Christendom and the Methodist Crisis on Homosexuality

Most members of the United Methodist Church know by now, if they haven't known for awhile, that the denomination is in a crisis.  That crisis centers around homosexuality and whether persons who are homosexual, particularly practicing homosexual behavior (it’s like saying that drunkenness is a sin but being an alcoholic is not), should be ordained or married in the church.  There is no doubt that homosexual persons are welcome in the church as we are supposed to love all people, but the question is whether we can ordain or marry people who are knowingly living in sin.  Obviously, then, the question revolves around whether or not homosexuality should be considered a sin or, if it is a sin, whether that matters.

Currently the United Methodist Church states that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with the teachings of Christianity and, therefore, we do not ordain or marry homosexual persons.  For years we as a denomination have wrestled with varying degrees of intensity over whether our stance should change.  In 2016, our General Conference (the quadrennial governing body for the denomination, consisting of lay and clergy in equal number) decided, amidst yet another heated argument making other church business impossible, to hold a Special Session of General Conference February 23-26 of 2019.  Hey, that's this month!  By the end of this month, then, we will more or less know whether or not the United Methodist Church as we know it will split based on the result of that Special Session.  Most prognosticators predict we will split.  Hence the crisis.  Hence why I, as an UM pastor concerned about the movement called Methodist, am writing a lengthy essay on the crisis.  To understand the essay in full, you should have a basic awareness of the main plans proposed for General Conference: the (Modified) Traditional Plan, the Connectional Conference Plan, the One Church Plan, and the Simple Plan.  Googling "UMC Traditional Plan," etc. will do the trick.

To be clear, I am not writing this essay with the intention of settling a theological score.  You'll find very little here about what the biblical understanding of homosexuality is or how to understand it contextualized in some theological system.  Rather, this essay is written from the perspective of Methodism.  How should Methodists approach the crisis and move forward after February?  To answer that question, I think it important to provide a bird's eye view of Methodism as a movement and, also, Christendom as a phenomenon.  Understanding the movement called Methodist and Christendom will shed light on the rest.

Since Methodism's roots tentacle their way deep into, or against, Christendom, it's fitting that we describe Christendom first.  At the outset it should be clear that I'm arguing that Methodism was a uniquely anti-Christendom or a-Christendom movement and that it has now become part of Christendom.  A long historical argument is, then, necessary. 

Typically Christendom can be traced back to the Roman Emperor Constantine who claimed that Jesus Christ was the force behind victory in a major battle, with a vision and all.  From Constantine forward Christianity went from being a persecuted religion to the religion of the empire.  Though a change in the religion was not immediate by any means, nor was the religion the exact same at the time of Constantine as it was in the time of Christ, we can certainly easily blame Constantine's conversion and promotion of the faith for the trend ongoing ever since.  The term 'Christendom' refers to this change: it was now the religion of the kingdom.

Don't be fooled, however, because Christendom is not merely the tying together of church and state.  Constantine's purposely merging the faith with his state, and the leaders of the faith acquiescing, is only one part of Christendom's definition.  Christendom, according to Soren Kierkegaard, is probably best defined as "official Christianity," a Christianity that compromises with culture to the point of being offended by the New Testament--a Christianity that is so far from being real Christianity that New Testament Christianity is offensive.  John Howard Yoder provides an historical analysis to explain Christendom through the lens of pacifism.  From the original disciples on through the first couple hundred of years of Christianity, Christians were adamantly pacifist.  Our first Christian manuals and teaching guides all are clear that a baptized Christian cannot become a soldier, and if one is already a soldier prior to baptism, then a baptized Christian must reject any order or engagement, or oath of loyalty, that might lead to violence of any kind.  Christians were so clear on the subject that they were known to be a hindrance to effective government (not only because their legions were now infected but because Christians were also clear that a Christian shouldn't be a civil magistrate or, if they were, to act in a manner totally opposed to normal operating procedures).  After all, it is hard to interpret the New Testament, the good news of Jesus particularly, to be anything but pacifist.  That Christians then slowly compromised their principles on this score to allow for soldiering and government participation is the definition of Christendom.  The surrounding culture informed Christian practice in the name of ease.  Though in our country church and state are legally separate, we can still see Christendom hard at work.  Christianity is a litmus test of sorts for politicians (yikes!) and Christians are no different than non-Christians in believing that serving one's country in the armed services is patriotic (yikes!).  Yikes, at least, would be the response of the early Christians before Christendom took hold.

