression. Turn to almost any prophetic book in scripture, and it’s crystal clear that God is also concerned about inequality between rich and poor. Inequality quickly has quickly turned to injustice as those who have enormous fiscal resources have squandered their wealth on speculation, creating a veritable wasteland for everyone else.
If the Occupy movement has done nothing else, it’s brought the discussion of social and economic justice out of the closet into the open. It’s adopted values of nonviolence and hospitality and has sought peaceful relations with local authorities, surely values that are right out of the gospels.
Over the last few months, the list of what the occupiers are against has grown from moral outrage against the system to include: the funding of college education through student loans, unemployment, lack of healthcare, outsourcing labor overseas, abuse of police power, predatory banking and the sellout of government power to the highest bidders.
How has this happened? Harvey Cox, in what has turned out to be something of a prescient essay, named it: the market has become our God. That’s right—good, old-fashioned, Old Testament-style idolatry. The market has been worshipped as unassailable, which means that to criticize free market capitalism, to suggest that regulations on banks are necessary for example, has been seen by market defenders as sacrilege.
Lost in all of the back and forth is the notion that there is an economy given by God long before Wall Street, an acknowledgment that there is enough for everyone. Only when we return to some sense that we can all live out of the abundance that God has given us, will there be the moral will to take on the challenges of changing the structures that create such destructive inequalities.
I’m thankful for the Occupy movement, for the issues they’ve bravely raised and for their outrage at greed. What do you think? How should the church respond to the Occupy movement?
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