General Conference 2004 Reports
Detroit Free Press
David Crumm
April 27 | May 5 | May 6 | May 7 | May 8
APRIL 27 - Methodists' meeting to address hot issues
Divide in Bush's church on war, gay marriages reflects nation's discord
In the midst of a controversial war and a hotly contested election year, the global leaders of President George W. Bush's church will gather today in Pittsburgh for their first legislative conference in four years.
Delegates to the United Methodist General Conference say they are determined to send a strong message about terrorism and the war in Iraq to their church's most famous member before they adjourn May 7.The White House still is negotiating with church leaders on whether the president or first lady Laura Bush will make an appearance.
The question that has journalists and political analysts closely watching the conference is: How will this cross section of Americans work out issues that are bedeviling the whole world right now?
Interviews with many United Methodists in Michigan on the eve of the conference reveal a denomination as deeply divided as the voting public on issues from homosexuality to Iraq.
"The Methodists are fascinating to watch because they have the whole diversity of American opinion -- left, right and center," said political scientist John Green, one of the nation's leading experts on religion and politics. Green, who teaches at the University of Akron in Ohio, plans to go to Pittsburgh to watch delegates work out these hot-button issues.
This is a church that embraces U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., as well as Vice President Dick Cheney. Four years ago, then-first lady Clinton addressed the last General Conference. A postelection study in 2000 of voting patterns among United Methodist clergy showed them evenly split between Bush and Al Gore, Green said.
"If you take Methodists as a group, they're very close to the middle of American politics, while at the same time reflecting the country's diversity: North to South, rural and urban, black and white, rich and poor," Green said.
Michigan's 20-member United Methodist delegation to the Pittsburgh conference ranges from Lew Tibbits, a camp director in Sebewaing on Saginaw Bay, to the Rev. Charles Boayue, the Liberian-American pastor of Second Grace United Methodist Church in Detroit.
Both say they are passionately committed to forging a prophetic statement on war and terrorism.
Tibbits took a break last week from organizing an upcoming fishing derby at his Bay Shore Camp to talk about the agonizing moral dilemmas Americans are facing.
"I feel very strongly that we've got to do something, but as I look at our choices, well, it feels like our pond has gotten pretty muddy," he said. "It's so cloudy now that it's hard to see."
A self-described conservative who has strongly backed Bush, Tibbits said: "This is very emotional for me. I've got good Christian friends who've told me, 'We shouldn't be over there in Iraq.' And other good Christians are telling me, 'We need to be there. Hats off to our president.' "
In Detroit, Boayue (pronounced boy-AY-you) said: "I hope the president does come to Pittsburgh. This is such a crucial time for the world that it would be a great opportunity for the president to meet with leaders of his church.
"Of course, because I was born in Liberia, I must look at these conflicts from a global perspective," he said. Boayue came to the United States in 1983 as a student and was ordained a United Methodist minister in 1993. He became a U.S. citizen in 1998.
He didn't support attacking Iraq, but Boayue doesn't think the United States can pull out now. "It would be immoral for us to have destroyed Iraq's institutions, then to abandon these people."
Thinking of relatives in Liberia and friends in many poor countries around the world, Boayue said, "The issue that is more important, now, is the way we are creating a new world with a devastating rift between the wealthy and the poor. If we fear terrorism, we must realize that this rift is the recipe for terror."
In Pittsburgh, American delegates will hear a broad array of international viewpoints. The seats in the conference, 500 for clergy and 500 for lay delegates, will include 188 men and women from Africa, Asia and Europe.
Delegates from Asia and Africa are expected to play a major role in defending their church's existing bans on gay clergy and on blessing gay unions.
"In the United States, people seem to be divided on these issues, but I can tell you that those coming from Asia and Africa will be 99 percent opposed to changing these positions," Boayue said.
About 8.3 million United Methodists live in the United States, including 200,000 in Michigan, and 1.9 million live overseas.
When compared with other churches, United Methodist numbers may seem low. The largest religious group in the United States, the Catholic Church, reports 64 million members, but that is a rough estimate of baptized Catholic children and adults, including families who have been inactive for years. Methodists count only teens and adults who have taken membership vows and remain active as gauged by attendance or donations.
Since 2000, Bush has visited many churches but remains active in his home congregation, Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. His 2003 tax return reports donations to Tarrytown, St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., and a chapel at Camp David.
