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.
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