Christianity, in its original definition and practice, not only wasn't concerned with the surrounding culture and state but in many ways was actively opposed to the surrounding culture and state.  Christendom turns the faith of Christ on its head, no longer being concerned only with discipling (following) Christ but concerned with fitting one's faith into normal, cultural living.  Essentially what happens, then, is that faith becomes less about present discipleship practice and instead only about future salvation; faith becomes less about the individual person in eternal and present relation to Christ and instead only about the propagation of the crowd of Christians.  Any number of Kierkegaard passages could be chosen to elucidate the point.  One of my favorites: "Christianity's idea was: to want to change everything.  The result, 'Christendom's' Christianity is: that everything, unconditionally everything, has remained as it was, only that everything has taken the name of 'Christian'--and so (strike up, musicians!) we are living paganism, so merrily, so merrily, around, around, around; or more accurately, we are living paganism refined by means of eternity and by means of having the whole thing be, after all, Christianity." (The Moment, 5)  Jacques Ellul, too, says the same.  "How has it come about that the development of Christianity and the church has given birth to a society, a civilization, a culture that are completely opposite to what we read in the Bible... There is not just contradiction on one point but on all points.  On the one hand, Christianity has been accused of a whole list of faults, crimes, and deceptions that are nowhere to be found in the original text and inspiration.  On the other hand, revelation has been progressively modeled and reinterpreted according to the practice of Christianity and the church."  (Subversion of Christianity) In other words, both the church and the culture are now arbiters of Christendom for the sake of their own propagation and security.  To Kierkegaard, for an individual to be a true Christian, one must renounce Christianity—what Christianity has become.

Discipleship of Christ, in its original, intended formulation according to Christ, was a personal choice with serious consequences, joyful and agonizing.  One must hate father and mother, sell off possessions, and be persecuted by the state and culture for giving up their ways.  Agonizing, more agonizing, and yet joy comes.  Christendom, however, removes the consequences of personal choice and transforms faith into a social choice with only reward--the joy of salvation and the joy of social acceptance.  Therefore, in Kierkegaard's formulation, if we are all Christians, then Christianity does not exist.

It is in the milieu of Christendom that the people and movement called Methodist arose.  John and Charles Wesley were ordained priests in the Church of England.  By virtue of the state church in England, many of the first Methodists were ipso facto Church of England.  By personal choice?  Perhaps not.  Regardless, the Wesley brothers understood that Christians needed to wake up, to revive, to feel and experience and live in God's grace, expressed in justifying and sanctifying terms, really and truly.  Because they operated within a state church, Christendom had a rather firm hold.  The faith of Christians at the time was dead.  One of the funniest things John Wesley ever wrote is found in his directions for singing, "Sing lustily and with a good courage.  Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep."  Indeed, deadness was the state of Christians at the time.  And, perhaps, of every time.  Being a Christian was grounded in the social reward, of not being persecuted by the state, of moving up in society, and of being like everyone else who also didn't care about living or practicing the faith.  As a movement of revival Methodism's aim was to wake up Christianity out of its Christendom slumber.

Methodism, as a movement, was therefore practice-oriented.  Theologically Methodists focused on God's grace, particularly on the fact that God's grace can do anything.  Rather than thinking that the end of God's intention in creating us and sending us Jesus Christ was to forgive us (justify us), Methodists believed that, actually, God wanted us to be like Adam and Eve, to have a relationship with us as He did with Adam and Eve, obviously before the fall.  So when Jesus himself says that we can be perfect like our Father in heaven is perfect, and other equal and similar invitations and commands, he was serious.  Jesus was both commanding and promising our likeness to him through God's grace.  Let us not, then, stop at believing.  Let that faith be active and alive in us.  In other words, we will no longer accept the complacent and compromising versions of social, Christendom Christianity.  Everything Methodists did was aimed at inviting God's grace more and more into our lives (through a method, hence our name) so that we could be like Christ in love and action.