When it comes to church membership, Bush has a huge advantage over his chief opponent in November, Green said. Unlike U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has been dogged by complaints that a practicing Catholic is forbidden to publicly support abortion rights, Bush's church practices a nearly wide-open policy on taking communion.
Bush has been free to disagree with his church's teachings and, at the moment, is at odds with United Methodist positions that call for sharply limiting handguns, keeping abortion legal and opposing the death penalty. All those positions are up for review in Pittsburgh, however.
Established in 1784 just after the American Revolution, Methodism's founders borrowed from the democratic institutions that were springing up around them. The church's hallmark is its system that entrusts its church law to the review of delegates every four years.
Bush could learn some valuable lessons in Pittsburgh, Green said. "This is a church that's been successful over many years in embodying the divisions in American society and struggling to find a middle ground on which to move ahead."
MAY 5 - Methodists are torn by homosexuality
In another vote, church leaders say it's wrong
The deep division within the United Methodist Church, whose worldwide leaders voted Tuesday to retain their strict condemnation of homosexuality, reflects the painful controversy raging across the country over gay relationships, clergy from Michigan said after the vote.
"The delegates who came to this conference heard the cries of our laypeople that they need clarity on our position about homosexuality," said the Rev. Terry Euper, the aide to Michigan United Methodist Bishop Linda Lee and one of 20 Michigan delegates at the conference in Pittsburgh.
After a public protest by 200 gay-rights activists and an emotional debate by delegates, the conference voted, 527-423, to reject a proposal to change the church's stance.
United Methodist law condemns homosexuality, bars from ordination anyone who is involved in a gay relationship, forbids clergy to bless gay unions and bars the use of church funds to promote homosexuality. On Tuesday, activists were defeated in their effort to add a more ambiguous sentence acknowledging that Christians disagree about the morality of homosexuality.
If the conference had added that sentence to church doctrine, called the United Methodist Book of Discipline, it would have helped pastors across the country who work with gay members, said the Rev. Brent McCummons, pastor of 2,300-member First United Methodist Church of Midland.
"I'm thinking of families back home for whom the church's position now is hurtful. They wanted us to be more inclusive of their children," said McCummons, who declined to say how he voted. "I'm trying to be a pastor to all of these families."
Though delegates rejected the proposal, the emotionally wrenching division in the 10.2-million denomination was obvious to anyone in downtown Pittsburgh.
Preparing for the vote, gay-rights activists and evangelical caucuses within the church leadership met over breakfast at separate sites near the Pittsburgh Convention Center.
The gay-rights activists, dressed casually in preparation for their outdoor march, met in a chilly church basement and ate cold cereal in plastic bowls. The malfunction of an old coffeepot meant no hot coffee. Still, equal numbers of men and women, virtually all Americans, joined hands and sang an upbeat song about God's compassionate love.
Several blocks away, about 400 evangelical United Methodists discussed strategies for defeating gay rights over a buffet breakfast eaten on china and white linen tablecloths in a hotel ballroom. Servers in tuxedo jackets hovered at their elbows, refilling their coffee cups as they discussed parliamentary procedure.
Most were men in dark suits. That included many delegates from Africa who spoke almost apocalyptically about the disaster they said would result from the slightest wavering in their church's condemnation of gays.
Retired Bishop Judith Craig, one of the first women in the world to be elected as a bishop and who supervised Michigan's 200,000 United Methodists from 1984 to 1992, sat at the head of the line of protesters in a motorized cart, because of a bad hip.
While in office, Craig did not publicly challenge church policies on homosexuality. "But now that I'm retired, what are they going to do? Fire me?" she said.
"This is a justice issue. I wish that 50 years ago, people had marched in the streets for women, when the Bible was being used against us just like it's being used against gays and lesbians today. I'm praying for a change of heart in my church."
Gay-rights activists said they took some solace, because the key vote in a long series of parliamentary maneuverings was defeated by a 55-to-45 percent margin -- narrower than the 67-percent majority on a similar vote at the last global conference, four years ago.
Nevertheless, as in 2000, strongly antigay statements by delegates from Africa played a crucial role. A Liberian warned that any acceptance of homosexuality would be licensing people to go to hell.
