Читать книгу The Secret Transcript of the Council of Bishops - Darren Cushman Wood - Страница 8

[The bishops pause for worship after several hours of conversation. They conclude their worship by singing, “What troubles have we seen, what mighty conflicts past, fightings without, and fears within, since we assembled last!”1 The bishops are seated.]

Compass: We return to the urgent matter at hand. Bishop Temperate.

Temperate: Let me suggest that tomorrow we should prevent any motion regarding separation from being presented on the floor. We should rule it out of order. We should avoid the topic. Some of us should work behind the scenes and discourage delegates from bringing such a motion, but if it comes up we should kill it immediately. We were consecrated to maintain the unity of the church and it is our calling to use our authority to bury this.

Leeway: Even though I sympathize with your goal it would be a misuse of our power and would fuel deeper divisions. We need to become more inclusive by creating a more flexible structure that enables people who disagree to remain in the denomination. We must agree to disagree on this issue and we need to give conservatives and liberals alike the space they need to be true to their beliefs. Only then can we focus on those things that unite us.

Credo: You cannot fix this with bureaucratic changes. You are just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. This has been a long time in coming. The actions of this General Conference call into the question whether the United Methodist Church as we know it is still part of the church of Jesus Christ. For forty years we have been fighting over the issue of homosexuality, and it has impaired our missional effectiveness. Perhaps the time has come for us to go our separate ways. This is like a dysfunctional marriage in which any further arguing is harmful.

Anchor: I can almost agree with you, except that we still have our doctrines which are constitutionally protected.2 This is what should unite us, and we should not consider further changes to our system in order to accommodate immorality, which is the fruit of heresy. We conservatives should not leave. We should stand against this immoral decision and insist on doctrinal fidelity. But we must be prepared to be kicked out. I am afraid that our persecution is inevitable.

Embrace: Perhaps, Credo, you are right. It is time for us to go our separate ways. For years I have grieved the loss of our gay brothers and sisters who have given so much to the church. Their persecution began a long time ago. How long should someone stay in a marriage in which they are being abused?

South: This seems to be an American issue. In my conference we have much bigger concerns. If we were truly a worldwide church, would this issue take up so much time and energy?

Hound: Divorce and the Inquisition. Now there’s a pair of hopeful metaphors! What are the limits of disagreement? How can we disagree and maintain true fellowship? What are the things that truly unite us? For that matter, what does it mean to be “the church” in its discipline and doctrine as well as its mission and spirituality? We have not done a very good job of helping the church talk about these issues on a level that engages our Wesleyan tradition.

Compass: In this late hour we should return to our roots and listen to Wesley who also faced the issues of schism and separation. We might find in him some wise counsel for our crisis.

What is Unity?

Temperate: What would Wesley think of the phrase, “amicable separation”? It is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as a friendly divorce. I cannot imagine how separation is in keeping with the spirit of Wesley. We must redirect our attention to what truly unites us, which is our common mission in Jesus Christ. This has always united us as United Methodists. Can’t we simply focus on those aspects of the mission of the church on which we all agree? As Wesley said, “Then if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss.”3

Credo: What you are referring to was Wesley’s understanding of Christian unity. In his sermon “Catholic Spirit” Wesley mentioned two types of union: external and “union of affection.” He acknowledged that external union may not be possible (or even desirable) on issues such as style of worship.

Hound: Obviously, he was a realist about getting those old Methodists to start singing praise songs and using Power Point. The typical congregation can’t unite the early service folks with the late service folks, how do we expect to keep an entire denomination connected?