Take Wesley's radical stances on money and poverty.  As an evangelical, Wesley took a number of radical and progressive stances for his time.  His stance on money, though, is perhaps the most radical, even for us.  Wesley claimed that the inefficacy of Christianity to change our culture (to change everything, as Kierkegaard said) lay in the fact that Methodists did not follow through with the third part of his famous guidance: Earn all you can.  Save all you can.  Give all you can.  Wesley took Jesus's call to sell all our possessions seriously, to give all we had to the poor seriously.  A Christian disciple living in God's grace should, like Christ, live simply and give whatever left over to those in need.  There is no reason, to Wesley, why anyone should live in poverty.  It's hard for Christians to hear this, then and now, because of Christendom.  The New Testament is offensive to us.

Whether Wesley or any Methodist at any time ever railed against Christendom using that precise word, I don't know.  I would bet not.  The fact is, though, that the movement called Methodist was, at its heart, aimed at waking people out of Christendom's seduction.  We should again be disciples, we should again live according to New Testament Christianity, according to the likeness of Christ, not the likeness of Christendom, not the likeness of easy and complacent Christianity.

Since the theology of the movement was fairly simply, the movement actively and purposely spread across denominations and theological divides.  Those divides, other than free grace over predestination, were unimportant to Methodists.  Wesley wrote a sermon entitled, "Catholic Spirit," in which he argues that as long as our hearts are right with one another, as long as we can join hands as disciples in living, action, love, ministry and mission, then we can and should put aside theological differences.  As long as we believe in the fundamentals of the faith, that Christ was and is the Son of God, that he died and rose again to save us and fill us with the Spirit, then why waste time arguing interesting but ultimately non-essential theological questions?  Let us focus on what is essential: Christ, our discipleship, and being filled with the Holy Spirit through grace.[i] 

The social structures, then, of society and denominations, and thus of Christendom, did not matter to Methodists.  Because Christendom malformed Christianity into a faith of belief only, rather than of discipleship and practice, matters of right belief for the sake of only future salvation became paramount to Christians entrapped by Christendom.  The difference between denominations then became crucial.  To Methodists, however, there's much more to faith than future salvation, and thus much more to faith than right belief.  Actively living in the grace that enables us to act, love, and live like Christ necessarily cuts across and against the structures of Christendom.  What mattered to Methodists was personal revival, the inward journey to fullness of Spirit.  There were certainly social aspects to Methodism, namely the class and band meetings, but these were intended to hone the inward journey, to hold individuals accountable to living according to Christ rather than Christendom.  Groups of Methodists were, essentially, critical to ensuring that individual disciples would continue to eschew the deadness of Christendom.

For those in the know about Methodism, you'll know that there are now significant structures in place in our denomination, particularly with the annual and general conferences.  What needs to be said here is that the Methodist conferences at the beginning were intended to be larger versions of the local class meetings.  The conferences were intended to focus on worship and revival.  To the extent that business was conducted, it was not the business of a church but the business of spirituality: who and where needs help, how do we support one another, what indeed is essential, and most importantly, how is the Spirit calling us.  Conferences were not intended to be another layer in the deepening of Christendom's structures.  In other words, how can we maintain the Spirit's moving apart from the compromising forces of Christendom?

Unfortunately, the story of Methodism is a tragic one.  What was once a fast-growing, Spirit-led movement of true disciples that cut across denominations, theology, and all of Christendom, became instead a slow, dead denomination.  Christendom proved too powerful.  Who knows what may have happened if the Revolutionary War did not occur when it did (effectively splitting American Methodists from British Methodists by virtue of patriotism, a purely Christendom word) because it effectively necessitated the birth of a denomination in the new States.  Soon after the growth trends of the movement slowed.  We were now our own denomination, so shouldn't we act like other denominations?  The structures grew and what defined us theologically grew more complicated.

