Pastor Mark Williams

Delegate Reports

Day 11 - Thursday, May 6

On Wednesday evening, Reconciling Ministries Network along with Affirmation and the Methodist Federation for Social Action announced that they would engage in a joint demonstration with Soulforce on the floor of General Conference to happen this morning. I tend not to agree with Soulforce's tactics. I found their arrests at Pastor Karen Dammann's trial unhelpful. I also felt that the letter that they sent to General Conference delegates a few weeks ago was threatening and intimidating. In their letter, they listed their "demands" that General Conference delegates must vote for, or else they would stage an act of civil disobedience. This type of ultimatum, particularly coming from an ecumenical movement without direct ties to the progressive caucuses in our denomination, seems to me to be inappropriate and alienating.

So I chose not to be present for the morning session when the demonstration was planned. I had received assurances that the demonstration had been negotiated with the bishops and the Calendar Committee. Soulforce had agreed not to engage in civil disobedience, bur rather take the direction of our progressive caucuses and take the floor only when permitted by the presiding bishop. From what I heard of the reports of the demonstration from participants, delegates, and other observers, the demonstration was quite non-confrontational. Many delegates and bishops stood and sang with the demonstrators as they circled the conference floor. Members of the Pacific Northwest delegation reported to me that it was a grace-filled, non-anxious event that felt moving and hopeful. When the agreed upon time was up, the demonstrators left the floor of the conference, many returning to the gallery to observe or leaving the convention center.

Some of the business that I missed in the morning session included the approval of creating an Episcopal Study Committee. This was adopted in response to the proposal of the General Council on Finance and Administration's petition that would have reduced the number of bishops in each jurisdiction by one. Instead, the Study has been assigned the responsibility to study the allocation of bishops and come to the General Conference in 2008 with recommendations for a fair assignment of bishops to each jurisdiction according to missional needs. This means that the Western Jurisdiction will still be electing two new bishops this summer to replace the two bishops who are retiring.

Another proposal from the bishops sought to create a position of a staff person for the Council of Bishops. This executive officer of the Council of Bishops would be chosen from among their membership to serve for four years. This person would help provide consistent leadership, support, and a center of communication for the work of the Council of Bishops. One African delegate who spoke, the person who was just elected as first reserve member of the Judicial Council earlier in the week, argued against endorsing this plan because it appeared to him to create a system too much like Roman Catholicism, with an "archbishop" over the other bishops. The conference voted to refer this proposal to the same Episcopal Study Committee that had just been created.

Time continues to raise tensions in the work of the conference. In order to complete petitions with financial implications, the conference worked through the usual lunch hour and took an abbreviated lunch break mid-afternoon. Throughout the day, procedural motions to cut-off debate and push petitions to a vote were approved by wide margins. This tension of getting the work done within the time allowed appears to be making people less patient.

Several petitions that the conservative caucuses had targeted didn't go their way today. A Resolution on the Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research proposed to place in our Book of Resolutions that it is "more morally tolerable to use existing embryos" from in vitro fertilization clinics than having them discarded and losing the potential research benefits. This petition passed.

A taskforce to study theological and ethical issues related to artificial insemination was approved by a vote of 53% to 47%.

A controversial petition brought to General Conference by the Women's Division proposed a resolution on "Teen Sexual Identity and Suicide Risk." This proposal was bitterly attacked by conservative voices who called the accompanying financial support for ministries for teenagers struggling with sexual identity issues a waste of our resources. Critics argued that sexual identity wasn't the only cause of teen suicide, and studies that reported that around 30% of teen suicides are directly linked to sexual identity issues involved manipulated statistics. One person arguing against the proposal stated that the money requested for these ministries would benefit only a targeted group of people, and that it would be better to spend that money on things that would benefit the whole church, such as the excellent and informative video presentations that are shown during the breaks at General Conference. These arguments were the most offensive I've heard, though no one else seemed to respond as negatively as I did to them. They actually argued that it would be better use of our money to produce a video for use in breaks at General Conference than it would be to engage in ministry to save the lives of gay teenagers. The forcefulness of the attack against the proposal made me fear that the resolution may not pass. But when the vote was taken, the resolution on Teen Sexual Identity and Suicide Risk passed with 55% of the vote.