The Rev. James Preston of Rockville, Ill., said he will head home Friday deeply saddened. "Today, my church refused to speak the truth that we do disagree," he said. "My church is bleeding today."
May 6 - Shattered chalice becomes a symbol for Methodists
Leaders' division over homosexuality painful
When a communion chalice was smashed on the floor of a worldwide gathering of United Methodist leaders in Pittsburgh this week, hundreds of bishops, pastors and laypeople were shocked.
The hours leading up to this explosive moment had laid bare the church's deep divisions over whether to accept or condemn gay and lesbian members. In the debate, the Rev. James Preston, a delegate from Rockford, Ill., hadagonized over the stern voices of antigay delegates, including one man who angrily declared that gay people are bound for hell.
Preston kept thinking about a close relative back home who is gay. As his church voted to maintain its strict condemnation of homosexuality, he felt the verbal assaults on homosexuality as attacks on his family.
Near the end of a communion service, the central symbol of unity in Christianity, Preston felt a powerful impulse to step toward the altar, raise an empty ceramic chalice high above his head and then open his fingers.
What happened after the gut-wrenching crash, however, turned this act of desperation into one of the few symbols of hope in a global gathering that, by Thursday, had broken down into calls for schism.
Former Michigan Bishop Donald Ott witnessed Preston's act and transformed it with a simple response: The bishop silently stooped and gathered up some of the broken pieces, which had shot off in a hundred directions.
"I was shocked," said Ott, "but I thought: How true this was to what we all were experiencing. The body of Christ was broken. I felt a strong instinct to pick up those pieces, to place them back on the altar and even to save one piece to remember this."
Soon, others followed. The Rev. Trey Hall of Glenview, Ill., also has gay relatives and now carries with him a tiny chip from the rim of the cup.
"What's happened here is so painful," Hall said. "This small piece is such a perfect symbol of that. I'll keep it and reflect on it, I'm sure, for the rest of my life."
Michael Mumme, a seminarian at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta who hopes to be ordained in several years, said he was shocked "that something so sacred was broken in front of us."
But there also seemed to be a profound truth in the broken chalice, he said. "This was a symbol of our failure to live up to Christ's call to love everyone. And, I knelt down, too. I plan to carry a piece with me as a reminder that God calls everyone to come to the table."
The chalice was broken on Tuesday and, by Wednesday, a new chapter in the chalice's story emerged. It turned out that the chalice belonged to Barbara Day Miller of Atlanta, who leads music at the conference. As word of Miller's personal loss spread through the 1,000 delegates, several people came to see her.
"They came to me at different times," she said. "Each one said, 'I'm a potter. May I make a new chalice for you?' And that's where I see a symbol of healing. There are people we don't even know who are waiting out there, ready to make new chalices for us. I told each one, 'Yes, please.' "
On Thursday, as evangelicals launched an effort to split the church, Ott said his shard suddenly took on a new meaning.
"Now, I just hope that, if we separate, I live long enough to come to the conference when we reunite, and I can return my piece to the altar," he said.
MAY 7 - Evangelical campaign to end homosexuality dispute stuns meeting
An evangelical campaign to split the country's second-largest Protestant denomination was unveiled Thursday in Pittsburgh after decades of controversy over homosexuality.
The move took the leadership of the 10.2 million-member United Methodist Church by surprise, but the dispute cuts across denominational boundaries. It has raged in the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church, which is in the midst of its own painful division over the issue.
United Methodist Church leaders had braced Thursday for a demonstration by hundreds of gay-rights activists, who marched through the worldwide General Conference waving banners and singing hymns to protest the church's condemnation of homosexuality, which a vote reinforced Tuesday.
But slowly, news of the call for a split filtered in, and United Methodists realized that the unity of their entire denomination was at risk from the opposite end of the theological divide. Evangelical leaders said they were exhausted by years of debate over homosexuality and wanted a denomination all their own.
It took until Thursday afternoon for the bishops to fire back.
"We feel a common sadness that we learned about this through the press this morning," said Bishop Ruediger Minor of Moscow, president of the council. "In leaving the church, these people would -- what do Americans say? -- they would shoot themselves in the foot, because they would lose the possibility of influencing this worldwide church."
Bishop William Oden of Dallas said, "We're spiritual leaders of the entire church, and we believe no one part of the church really represents the whole."