The split referenced above between American and British Methodists was the first sign that something had gone terribly wrong.  Logically and historically we can make sense of why, during and after the Revolutionary War, Methodists on this side of the pond could no longer get along with Methodists on the other side.  Again, for the most part, Methodists were members of the Church of England because that was the state church.  Sometimes we forget that it was also the state church in the colonies.  When the fervor of patriotism--again, a word of Christendom--set the colonies against the crown, colonials now calling themselves American wanted to disconnect themselves from all things related to the oppressing power.  Americans could no longer justify being guided in their movement by a Brit supporting the king.  The split that led to the creation of the denomination makes sense.  Historically, anyway.  Spiritually, from the perspective of Methodists, the split makes no sense.  This was a movement guided by the Spirit in which people sought the Spirit's power in their lives to be like Christ, and therefore a movement that cared nothing at all for the powers that be.  The one loyalty of Methodists was to Christ and Christian living, like the original Christians.  Now, suddenly, with the war, Methodists, too, were infected with loyalties other than and above Christ and discipleship.  Christendom was creeping in.

What happened at the local level was equally harmful.  Local churches began to build massive church buildings.  Prior to that, the movement met in people's houses or rented space in other denominations’ buildings.  In building our own church buildings, however, Methodists decided that the movement was no longer counter and a-cultural.  Instead, we trended toward conformity, to a way of being church concerned with making its members comfortable.  Likewise, at the same time, members of churches no longer felt it important to be held accountable to living out their faith, to living in the grace of the Spirit, to living and acting and loving like Christ.  Perhaps it was too difficult.  Rather than meeting together in accountability groups, Methodists decided to have a pastor do the hard work for them.  Until then our pastors were circuit riders, seeing each church on their circuit once every month to three months (that is why we partake of Communion once a month or, in some places, once every three months).  Now churches wanted a pastor just for their single church.  That way the pastor can be the one to live in the Spirit and everyone else can focus on living their lives comfortably as if faith played no part except for future salvation.  The story is similar in nature to what began in 1 Samuel 8 with the Israelites' demanding a king.  Again, comfort and convenience became king over radical discipleship loyal only to Christ.  Still to this day we see these trends secure in our churches. 

The previous paragraph will feel harsh and upsetting, as if I am directly questioning your faith or the faith of your church.  I don’t mean to.  Just as, if you are a white person, the institution of slavery was not your fault but we may still be contributing to lasting racism resulting from slavery if we do not appropriately reflect, so, too, we and our churches are not responsible for what the local churches did 180ish years ago but we may still contribute to those trends in a major way if we do not stop and reflect.  Our reflection must conclude that clearly ours, the Methodists’, is a story of compromising again with Christendom. 

All of the above happened in rather short order.  So, too, did the life of an average Methodist change.  No longer was the average Methodist concerned with giving all they could.  Instead, the average Methodist was firmly middle-class.  Earning all they could, yes; saving all they could, yes; but giving all they could?  Indeed Wesley's fears about the inefficacy of Christianity to change the culture of Christendom became glaringly true.  With our big buildings, middle-class members, loss of class and accountability meetings, and likeness to the rest of Christianity in our denominationalism, we had lost the battle to reclaim New Testament Christianity in the likeness of Christ.  Once again Christ and New Testament Christianity became offensive to our sensibilities.

Perhaps the worst example of Christendom's influence on the Methodist movement is the gradual acceptance of slavery into Methodism in the early 1800's.  What happened as a result of changing beliefs and practices around slavery has had a lasting effect on Methodist-related denominations, particularly the United Methodist Church.  In the beginning, Wesley and the first Methodists were strictly evangelical.  That word 'evangelical' had an almost opposite meaning to what it does now if we're only using the conservative-progressive spectrum for our definition.  Evangelicals were those concerned with spreading the good news--as they are today--and believed that radically changing society for the better according to Christ's kingdom's likeness must play a role.  Though Wesley and the original Methodists may never have called themselves evangelical, they were, and we therefore cannot understand Wesley's fears over the inefficacy of Christianity otherwise.  Without a radically and progressively changed society, the good news will be ignored or disbelieved by the many whom society leaves behind.  Wesley and the first Methodists were thus adamantly opposed to slavery.  How can anyone believe that Christ is the great Liberator as in Luke 4 if Christians, Christ's disciples, don't liberate?  John Wesley died in 1791; in 1800 Richard Allen, an African-American, was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church; by 1808, the General Conference allowed each annual conference to make its own policies about slavery as an accommodation to southern states; then in 1816 the General Conference made owning a slave (for officeholders, like a bishop or pastor) against church rules only in the so-called 'free' states.  The 1816 decision is clearly the rule of Christendom: the church's stance will align perfectly with the legal climate for the sake of conformity and accommodation.  No surprise, then, that shortly after 1808 Allen formed what is still called the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and not long after a number of other splits occurred over slavery in which some few Methodists rallied around the original Methodist, evangelical zeal that cared nothing at all for Christendom and its laws.