Leeway: Regardless, Wesley believed in a deeper, spiritual unity that is always possible and, indeed, is already a gift given to us. He went on to describe how we should express our unity by praying for one another, encouraging one another to grow in faith and good works, and even by confronting one another with the truth in order to bring out the best in each other. As he said, “smite me friendly.”4 There is a pro-active nature to Christian unity. It is not merely a goal toward which we must strive. We must actively participate in this gift of unity in the Holy Spirit. “This is catholic or universal love,” wrote Wesley, “For love alone gives the title to this character—catholic love is a catholic spirit.”5

Anchor: But Wesley limited what he meant by “catholic spirit.” He said that it is not an indifference to core doctrinal beliefs that he called “speculative latitudinarianism,” which is a “great curse, not a blessing; an irreconcilable enemy, not a friend, to true Catholicism.” Anyone with the true catholic spirit is “fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine.” He would not settle for “muddy understanding” in order to avoid a conflict or to ignore the role of doctrine in Christian unity by “jumbling all opinions together.”6

Isn’t Tolerance Enough?

Leeway: Why can’t we agree to disagree? What is wrong with having different interpretations of doctrine and differences of opinion as long as we can all get along. Our greatest strength is our pluralism. The United Methodist Church is a big tent, and the only thing we need to unite us is an agreement to respect each other, because you can believe whatever you want and be a United Methodist.

Credo: You are equating tolerance with unity. They are not the same. Tolerance is fine for a democratic society, but church unity requires more.

Anchor: Ultimately, your vision of pluralism is incoherent and contradictory. In order for pluralism to unite us, everyone must abandon their adherence to specific beliefs in exchange for complete relativism to adjudicate the conflict. In that case, respect for real diversity is lost. For conservatives, who hold specific beliefs and practices to be essential to the faith, pluralism demands that they exchange the substance of their faith for words and symbols that mean something else or have no meaning. At best, this is a détente; at worst, it is anarchy.7

Temperate: While I agree that our denomination is a big tent and there is room for diverse opinions, I do not believe that pluralism is enough to unite us. The Holy Spirit unites us, not our capacity for politeness. Thus, tolerance as the centerpiece of church unity is nothing more than founding the church on human effort.

Also, there is something hallow and dishonest to say that we can have diametrically opposed interpretations about key beliefs and yet are united. If all we have to unite us is tolerance then it is a unity of the lowest common denominator and that is insufficient to keep us together, much less to effectively carry out our mission and renew the church. It would be like a dysfunctional marriage in which the spouses merely share the same house; it would be a pretense of a true covenant of marriage.

What I am saying is that there is a degree of wideness in our tradition that allows for theological diversity. How wide is that diversity? Conservatives portray the tradition as if it were a bowling lane with a narrow pathway. Instead, I think of our theological heritage like a baseball diamond from which the foul lines expand out and allow for a wider variety of fair balls to be thrown. Either way, there are certain key things that we reject.8

What is the Church?

Embrace: Wesley’s concept of catholic spirit may help us. It reflects his understanding of the nature of the church, and even though doctrine plays a role, it is not at the center of church unity.

He often began his description of the church by expounding upon Article Nineteen of the Articles of Religion—“The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered”—and by referencing the third century bishop Cyprian who wrote, “Where two or three believers are met together, there is a church.”9

But then he always moved to a deeper definition of the church. In his sermon “Of the Church” he defined the “true members of the church” as those people who actively work for “unity in the Spirit in the bond of peace . . . Thus, only can we be, and continue, living members of [the] Church.”10 In short, the church equals all those members who have a “living faith.”11

For example, this was seen in his description of baptism as an initiatory rite into the body of Christ. In baptism we “put on Christ . . . that is, are mystically ‘united to Christ’ and made one with him. For ‘by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body’—namely, ‘the Church, the body of Christ.’ From [this] spiritual, vital union with him [comes] the influence of his grace on those that are baptized; [and] from our union with the Church [we] share in . . . all the promises Christ has made to it.”12 We are the church when we are spiritually united with other believers.

The catholicity of the church is simply “all the Christians under heaven.”13 At times, “church” refers to a small gathering of believers, and at other times, it refers to all the believers who are both living and dead. Probably the broadest term he employed was “Church of God” to refer to everything from a national church to the Methodist societies.14 But at the heart of the church, whether it is a local congregation or the entire ecumenical movement, is this spiritual bond, a mystical union in the Spirit of Christ.

