UM History Happens: A Reflection

Over the course of this semester, I have taken a road trip through United Methodist history. It has contained lots of pit stops: moments to refuel or take in the landscape, moments where something in particular caught my attention, moments where I stood in awe and shock at the scene I was witnessing. I have learned so much about my heritage as a United Methodist, and I am both honored and ashamed.

I am honored because the Methodist movement was a wonderful part of history. The original Methodists really catered to people’s needs, and they lived the gospel in a new way. I am honored because I really love John Wesley’s theology, and I am glad to claim it as my own. I am honored because my denomination has been active in spreading the message of Christ to the world, and now the UMC is growing fastest in other parts of the globe.

I am ashamed because of the way that my denomination has been a part of the oppression and suppression of so many people. I am ashamed that my denomination spent years pleasing slaveholding conferences just to preserve unity. I am ashamed that my denomination still does not want to have honest discussion on controversial issues. I am ashamed that we sometimes allow our own agendas to block out God’s.

Throughout this semester, I have had many opportunities to reflect on my own call, theology, and life, and this course has had a profound effect on all three. Thank you, Dr. Lobody, for bringing the history of this denomination to life. It has been quite a trip.

Reflections on Institutional Racism

Racism is a big deal. It has broken hearts, hurt souls, and destroyed lives. Racism is still a massive problem today, although it is not talked about the way it was thirty and forty years ago.

This week, a group in class presented on institutional racism in the United Methodist Church. The first person of the group gave us the history of racism in general in the United States and what the UMC’s actions (or rather, lack thereof) were during this period. I was left truly appalled. I have studied this period before, so I know what went on. His presentation really struck a chord, though. He used images to depict the horrors that were inflicted on African Americans during the first 65 years of the 20^th century. The following is one of them.

This image disturbed me more than any other, although the brutalities inflicted on other people were far worse. Why? Look at the crowd. Not only does it consist of men and women, but they are smiling. They’re happy. The lynching of African Americans by white people was something to be celebrated.

The Methodist Church did nothing to stop this. The Central Jurisdiction was formed in 1939 as a way of keeping the peace once the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South reunited. Now, African American pastors would only pastor the African American churches within the Central Conference. “Separate but equal” was the thinking behind this decision, but it was institutional racism. It may have kept the peace between the MEC and MECS, but it did so at the expense of their African American brothers and sisters.

Although the Central Jurisdiction was dissolved in 1972, institutional racism still occurs. Many times today, it is disguised in the form of trying to ensure that everyone has a voice. This is why we will have the token African American on committees. Also, this can happen towards others. It seems that in our efforts to ensure that those who are not white, middle-aged men have a voice, we may be oppressing the white, middle-aged man. In following the Twitter feed for #gc2012, many snide comments were made toward white male tweeters, saying things along the lines of, “Of course you think that. You’re a white man.” This is not okay, either. We have to find the balance between lifting up the voices of the marginalized without sacrificing the voices that have been dominant. 

Ministry With and For Young Adults

As a young adult in the United Methodist Church, I am impassioned by the need for young adult ministries that I see in my Church. It has been my experience that there are not very many ministries available specifically for young adults who are in college or out a few years. The UMC is in an interesting dichotomy because on the one hand, its members complain about the lack of young adults in churches, but on the other, when students graduate from high school, churches essentially say, “Have a good time in college! We’ll see you when you’re in your late twenties, married, and have a kid or two!”

This is not to say that all congregations are failing to minister to and reach young adults. Some congregations excel in ministries for this age group. Nor is it to say that we (young adults) should only participate in ministries geared directly toward us. On the contrary, multi-age ministries help people to grow in amazing ways. The ideas, wisdom, and stores shared across the boundaries of age and experience are wonderful. However, just like it is difficult to get junior high and high schoolers to get involved in ministries that are multi-age, it is difficult to involve young adults in these same ministries. When it comes down to it, we are most comfortable with those who are like us and are experiencing life in similar ways. If the UMC wants to reach more young people, it has to create ministries that are aimed specifically toward them.