There are two reasons why our history on slavery is the worst compromise with Christendom.  The first is practical.  At the start of the Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church officially split between north and south, in addition to other splits over slavery that had already occurred.  In 1939, the southern and northern churches merged together along with another major denomination descended from the pre-war days.  The African-American denominations, however, were not included in the merger.  Not only that, but the 1939 merger changed our connection slightly.[ii]  Assuming for a second that our bureaucratic structures had weathered the storm of Christendom and deadness (which they hadn't), those structures girded our connection: each church was connected to its annual conference and from the annual conference directly to the General Conference.  Unfortunately, in 1939, because the southern church still couldn't abide black people in the church on an equal footing, a non-geographical Central Conference was created.  All the predominantly black churches were a part of this Central Conference, keeping them separate from the white churches.  Since not all the annual conferences were purely based on geography any more, geographical jurisdictional conferences had to be erected, adding yet another layer between each local church and the General Conference and, indeed, separating annual conferences from General Conference in a rather significant way.  When there was yet another merger in 1968, the newly created United Methodist Church did away with the racist Central Conference[iii] but kept the new structure.  What began as a fight over slavery ended 150 years later destroying the connectionality of a connectional church.  Our connection that fueled the movement of Methodism barely exists.  Now you'd be hard-pressed to find a local United Methodist church in which every member knows why we are connected, how we are connected, or what the connection does.

The second reason we must focus on the slavery compromise is that, every step along the way of the compromise, racism reared its head.  Like slavery itself, racism is structural.  Sometimes we get racism confused with bias and we are wrong to be so confused.  Bias is when we sit across from a black person and feel dislike or discomfort simply because he or she is black.  Racism is when we look at two job resumes that are the exact same but affirm the applicant "James" over the applicant "Shaniqua" because we assume, given the structures of our society and social norms, that James would be a better fit.  From a structural viewpoint the employer may be right: racism as such has separated traditionally black neighborhoods and schools from traditionally white neighborhoods and schools, and so if having a 'white' experience and background matters, then Shaniqua would be a poor fit.  The Harvard application race case currently ongoing is another good example: Asians consistently receive a lower 'personality' score based not in bias but in the institutional standard of what 'good' personality is and the institutional stereotyping of Asian culture.  Racism is an institutional and structural phenomenon that constantly perpetuates itself, especially because 'good' people defend themselves by saying they are good and therefore not racist, which is irrelevant.  By definition, then, racism is Christendom because Christendom, too, situates itself in social systems and structures, in institutions, and makes decisions based upon those systems rather than based upon Jesus Christ.  What we then get are Christians like Jerry Falwell, Jr. advocating for politicians based on policies of institution rather than on character. 

The relationship of Methodists to slavery and racism makes clear that we are no longer a movement of the Spirit but the seduced mistress of Christendom and its institutional systems.  Inherited structures of Christendom, namely the institutions of the status quo, take precedence over the forces needed to fuel a movement of Christ.  Thus the very call for unity becomes less about Christ and more about the status quo of Christendom.  No longer are we concerned about being filled or led by the Holy Spirit in powerful, holy, and radically progressive ways.  Now we are concerned about structures and institutions.  A long time ago we lost what is Wesleyan and Methodist about Methodism.

Indeed, we in the United Methodist Church are no longer Methodist.  How many Wesleyans or Methodists are part of a class meeting or band meeting?  Or even know what those are?  How many know our distinctive emphasis on God's grace, particularly the grace that can sanctify us into perfect Christians, aka people who love like Christ and are what God made us to be?  How many strive to Christian perfection believing that it is possible, through God's grace, in their lifetime?  How many earn, save, and give all they can to the poor and least of these?  How many put Christ and being filled with God's Spirit above all other loyalties and commitments, including family, nation, and denomination?  How many seek to spread the good news of Christ's saving grace personally through changing the systems that be by joining hands with others with no concern about theological or denominational affiliation beyond the essentials to salvation? 