Temperate: But it is unity for the purpose of making disciples. What is running through this understanding of the church is his “order of salvation”—prevenient, justifying, sanctifying grace. The church, through the sacraments and preaching, saves sinners and edifies believers. We are brought together as the church in order to receive the grace that Christ channels through the church.

Anchor: This is what he meant by “social holiness”; believers come together to support one another in the common pursuit of sanctification. He never equated “social holiness” with “social justice.” However, works of justice are one part of our common, holy life.

Leeway: Obviously not every member has what Wesley called a “vital faith.” His understanding of the church presupposed a distinction between what he called “scriptural Christians” and nominal Christians. The authentic church members are those whose “inmost soul is renewed after the image of God” and “who are outwardly holy, as He who hath called them is holy.”15 In contrast, he criticized “nominal Christians” who “are not now vitally united to any of the members of Christ. Though you are called a Christian you are not really a member of any Christian church. But if you are a living member, if you live the life that is hid with Christ in God” then you are a true member.16 And so, formal statements of membership are not enough to constitute true church membership. All This reflected his goal of renewing the Church of England.

Temperate: You make Wesley sound too black and white in his understanding of church membership. Yes, he made a distinction between an “almost” and an “altogether” Christian, but he also had a porous understanding of membership. For example, his criterion For membership in the societies was only that they had a desire “to flee from the wrath to come,” not that they had already achieved it.17 Those experiencing the active working of prevenient grace were included before their hearts had been warmed. Thus, the church includes those who are struggling.

Credo: Struggling, yes. They have to be at least struggling with sin, not celebrating it and tolerating it. Earlier you mentioned outward holiness, which brings up something you and Embrace are downplaying. Wesley always begins with a bare bones definition, but then he moves beyond this to a deeper definition of the church. Wesley always saw the true church or true believers as being within and visible in the institutional structure of church discipline and they are marked by personal expressions of outward holiness.

In referencing Article Nineteen and Cyprian, he made the point that the church is always visible; it is more than a “spiritual” unity. It is seen in the sacraments, heard in good preaching, and felt through the loving actions of all true believers. He had no concept of an “invisible church.” If the church is the church, then it is always a visible church.

It is most visible in the holiness of its individual members and their relationships. This emphasis on holiness is reflected in his description of the church as those who are “called out” of the world.18 We cannot avoid the issue of sexual behavior in this discussion. There is an inseparable connection between one’s beliefs and one’s behavior; one must claim that Jesus is Lord in one’s actions.

Embrace: But Wesley also said, “The nature of religion . . . does not properly consist in any outward actions of what kind so ever.”19 By this he meant that Christianity is a religion of the heart, first and foremost, that leads to right actions. He avoided two extremes, legalism and moral indifference.

Credo: True, right behavior inevitably arises from an inner transformation. It bears fruit. What one does with his or her body is a mark of who is a true church member and who is not. By extension, when the church teaches and tolerates behavior that is not holy, then it ceases to the true church. There are four creedal marks of the church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Right now, the mark of holiness is pitted against the mark of oneness. Thus, the issue of homosexuality strikes at the heart of the church and our unity. Homosexual behavior is clearly sinful behavior and to condone it is tantamount to surrendering our identity as the “Church of God.”

Leeway: But you are putting too much emphasis on this one issue as if there is a fifth mark: straight. Your narrow litmus test ignores that the inner transformation is first and primary. The profound insight of Wesley is that right action must spring from that inner transformation. By making the issue of homosexuality into something so crucial that we should separate over it, you are obscuring this deeper unity of the Spirit who transforms us from the inside out. You are implying that what really unites us is our outward expressions of holiness rather than the source of that holiness. To put it another way, is the unity of the church so tenuous that it stands or falls on one single, outward behavior or is it the Spirit that makes us holy and unites us? The Spirit gives us the gift of unity.