There is a general lack of ministries now, but that has not always been the case. The Epworth League was a huge, all-encompassing ministry for the young people in the entire Methodist Episcopal Church. “Young people” included those who were youth (still in grade school) and young adults. The youth would grow up in the Epworth League and eventually become the young adults who led the ministry. This was the first case of the Methodist Church attempting to reach youth specifically. The Epworth League eventually died away, but recently, it has been resurrected specifically to reach young adults.

motive magazine was written specifically for Methodist college students during the 1960s and early 1970s. This was a place for avante garde artwork and articles on the issues of the times. This was an incredible resource for the young people of the day, giving them a way to connect the Church with their lives. It helped them to give voice to their own thoughts and opinions. It was media for them to pass around to their friends and get the word out that the Church would embrace its young people. When the magazine drifted too far into the controversial, printing articles and entire editions on homosexuality, the Methodist Church put its foot down and pulled funding on the magazine. Without this, motive had to cease to exist.

There were obviously moments when ministry with and by young people flourished. However, it seems that when the young people get too out of hand, no longer fitting into the traditional box of United Methodism, the Church will buckle down and silence these voices. The time has come for the Church to determine what it truly wants: to build strong leaders who know their own values or leaders who stick to the status quo. 

What the heck is multiculturalism, anyway?

Since before Europeans landed on American soil, this land has been a multicultural one. While Native American tribes appeared similar physically, they spoke different languages, followed different traditions, and lived very different lifestyles. Once Europeans came to make their home, the number of different cultures increased tremendously, and it has never stopped. New people are constantly immigrating to America and bringing new traditions, clothing styles, languages, etc. So what does it mean to live as Methodists in this multicultural world?

Methodists from all of history would agree that living in a multicultural world means welcoming those of other backgrounds. They would also agree that being multicultural is important to the gospel. Kenneth Cracknell’s book An Introduction to World Methodism is a testimony to this. The fact that books like this even exist proves that multiculturalism has been and is on the minds of Methodists. What this looks like, though, has certainly changed.

John and Charles Wesley came to America to be missionaries to the Native Americans. They sought to bring new people of different cultures into the Church. Unfortunately, their idea of mission was to convert the natives, not just to the Christian faith but to the Christian lifestyle. “Multiculturalism” for them would have been looking different and perhaps having a few different traditions but mostly converting to the European way of living. One would think that we would learn from this, but it’s taken a long time.

In 1923, multiculturalism was on the minds of a lot of Methodists. Thousands of people had moved to the United States searching for a better life than the one they had in their home countries, and they brought with them their languages and traditions. The Methodist Church wanted to welcome these people into the fold, so they began searching for ways to minister to these folks. Many times, they had a “melting pot” mentality. In this case, the idea was to find ways to minister to the people where they were but then slowly convert them to the culture of the congregation at large. This would include everything from hobbies to language to value systems. The Methodist Episcopal Church had come a long way from the Wesleys’ early missions, but it still wasn’t truly multicultural.

What about now? We have certainly come away from the idea of a melting pot. A lot of people refer to America instead as a “tossed salad,” in which all the cultures maintain their own identity but complement one another with their various flavors. In an effort to make certain everyone has a voice and different cultures are represented, we make great efforts towards diversity and having multicultural congregations (sometimes). This has led to having the “token” people on committees. There will be the token African American, the token Asian, the token Latino/a, the token woman, the token young adult, etc. We have made even more progress since the Methodists of 1923, but this is still not the best way of doing things.

Multiculturalism is not something that should be forced. It needs to be born out of a genuine desire to learn more about others. It should come out of the efforts to reach people where they are (and not try to convert them to a new culture). People’s voices should be heard not because they are red, yellow, black, white, female, young, old, male, or anything else. Rather, their voices should be heard because they are children of God, and their voice is important. Multiculturalism happens when all this takes place, and we are moving closer and closer to it.

GLBT Movement – A Modern Abolitionism?