Yes, many Methodists have retained a drive to work toward social justice, but most of those who do have lost the corresponding power of grace, believing that Christian perfection is impossible.  While many of us work for social justice we make Christ a liar and become a regular old non-profit organization, albeit one that happens to claim Christ as savior.  Essentially Methodists have taken two separate paths that both guarantee Christendom's sway.  On the one hand we have modern evangelicals who seek to gain adherents to the faith but do so by the dictates of Christendom, refusing to challenge Christendom by living separate from it; on the other hand we have radical progressives who seek to challenge Christendom but have foregone the infinite power of God and therefore cannot challenge anything.

All Christians, then, find themselves in a crisis, but United Methodists in particular.  Following the Special Session of the General Conference on homosexuality at the end of this month, a split may occur no matter what path is chosen.  But even before we get to the question of homosexuality we are in crisis: we as a denomination are fighting over nothing.  We think that we are fighting for the heart of United Methodism when the heart of Methodism stopped beating long ago.  Seeing that fact clearly should mean that we let the denomination die.  Who cares if a dead thing of dead Christendom stops walking around? 

The death of a dead denomination might allow the Spirit to work again, to revive the heart of the movement called Methodist in persons and churches at a local level, cutting across and through denominations, theology, and all of Christendom, acknowledging that even the most theologically or organizationally perfect structure can make us Methodist or Spirit-filled.

The previous paragraph should have been the end of the essay.  It's hard to continue on after arguing that the denomination should die.  I need to, though, at some point, come back around to the question most on people's minds.  What, then, are we to do about homosexuality?  What is the path forward?                       

Given who we are as Methodists, our answer cannot lie in any structural concerns.  We cannot argue a path forward based on The Book of Discipline or whether bishops are violating their prerogative by supporting one plan or another.  We are not a church called to make decisions in that way.  Nor can we argue a path forward based on theological grounds.  Wesley and the original movement of Methodists made clear that the only theology that matters to the movement is what is essential to salvation--justification by faith, God's sanctifying grace, and our need for the Christ who came in the flesh.  All else may be interesting to debate but ultimately not essential to salvation and therefore not essential for any Methodist.  If Methodists made other theological tenets requirements, then we would never have had time for joining together seeking to be filled entirely by God's Spirit.

Now, before I state how we should argue a path forward, would be a good time to point out that many Methodists may disagree with me about what foundations to use in charting a course.  That is understandable and expected.  But the disagreement, I think, comes in whether or not we believe that God has called up the people called Methodist for a special, evangelical cause for all of Christianity against and apart from Christendom.  I do so believe and therefore reclaiming the original foundations of the movement, the foundations of the Spirit, is critical.  To those who do not believe that the Methodists are special in that way will not care about any of what I have written here and therefore disagree about how we should decide our future.  Those people will instead seek the right path forward for the denomination we now have rather than the movement we should have.

If we are going to even be nominally Methodists as we push forward, the path forward must be grounded in a revival of God's grace in people's hearts and lives.  As in Wesley's day, Christianity is nearly dead and is full of dead people.  It is time once again to put aside what is not essential to salvation so that we focus on preaching and spreading God's enlivening Spirit, the Spirit that can fill us with power so that Christ's commands to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect become also promises.  We must put aside all else that does not engender true holiness in Christ's disciples, the type of holiness that would put us on equal footing with Adam and Eve prior to the fall, that would make our participation in Christ's likeness and divinity a reality rather than a biblical typo--a typo repeated again and again. 

On homosexuality, the question becomes: is what we believe and practice concerning homosexuality, personally and collectively, essential to salvation?  Rooting the answer in God's intention for the movement called Methodist, I believe the answer must be, 'no.'  In addition to progressively and radically opposing slavery to the point of ordaining an African-American in 1800 (in the U.S., that's amazing), Wesley and the Methodists also originally sought nearly equal rights for women as leaders in the church.  At first, Wesley held the view of Christendom, that since men are the heads of families and industry, so, too, should only men be the heads of churches.  After his mother pleaded with Wesley to hear a woman exhorter, Wesley discerned that indeed the Holy Spirit can move in and through even women.  Again, the Methodist movement is not intended to be an added layer of Christendom's structures but a movement of the Holy Spirit.  How is the Spirit moving?  Could the Spirit be moving in persons who are homosexual just as it did, and does, in women and in African-Americans?  Should we then ordain those homosexuals in whom the Spirit moves?  If we do not, then we have bowed to Christendom rather than the Spirit. 