Can the Church be Holy and Wrong?

Credo: At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether we are a scriptural church. When we stop following the Bible, then we will stop being the church. Individual members may err, single congregations may be wrong, but the church cannot err and still be the true church because it is holy, by virtue of the Holy Spirit. What may be adopted by this General Conference will set in motion a situation in which the United Methodist Church will grieve the Spirit and ultimately cease to be an expression of the true church.

Leeway: It sounds like the holiness of the church depends more on our purity and obedience than on the presence of the Holy Spirit. For the sake of argument, I will accept for a moment your premise that homosexual behavior is a sin. Even so, there are two problems with your understanding of the “holy church.” First, you are assuming that church policies are at the heart of what it means to be the true church. If our policies are “holy,” then we will be a holy church. This assumption is too institutional. The true church is all those believers who are united in the Holy Spirit. At best, church policies create the structures in which this can take place, but they can never prevent the Holy Spirit from making those spiritual and missional connections among believers. That is what makes us holy—the presence of the Spirit in us, in our fellowship, and in our ministry. The Spirit will always break down or defy those church structures and policies that prevent this deeper union. So even if our policies are in error, that does not disqualify the entire denomination from being a part of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”

Anchor: You are making an inaccurate assumption that the fellowship of believers is completely separate from the church as an institution. The institutional aspects of the church are interwoven with its fellowship, and they affect each other. Such a dichotomy reflects the cheap distinction often heard in society between “spiritual” and “religious.” The connectional nature of our tradition assumes that the local and the general are connected. The holistic vision of Wesley will not allow for any sharp distinction between “mission” and “administration.”

Leeway: Let me continue with my second point. The church is founded on the grace of Jesus Christ—which is another way of saying that the church is maintained by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The church does not exist, will not be preserved, and cannot be renewed by our acts of moral purity. There may be times when the church gets it wrong. Yet we assume that through the error, God’s grace is sustaining us and God’s Spirit is uniting us.

Anchor: That sounds like “cheap grace” that Bonhoeffer warned us about.20

Leeway: No, it is costly for those whom God uses as a means of grace. For example, think of the former Central Jurisdiction as a theological case study. Was the Methodist Church (1939 to 1968) the church according to the marks of the creed, specifically the mark of holiness? The Central Jurisdiction was the systemic embodiment of the sin of racism; segregation was encoded into the very DNA of the denomination’s constitution.21 This was not just the racism of an individual member or local congregation; the denomination was a racist institution. And yet, I doubt if any of us are willing to say that the Methodist Church was not a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

I would add that during those decades of segregation, God’s grace was being channeled through our members who protested the segregation and through our African American congregations who stuck it out. The gift of the Spirit was seen in this remnant band. I am not equating their story with either side in the homosexuality debate. These faithful few were the channel of grace that represented the mark of holiness. What I am saying is that the denomination can be in error on some fundamental things but still be a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, because it is by grace that the church is saved and not by our works.

Hound: But the crucial difference between the issues of race and homosexuality is that the morality or spiritual equality of African American members was never in question. The question was whether that equality should be practiced in the church on earth. It should come as no surprise that Methodists have struggled longer than other mainline denominations with homosexuality because we still contain the residue of the holiness tradition, which smacks at the heart of sexuality in a way that racial segregation never did.

Credo: Leeway, are you suggesting that God will never reject the United Methodist Church? You make it sound like grace is irresistible: “once saved, always saved.” Wesley must be rolling over in his grave! His understanding of the providence of God also means that if a congregation or denomination stops being faithful to the mission of Christ then God will stop using them. We have to receive God’s grace by faith. To be sure, the ability to believe is a gift from God. Still, it requires a human choice. This is also the presupposition when he says that “the Church is called ‘holy’ because it is holy; because every member thereof is holy, though in different degrees, as he that called them is holy.”22 To your point about the Central Jurisdiction, there was a remnant of faithful believers who resisted the unholiness of the rest of the denomination. If God Rejected the denomination then those who remained faithful were the true church.