Many issues have divided the Church over time, but none as much as slavery. For a very long time, the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) struggled to remain united. This was mostly done by trying to appease the southern conferences of the United States, which survived on a lifestyle built on slavery. Methodist Abolitionists were disappointed year after year as the General Conference refused to hear them speak. Eventually, they were barred from even talking about the issue of slavery. It seems as though the thinking was that if the problem was ignored, it would simply disappear. Unfortunately, this is not how the world works. Problems don’t just go away, and they can’t be swept under the rug. This was found to be true for the problem of slavery.

How could those living in the South constantly support slavery? Looking back today, it is hard to understand how they could actively participate in the subjugation, oppression, and rape of an entire populace. People had hundreds of reasons for why slavery was an acceptable institution. Christian slave owners (or supporters) used the Bible to support it. Leviticus 25:44-46 describes what sorts of slaves were allowed for the Israelites. Paul tells slaves to not try to run away from their masters, but instead to be better slaves. Also, it was thought that the Africans were descendants of Ham, son of Noah, and Noah had cursed Ham and Ham’s descendants, saying that they would always be the lowest servants to his brother (Genesis 9:25-7). All this could and was used to defend the institution of slavery.

At the same time, abolitionists were using the Bible to condemn the institution. Galatians 3:28 says that all are one under Christ, there is no longer slave or free, so the African slaves were the brothers and sisters of Christians. Is it right to enslave one’s own brother or sister? Jesus called for Christians to love their neighbors as themselves, and enslaving someone is certainly not loving them as one loves oneself. It was also argued that Paul wrote for slaves to stay enslaved in order to maintain some semblance of order within the fast-growing Church. The early Church was already under a great deal of persecution, so encouraging a slave uprising would have only hurt the mission of the Church. Everything that the pro-slavery Christians used was determined to be a cultural issue and not applicable to the slavery in America.

This issue mirrors the modern issue of the GLBT movement. The United Methodist Church is heavily divided on the issue of homosexuality, as demonstrated once again at General Conference 2012. Just like the slavery issue, people on one side use the Bible as their evidence against homosexuality, and those who are pro-homosexuality assert that what is written in the Bible is an issue of time and culture. People who maintain that homosexuality is incompatible with the Christian lifestyle reference passages such as Genesis 18-19 (Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed), Leviticus 20:7-21 (sexual prohibitions), and Romans 1:18-32. Those who maintain that homosexuality is acceptable will counteract these passages by arguing that, for instance, the issues of Sodom and Gomorrah were not about homosexuality but about power, oppression, and disrespect, the passages in Leviticus are part of the Law that Christians are not bound by, and Paul was writing from a certain cultural location that does not exist anymore. Those who are for welcoming people who are GLBT into membership and ordination view the issue of homosexuality much like the issues of slavery and women’s rights.

It is interesting to note the similarities between our time and the time of our ancestors when they dealt with the issue of slavery. Eventually, the Church divided once because it could not resolve its issues. Will the UMC reach this point in the next decade? That remains to be seen. 

The Call - Then and Now

Call. What is this? When we talk about calling in the United Methodist Church, we are referring to the moment when we knew God had a special plan for our lives that included ministry of some sort. Once we understand that we have a call, we discern what this calling is to. This looks very different today compared to calling in the early Methodist Episcopal Church.

In many cases, during this period, people would feel the calling and immediately be thrown into ministry. The call was usually interpreted as a call to preach, which was fine if you were a white man, but it was a problem if you were a woman or not of European descent. Sometimes, women and people of African or Native descent would still be allowed to preach, but rarely were the offered the opportunity to turn their calling into a vocation. For example, Richard Allen, a black man who would later become a bishop in the AME, was only ever considered a “local deacon,” an action that wasn’t ever recognized by the Book of Discipline (Richey, The Methodist Experience in America, vol. 1, p. 143). As for Native Americans, only few ever became preachers, among them being William Apess.