I say all of this while also believing homosexuality to be a sin.  By ‘sin’ I mean a separation from God and from God’s intentions for His children. Jesus the Christ, our Savior, and our New Testament claim that the only beliefs that are essential to salvation are those concerning Jesus’s person, his dying and rising in the flesh, because it is through Christ alone that we are saved.  All beliefs associated with Christ’s person, like the Trinity, are also essential to believe for our personal salvation because, again, we find salvation through Christ.  The rest, however, is about discipleship and practice.  Indeed, the rest, all other beliefs, become only essential to our own individual salvation: if I believe homosexuality or drinking alcohol are sins, then I cannot be saved if I am homosexuality or a drinker of alcohol; but if you hold different beliefs about the non-essentials, then you are not beholden by my personal, non-essential belief that applies only to my path to salvation with Christ.  Salvation thus becomes subjective to some extent.  Each person must work out their salvation in fear and trembling in relationship with Jesus Christ.  The objective nature of salvation is Christ—all salvation comes through Christ.  Christ closes the gap caused by sin’s separating us from God.  Yet Christ does this in each person, each individual who strives to him and with him, who believes in him. Who are we, then, to tell a person that, if they believe all the right things about Christ and the associated beliefs, all that is essential to salvation, and their subjective faith in Christ is enough, they are still separated from God?  Whatever the reason may be, whether they are inclined to lying or homosexuality, how can we know that someone is still separated from God even though they have the essential beliefs and relationship and, subjectively, are working out their salvation with our objective God in fear and trembling?  More than claiming that they cannot be saved and reunited with God, how can we say that they cannot serve God as a pastor or through marriage, because of a personal belief we hold about our own salvation that is not essential to said salvation? 
We may feel like we are doing people a disservice by letting them live in what we believe to be sin, and thereby not living the life of joy and service God intends for them, but the same holds true for any sinner (which is all of us): if the sin in question is not directly related to belief in Christ’s person, our role is to point them to discipleship and practice by asking, “Are you living the life God intends for you?”  Each person must answer that question on their own as they work out their salvation and perfection with God in fear and trembling.  Any person or entity that inserts into the salvation formula far more than is necessary, more than Christ, that person or entity is a stumbling block.  And as Christ said, it will be worse for the stumbling block in the last days.[iv]
We must reaffirm that God did not raise up the people called Methodists to reform theology or institute the most effective denominational structure.  Other denominations may find some strange hope in determining universal truth for all its members, even if they call it “plain truth” or some such illusion.  All that is plain is the revelation of Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, God raised up the Methodists in a particular way so that the Spirit could revive dead disciples everywhere in the way that we live, to be alive in the Holy Spirit—each one of us working out our own salvation and striving to perfection.  The Holy Spirit can and does speak prophetically to structures, certainly, but as defining forces in church life and personal holiness the Holy Spirit cares little for structures.  The Holy Spirit infuses us with the power of the life of Christ so that we can live as disciples, no matter what Christendom and its denominations and cultures may tell us.  The Methodist spirit thus takes priority over personal beliefs not essential to salvation or any search for universal truths to subject people under beyond what is essential.

Perhaps more importantly, the fact that I, or any one, feels the need to write or speak on the question of homosexuality, and the fact that we are having a Special Session of the General Conference on homosexuality, is part of the problem.  Wasting breath on matters not essential to salvation, like homosexuality, bar the movement of the Spirit in two ways.  First, those who are homosexual, and their friends and loved ones, hear and see our obsession with the question and ask, "Seriously?"  Despite our denomination's insistence that we should love all people, including homosexuals, it does not in any way preclude homosexuals and others wondering where our priorities lie.  Why declaim a homosexual as a sinner and not a divorcee or an unwed mother, both of which receive far more words of condemnation in the Bible and from Jesus himself?  For many, our obsession with homosexuality is not just theologically wrong but plain hypocritical.  Or, worse, an indication that we are more concerned interpreting the book of Christendom than the person of Christ.