Two legislative attempts were made to take away the property and some of the trust financial resources of the General Board of Church and Society. Conservatives argued that the Board of Church and Society wasn't doing enough to promote ministries to address alcohol and substance abuse, therefore they were failing in their responsibilities as the successor of the former agency to promote Temperance. The temperance argument sounded like a ruse to me. I strongly suspect that it isn't what Church and Society fails to do that drew this attack upon them. It's what Church and Society does do on other matters, such as their outspoken criticism of the Bush Administration's pre-emptive war policy and attack against Iraq without seeking the approval of the United Nations. It's the Church and Society's advocacy for women's legal rights to choose their own reproductive futures. Temperance, it seems to me, was not the issue, though several conservative college age men got up to speak in favor of taking away the resources of the Board of Church and Society because they aren't doing enough to curb drinking on college campuses. When all was said, the attempt to de-fund the General Board of Church and Society failed 29% to 71%.

A similar attack on the United Methodist Women was debated. In this petition, it was proposed to allow non-UMW women's ministries to be adopted by local churches, undermining the role of United Methodist Women. Conservative caucuses have identified UMW and the Women's Division in general as too liberal. Because of the Women's Division's support of the march for women's rights, including support of women's rights to reproductive choices, they were targeted by the conservatives. But after considerable debate, this petition failed by a vote of 23% to 77%.

A highly contentious debate on a resolution calling for the Promotion of Ministries for and With Homosexuals took quite a while to debate. The proposal as it originally came to General Conference called for the United Methodist Church to endorse ministries to help people leave "the homosexual lifestyle." A watered down version of this petition made it to the conference floor as a minority report. The watered down version considered today didn't specifically mention "conversion" or "reparative" therapies, but it did use language of "dealing with" and "struggling with" homosexuality. One impassioned supporter said that this legislation was necessary for the church to be in ministry "for those who don't want to be involved in the life and activity of homosexuality any longer." Rather than pass the legislation as a resolution of General Conference, though, it was referred for consideration by the General Board of Discipleship by a vote of 72% to 28%.

On the other hand, a petition to encourage youth-serving groups who use United Methodist Churches to consider the matter of inclusivity in their membership failed by a vote of 20% to 80%. The debate around this petition centered on the Boy Scouts of America's policies that exclude gay leaders and members. The rush to defend the Boy Scouts seemed to me to obscure the debate around encouraging conversation between churches and outside organizations about accessibility and inclusiveness, which the church strongly supports in our Book of Discipline.

A petition to reformulate jurisdictional representation on general boards and agencies proposed to eliminate 30 of the 33 Western Jurisdiction representatives to our denominational agencies, and add about 30 representatives to the Southeastern Jurisdiction. Most of the other jurisdictions would lose a handful, and a handful would be added to Central Conferences. The petition passed, and the voice of the Western Jurisdiction was further muted.

Probably the greatest impact on the life of the church, particularly in the lives of our clergy, was the petition from the General Council on Finance and Administration to overhaul our Clergy Retirement Security Program. The petition called for our pension plan to move to a designated benefit plan, with the promise that it would reduce costs to annual conferences and guarantee pension benefits that will be paid out at retirement for clergy. This dramatic departure from our current pension program, which seemed to me to be working well, even with the financial downturn of the past three years, was debated. The petition to restructure our pension program was approved 74% to 26%.

Immediately upon approval of the new pension scheme, a declaratory ruling was requested from the Judicial Council as to the plan's constitutionality.