And what of women? As many do now, women helped to keep the church running, usually from behind the scenes. Once they lost the ability to be class leaders, though, they no longer held any power within the church. Women were not allowed to be preachers. However, many women who experienced a call from God would go on to become pastor’s wives. Hannah Pierce Reeves was one such woman (p. 151). She experienced a call to preach, and after she was married, she was an integral part of her husband’s ministry, often preaching in his place if he was sick. Other women, such as Sally Thompson, attempted to intenerate and preach on their own. In the case of Sally Thompson, it did not end well. The Methodist Church persecuted her, and she finally decided to leave for another denomination that did not try to oppress her voice and obvious call.

This is not quite the case today. Race and gender are no longer walls put up to keep people from preaching. What happens when we experience our call? Instead of immediately being thrown into ministry, there is a long and arduous candidacy process each person must go through. It is a chance to truly understand one’s call before going into fulltime ministry. It is understood now that some people are called to preaching, some to pastoral care, some to chaplaincy, some to work with children, some to work with youth, some to work with young adults… the list could go on and on. The goal now is not to fill pulpits and convert the masses but to truly understand the gifts and talents of each individual. When these are plugged into the right place, amazing things happen.

Seems like call and discernment happens in a much better way now. 

Eucharist - Communion with God

The celebration of Communion was very important to both John and Charles Wesley. This is evidenced from how often they took it, what they taught about it, what they wrote about it, etc. Communion was so much more than just another part of the liturgy.

It seems that today, most United Methodists have lost the deep meaning behind Communion. For a while, it certainly seemed that way for me. There were times when it was particularly significant, but for the most part, I mostly felt that I was simply going through the motions. The purposefulness wasn’t there. After I did a project on Charles Wesley’s Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, I reclaimed the grace and meaning of Communion.

The thing is, Eucharist has so much more to it that just some tasteless crackers (or delectable bread) and grape juice. The hymns in this collection really convey this. The first hymn beautifully portrays the meaning behind Communion, the whole purpose of the ritual:  

Hymn 1.

1 In that sad memorable night,

When Jesus was for us betrayed,

He left his death-recording rite,

He took, and bless’d, and brake the bread,

And gave his own their last bequest,

And thus his love’s intent expressed:

2 Take eat, this is my body given,

To purchase life and peace for you,

Pardon and holiness and heaven;

Do this, my dying love to show,
Accept your precious legacy,

And thus, my friends, remember me.

3 He took into his hands the cup,

To crown the sacramental feast,

And full of kind concern looked up,

And gave what he to them had blest,

And drink ye all of this, he said,

In solemn memory of the dead.

4 This is my blood which seals the new

Eternal covenant of my grace,

My blood so freely shed4 for you,

For you and all the sinful race,

My blood that speaks your sins forgiven,

And justifies your claim to heaven.

5 The grace which I to all bequeath

In this divine memorial take,

And mindful of your Saviour’s death,

Do this, my followers, for my sake,

Whose dying love hath left behind

Eternal life for all mankind.

If this hymn is the only one read, sung, or listened to out of the entire collection, a person will still gain some understanding of Communion. This hymn reminds us that Communion is done to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made. It is so easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and slip into routine. However, the ritual of this liturgy has deep meaning. How can we help our congregations to reclaim this connection?

Part of the issue is that in general, people aren’t using their minds as much. If we examine the lyrics to most of the songs sung in contemporary worship, they are devoid of depth. Oh, they have good messages, but they completely lack the depth of meaning and language of older hymns, even those written in the past thirty or forty years. We live in an age where people want to be told everything. Twitter will deliver breaking news directly to your iPhone. Google can find the answer to almost any question ridiculously fast (for example, it found 710,000 results for “cheese curds” in 0.30 seconds). It is no longer necessary to delve into something gain new understanding.

Perhaps churches need to shift part of their focus to reclaiming the depth and meaning that goes along with liturgy and ritual in general, and especially for Communion. After all, this is a distinctly Christian practice. It is the time when we come to remember the entire reason that the Christian community exists – Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.