That's exactly why the evangelical coalition, spearheaded by the Rev. Bill Hinson, a retired United Methodist pastor from Alabama, said it wants to lead evangelical congregations into their own denomination.
Hinson told reporters that he intended his surprise announcement to stun the church's leadership, and likened it to throwing a long pass at the end of a football game.
"We just tried to throw the bomb," Hinson said as he unveiled his movement's strategy on Thursday.
Michigan United Methodist leaders said they hope that their church won't split.
"My hope has always been that our differences can be reconciled," said Shirley Cook of Oxford, the head of the 12-person Michigan delegation of clergy and laity at the Pittsburgh conference.
"A united church is a much better expression of the will of God than a separated church," said the Rev. Charles Boayue Jr. of Second Grace United Methodist Church in Detroit. Boayue is a Liberian-American delegate who also works closely with delegates who traveled from Africa to attend the conference.
Boayue questioned Hinson's plan to unite with African United Methodist leaders, whose evangelical traditions have prompted their opposition to homosexuality. Africans are not single-issue Christians, he said.
"I disagree with anyone who thinks that Africans are that naive," Boayue said. More important than any single issue to most Africans is unity within Christianity, he said.
Hinson said the potential schism depends more on a grassroots campaign that he and other evangelical leaders plan to wage in the next few years than it does on official action by the church's leadership.
By Thursday evening, Hinson said, "We're already hearing from people across the country who like the idea of finally having a solution to these endless debates over homosexuality. They've heard about this through the press, and they like the idea."
Hinson said that, although church leaders may reject -- or even refuse -- to consider his plan for a separation before they adjourn tonight, a broad grassroots campaign involving thousands of congregations nationwide will cause enough furor to force a schism.
However, the Rev. J. Phillip Wogamon, a United Methodist theologian and author from Washington, D.C., said, "They've certainly got a shot at getting some congregations to separate, but, if they are truly pursuing this strategy, they're going to find some considerable spiritual and intellectual resources in this church that will rise up to try to restore calmness and reason and unity."
MAY 8 - Methodist conference condemns Iraq actions
United Methodist leaders, winding up their global conference in Pittsburgh, turned Friday to the violence in Iraq that drew worldwide attention this week.
A resolution written by bishops representing 11.2 million United Methodists worldwide called the continued loss of U.S. and Iraqi lives an affront to God and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners both un-American and un-Christian.
A draft of the declaration, given to the Free Press by bishops on Friday night and expected to be formally released next week, called for a swift end to the violence and a stronger role for the United Nations in stabilizing Iraq. But, as they weighed the complex moral choices presented by the war, United Methodist pastors said they are finding it almost impossible to know what to tell their thousands of congregations.
"We're in a quagmire, where we can't just leave Iraq but, if something doesn't change, we're becoming the country's occupiers," said the Rev. Tom Robinson, who oversees 80 churches in the Saginaw area. "One thing that's clear is that our people here are very supportive of our people who are serving over there in Iraq. But, more and more, people here do not support a lot of what is happening over there."
President George W. Bush is a member of the United Methodist church, but declined an invitation to speak at the conference. Some delegates voiced sharp criticism of their church's most famous member, but many said they prayed daily for the president.
"I lift up Bush and his entire cabinet in their dealings with Iraq in the hope that they can quickly find some resolution," said the Rev. Tara Sutton of Central United Methodist Church in Waterford. The continuing loss of life and the treatment of Iraqi prisoners has left "a great sadness," Sutton said.
UNITY VOTE: Though divided about the war, delegates overwhelmingly supported trying to hold their denomination together. After a week of heated debate over homosexuality and a threat by evangelicals to bolt, the conference voted, 869-41, to reaffirm unity. "As United Methodists, we remain in covenant with one another, even in the midst of disagreement," the resolution said. But the Rev. William Hinson of Alabama said he will work with those who want to free themselves from debates over gay rights. "I don't think the gap can be bridged," he said.
NEW MEMBERS: Hinson had predicted that United Methodist leaders in Africa would be sympathetic to division. But Friday, the 1-million-member Protestant Methodist Church of Cote d'Ivoire in Africa was formally accepted into membership in the church.
"We want to be part of the mission of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world," said the Rev. Benjamin Boni, head of the delegation from the new branch.