Church

 I’ve told you before that I often question my religious faith. There are questions I don’t have the answers to and things done in the name of religion that I don’t agree with.  But I love my church.  The biggest events in my life have revolved around that church.  I was married there. That was the first place we took our children.  My children were christened, confirmed and baptized there. Both my parents’ funerals were held there.  My son’s funeral was held there.  It holds a special place in my heart   

I am a United Methodist.  I’ve been a Methodist all my life, and a United one since 1968 when the Methodist church merged with the predominantly black United Evangelical Brotherhood.  I was 13 when this took place, but I remember well how a lot of churches, and a lot of people, including members of my family, left the denomination because they were afraid their church would be forced to have a black pastor and forced to accept black members. You have to remember that even though civil rights laws were changing, this was still the Segregated South. They were convinced that it would be the end of the Methodist denomination. It wasn’t.  In fact, the denomination has grown even bigger.  

Now in the 21st Century, my denomination is facing another crisis.  This time over the inclusion of LGBTQ members, ordination of openly gay clergy, and allowing same-sex weddings to be held in the churches or officiated by UM clergy. This argument has been going on for about 10 years now, but came to a head about 5 years ago.  It’s too complicated to go into here, but in Mississippi alone, nearly half the churches in our conference have “disaffiliated” or left the denomination.  Many clergy have left.   Their justification for this is a paragraph in the Book of Discipline, our church laws, prohibiting openly gay clergy and same sex weddings. They also cite a passage in Leviticus against homosexuality.  

Here’s my thoughts.  If you’re going to cherry pick that one passage to justify your prejudice, and hatred, why stop there?  Let’s stone to death anyone who’s divorced.  I fit in that group.  Or women who wear pants.  Or men who shave their beard.  We must sell our daughters into marriage.  We should be allowed to own slaves.  And don’t you dare go to the barbecue joint and eat a slab of ribs or go to the fish house and eat shrimp and catfish.  If you’re going to enforce one Old Testament law, enforce them all.  

These people call themselves Christians, which by definition means a follower of Christ and his teachings.  Jesus didn’t have much to say about homosexuality. Look it up yourself.  Check all those red words in the Bible and you’ll see. He did, however, have a lot to say about loving your neighbor.  And he didn’t put any restrictions as to who was our neighbor.  If you’re going to enforce biblical law, don’t stop with the Old Testament, remember the New Testament too  

I’m vocal and passionate about this for this reason. We had a young pastor, about 20 years ago, who was a wonderful pastor, preacher, teacher, and friend.  The church grew and thrived under him. The whole town loved him. But he was kicked out of the United Methodist Church because of who he loved. We knew he was gay but we didn’t care.  We loved him and still do.  After he left us and went to another church, he came out as gay and the bishop, according to church law, had no choice but to revoke his credentials.  He has a God given gift but is not allowed to use that gift because of who he loves. He was, and still is, my friend.  I love him dearly and I always will. 

Next month I will go to the Mississippi Annual Conference as the delegate from my church.  We will be getting a new pastor and it’s my job to meet him or her (yes, we’ve had women pastors before) and report back on the business of conference and anything we need to do for the new pastor.  I think this will be my last conference   I’ve been a delegate for 20 years and I’m tired. Tired of all the politics.  Tired of all the hypocrisy. Tired of all the bullshit.  Tired of people who claim to love Jesus doing the very things he said not to do. 

I said when this issue came up that the United Methodist Church survived integration and we would survive this.  I’m not so sure now.  

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