But how long will our denomination grieve the Holy Spirit by our lack of faithful obedience to God’s law? At some point, it is not unreasonable to assume that God will abandon our a denomination. This in no way means that the church earns the designation “holy.”

Leeway: In that case, my historical analogy of the Central Jurisdiction should give you reason to stay in the denomination when it errs so that you can be the remnant band that provides a channel of grace.

Can We be United in Mission?

Temperate: Both of you are wrong. The real problem of separating over this issue is that it threatens the mission of our denomination. This is the greatest threat to our identity as the church. There was a distinctively pragmatic dimension to Wesley’s ecclesiology. It is in the mission of proclaiming the salvation of Jesus Christ that the spiritual unity and visible holiness of the church find their truest expressions. Listen to this wonderful quote from Wesley in which he explained the missional nature of the church:

This is the original design of the church of Christ. It is a body of men compacted together in order, first, to save each his own soul, then to assist each other in working out their salvation, and afterwards, as far as in them lies, to save all men from present and future misery, to overturn the kingdom of Satan, and set up the kingdom of Christ. And this ought to be the continued care and endeavor of every member of his church. Otherwise he is not worthy to be called a member thereof, as he is not a living member of Christ.23

For Wesley, the nature of the church was wrapped up in the mission of the church, which proclaims the salvation of Jesus Christ. When this ceases to be at the center of the church then the church ceases to be.

South: But how can we “overturn the kingdom of Satan” if we have not been freed from the devil? Our mission is only effective if we have experienced and are offering the transforming power of the Gospel. And we cannot offer it if we question its truth. For years there has been a small radical minority advocating that we abandon the apostolic faith and the church’s orthodox teachings on human sexuality. They are out of step with the vast majority of Christians around the world and throughout the ages.

They want to lead us down the path of further decline. Their churches are in decline in the Western and Northeastern Jurisdictions. We also know that in those places where our churches have been growing, such as the South Central and Southeastern Jurisdictions in America and in the central conferences in Africa, it is where the truth of the Gospel and the apostolic faith are being proclaimed.

Leeway: So does this mean that once we see numerical decline in those annual conferences that the apostolic faith and the church’s orthodox teaching are no longer true? How do you explain the growth of some of our largest churches that are open and affirming of gays and lesbians?

Anchor: These churches have sold out to the dominant culture.

Leeway: Couldn’t the same be said about our conservative churches? Aren’t they riding the wave of the popularity of the Religious Right?

South: To be sure, the Gospel in the global south has been linked to certain cultural norms in order to make it relevant. Throughout the history of the church there has been a tension between two missional questions: relevancy and integrity. Making the Gospel relevant to particular cultural settings requires a process of using and transforming the ideas and symbols of the context. One the other hand, that process can go too far, and the message is fundamentally distorted when we accommodate too much of the culture. Liberals in North America claim that acceptance of homosexuality is missionally relevant, but for those who are in Africa, the opposite is true. How do we make the message relevant while maintaining the integrity of the message?

Embrace: Could it be that the African churches have accommodated the extreme prejudice against homosexuals that is in their cultures? Is that not a distortion of the message?

South: We can all agree on protecting the rights of gays and lesbians without agreeing on whether or not homosexuality is a sin. The question before us is this: How do we remain united when the contextual demands are diametrically opposed to each other?

Anchor: I refuse to accept the premise that this boils down to regional differences, whether those differences are international or within the United States. What is right is right, regardless of the context.

When is Separation the Right Thing to Do?

Temperate: It is ridiculous to separate over one single issue. We have wasted time and energy on a few wedge issues when all of that passion could be used to confront life and death issues such as poverty and the Global AIDS pandemic.

Anchor: You are absolutely right, which is why we should have passed a resolution years ago banning any further discussion of the issue.