At dinner, many of us learned of news reports on CNN and printed in the New York Times and other papers announcing that conservatives had called for the division of church assets and a separation of the denomination. This came as a surprise to some, considering no such proposal has been presented to the General Conference. After dinner, one obviously angry delegate spoke to the matter, calling the public release of this proposal before coming to the floor of the conference with it a matter of betrayal and broken covenant. When this was mentioned on the floor of conference, there was considerable murmuring and groans. This news clearly caught many delegates off guard, and the speaker's opinion that it was shameful to learn about such things being discussed behind closed doors by having to read outside newspapers.

* This manipulation of the media has been a theme in the past two weeks. Christianity Today, a moderately conservative magazine, published a quote from Bishop Elias Galvan indicating that he believed the Judicial Council ruling from earlier this week prohibited him from appointing Pastor Karen Dammann. We came to discover that the bishop never said this, and in fact was never contacted by Christianity Today. Upon further investigation, it appears that a reporter from the magazine approached someone who claimed to be Bishop Galvan, and quoted them without checking to find out if it really was the bishop. This open deceit is appalling.

In the evening session, the main petition that I found of significance was a proposal to reaffirm our doctrinal standards as a denomination, and to hold bishops, clergy, and laity in leadership positions accountable to uphold and defend "orthodox" Christian faith as contained in our doctrinal standards. This debate began as a matter of reaffirming what we believe, but it was quickly pointed out that the petition would have the effect of calling for an inquisitorial atmosphere in the church. One woman from the Northeast pointed out that people in her state knew all too well the justifications for witch hunts, and that this petition was clearly the foundation for attacking our church leadership based on debates about faith and doctrine. Another person argued that we have never been a creedal church, and it would be a sharp departure from our "think and let think" history as a denomination. Several amendments to the petition gutted the punitive parts of it that called for bishops, clergy and lay leadership to be held accountable to the historic doctrinal standards. And amendment clarified exactly what were listed as historic doctrinal standards in the Book of Discipline. Eventually, a watered down version without teeth was passed by a significant majority. Immediately, a declaratory ruling was requested of Judicial Council as to the constitutionality of the legislation. The request for the ruling was approved by 64% of the delegates.

Today felt like a very different day. The motion to reconsider the postponement of the church's right to appeal a trial court verdict has not come up yet. Several petitions which conservative caucuses identified as part of their platform for General Conference failed. The reformulation of jurisdictional representation to general boards and agencies was a terrible loss of influence from the Western Jurisdiction on the denomination. But the conservatives clearly cannot get everything they want from this General Conference. Further, the pre-emptive alert that they are calling for a church split seems to me to have backfired. I sensed resentment on the floor, not only to the idea of the proposal, but even more to the manner in which they learned of it. I think the conservative caucus overplayed their hand and lost considerable momentum that they had been able to capitalize on earlier in the week.

Tomorrow I will be seated on the floor of conference throughout the day, as Bob Hoshibata will be flying out. It may be a very eventful day. I suspect it could also be rather anti-climactic. We could be living into a schismatic moment in the church, or, I suspect more likely, we will end our sessions with more rules, more restrictions, but ultimately without much real change in the tension and internal struggles we faced as a denomination at the beginning of General Conference.

Mark Williams
Pacific Northwest Conference Delegation
First Alternate Delegate

* Kathleen Rutledge from "Christianity Today" contacted me after I returned from Pittsburgh to clarify what happened with regard to the misquoting of Bishop Galvan. In reponse to her email, I agreed to post this correction. "Christianity Today" did not publish the misquote of Bishop Galvan. Ms. Rutledge caught the mistake before publishing her article. She confirms that when she asked someone to point her to Bishop Galvan, she was pointed to the wrong person. That person, in turn, answered affirmatively when asked if he was Bishop Galvan. She took his quote, believing in good faith that he was the person he identified himself to be. But fortunately, the error was caught prior to publication. So my report that Christianity Today had published this misquote was in error, and I apologize for implying that she didn't check her facts sufficiently. In fact, I'm glad that she checked her facts more diligently than I did. In my attempt to consolidate and pass along so much happening at General Conference, I likely made more than just this mistake. My apologies. MEW

The First United Methodist Church of Ellensburg

Delegate Reports

Day 11 - Thursday, May 6