Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

Not since they started serving beer!

 

When I was in high school, the county seat held an election on adding liquor by the drink. My parents were frustrated they couldn’t vote “no” because we lived just outside the city limits. I wasn’t exactly looking to get sloshed at 16, but I did want something nicer than Shoney’s in our weekly eating out rotation.

“If this passes, will we at least get to eat at the new restaurants?”
“Oh sure.”

It passed and we did.

 

The hell you say.

 

That had to be done in my town when Applebee's came in the mid '90s. We had to pass liquor by the drink and alcohol on Sundays before they'd start construction.

 

All of those churches who put black electrical tape and spray paint over the words "United Methodist" may be feeling a little foolish.

The Nigerian and Ethiopian congregations who clutch their pearls over sin in the camp always change their tunes when they want some of that evil Western money. They can go sit hard on cut cane.

xoxoxo
The Episcopalians Down The Street

 

Passed laws to get an Applebee's in town. An Applebee's.

 

I try to have grace for the African members of our connexion because many live in countries where homosexuality is a capital crime. And even in dissent (and there’s surprisingly little this week; the prohibition was lifted via consent agenda) they have stayed faithful to the denomination. The same can’t be said for the American breakaway churches, many of whom as you noted have treated their church signs like a dying motel doing a slipshod job of covering up its past life as a Holiday Inn.

 

I'm one of the board's resident United Methodists, but to me this feels like the ultimate Pyrrhic victory.

I've believed in inclusion in the UMC for more than 20 years but I really wish we could have gotten there in a way that didn't probably destroy my home church and possibly as many as two other churches I have been a member of in the U.P. since I became an adult. The "disaffiliation" plan mentioned in the NYT requires, among other things, a 2/3 vote and the paying of apportionments (support of the regional and global church) a year ahead of time. Looking back, it was probably a worst case scenario -- the disaffiliation motion failed by a single vote. Therefore, there were enough people aggrieved by the outcome to walk away, form their own church and gut their financial support. The pastor, who had preached in favor of disaffiliation, resigned, and they don't have the money to support a full-time pastor. My Dad has been part of a cadre willing to take one week a month. As the only one of his three kids who is practicing, he likes to tell me about it and ask me about how things are going for me. Some of it is the demographics of our town. There aren't any kids in church and Dad frequently bemoans the inability to get a decent choir together, but this stuff ripped the guts out of it. Last I heard, they were discussing some sort of merger with the local ELCA Lutherans.

I guess that's the price that has to be paid. This debate has existed in the UMC since 1990s, and probably before. In a way, it was kind of genius in that simply refusing to follow their own rules (or enacting token punishments for it) was the way to achieve this equality, especially since many of the people and places that walked would have found a reason to do it eventually over something, and that many of them showed their cards by the disingenuous or outright dishonest ways they lobbied churches like mine to disaffiliate.

I guess what I'm saying is that when I take up my place in the 30-person choir next Sunday at my United Methodist Church in Minnesota, one that has been "reconciling (inclusive)" for 30 years, and whose pastor when I moved here in 2015 became my parents (and church friends') bishop in Michigan in 2016, I expect people will celebrate the work of this General Conference as some sort of bloodless divorce in which they got full custody and the keys to the Camaro.

I can assure you that when I go home next Christmas Eve, it will not. If there's even a church to go home to.

 

Ours at the edge of the Birmingham suburbs is hanging on and even seems to be perking up a little the last few months. We will probably get one more jolt of defections after this week (there’s a Sunday school class that recently transplanted itself to a Global Methodist congregation in a town next door) but most who were agitated saw the writing on the wall over the past couple of years. Still, if you are headed south we are practically the last chance saloon as far as the UMC goes until you nearly get to Montgomery.

 

In the mid 90s, we didn't have anything like that. It was a first.
The local bars served beer only. If someone wanted liquor, they had to belong to a private club. Those were like the Local Ski Club, 9 out of 10 whose members wouldn't have known a lift ticket from a binding.

 

One more note from your Episcopal cousins:

Don't do it. You will regret it.

I try not to be judgy. Some of Will D. Campbell's books sit on my Happy Corner Shelf as a rebuke. He ministered to Klan members, something I keep thinking I could not do. Still, who is likely supporting those laws? Like I said, they're all about being the Godliest until they want to hit up Canterbury and company for those shekels. Then we're their "brothers and sisters in Christ."

 

The disaffiliation stuff was heartbreaking because of the lies the Global Methodists were saying about the United Methodists. Most of the ones who disaffiliated around here then didn't wind up going GMC and instead became independent evangelical churches - which I think was the goal all along for many preachers leading the charge. They didn't like getting moved on a regular basis nor having to kick up apportionments.

Given the UMC approved full communion with the Episcopals, I suspect we'll see a few combined congregations start to pop around the nation. At least, I hope that's the case. Draw that circle wider.

(Also, since Covid, even the mega-churches around here have seen a big decline in Sunday attendance. So sharp, in fact, that the local youth baseball league began scheduling Sunday morning games. This in a region where up until 10 years ago, the school system didn't schedule events on Wednesdays to avoid angering the big Baptist and evangelical churches.)