Secondly, every breath spent debating the issue of homosexuality is a breath not spent reforming ourselves back into a movement of the Spirit.  All the oxygen that should be used to align ourselves again with Christ against and apart from Christendom is instead sucked up on non-essential matters.  We're thus unable to face the real crisis: our conferences, our churches, our pastors, and our members are far from living a Methodist life of Spirit renewal and exultation.  For the most part, those colleagues of mine ardently supporting the Traditional Plan, or something like it, also see no problem with single-church appointments for our pastors, even though a pastor serving a single church slows down revival and evangelization because the burden for spiritual work is clearly laid on the pastor rather than the lay people.  We pastors seem to want a denomination that will give us good-paying and stable jobs rather than spiritual renewal; we lay people seem to want a denomination that reinforces our laziness.  Whoever we are, we want a denomination.  And we want a denomination that allows us to call ourselves Christian without any resulting personal or social consequences to our nominal discipleship.  This is the true crisis and we have no time for it.

As a Methodist, then, a Methodist concerned with spiritual renewal by the power of the Spirit and God's grace, concerned with living the life of a disciple of Christ against and apart from Christendom as Christians and Methodists were meant to, the Simple Plan seems the best way forward if and only if we want to continue as a denomination.

The One Church Plan is a close, but unfortunate, second. The OCP seems to try to care little for matters not essential to salvation, which is good, but in fact what it does is similar to what the Methodist Episcopal Church did about slavery: inscribing two opposite positions into official denominational policy.  In practical terms, all the OCP does is take us one step closer to one day announcing an official, progressive theological stance or a traditional contemporary conservative stance.  Yet it would be an official stance not essential to salvation or our heritage as Methodists.

The Traditional Plan outright does what the OCP only hints at doing: taking an official theological stance on a matter not essential to salvation.  If we are seeking theological correctness on all matters, the TP might make the most sense.  But as Methodists, if we are concerned with our own heritage and purpose, then we should not be concerned with universal theological correctness across the denomination or Christianiaty on any matter not essential to salvation.  That means any plan enshrining theological dogma on any matter that is not the Trinity, God as Creator, Jesus as Son who came in the flesh to live, die, and rise again for us, Spirit as Redeemer and Empowering Force, and God's Love and Grace, are nearly irrelevant to the way forward.

As for the Connectional Conference Plan, well, I know hardly a one who supports the plan.  The CCP leaves us at square one in many ways but, rather than leaving things as they are, would cause a giant pragmatic headache. 

Simply put, if we want to move forward as Methodists, we must remove Christendom from the equation as much as possible, which means removing as much denominationalism as possible.  The Simple Plan does just that: removing all language about homosexuality[v] because it's not essential to salvation or our ministry as grace/Spirit-filled evangelicals.  Recently a church member asked me how, in the Simple Plan, the denomination could secure agreement on what to believe or practice concerning homosexuality.  Removing all language about homosexuality, as the Simple Plan proposes, would also leave room for theological vagueness and possible theological disunity.  "Exactly," was my answer.  By bothering to have theological clearness on the issue we not only discredit the spirit of Methodism but also waste time that could have been spent on radically living into and by God's grace and progressively spreading the good news. According to the Simple Plan, we will not bother with non-essential issues and can press on with the real crisis of spiritual deadness in the church.

At the end of the day, however, while I am sure that the Simple Plan is the most Methodist of the proposals before the General Conference, I am far less sure that a single proposal can be the solution.  The crisis will be in vain regardless of the approved plan if the character God raised up in the Methodists remains unknown and unwanted.  So whatever happens, our prayer, whether we are Methodists or not (since Methodism is supposed to revive all Christians), should be that the Spirit lights the church aflame.  Perhaps that flame needs to burn down the church.  If the church remains standing, though, the flame will hopefully renew us in the spirit of the movement called Methodist, the movement that God raised up, like a judge in the Bible, for a particular purpose: to call Christians out of Christendom into true, grace-filled discipleship as God in Christ intends, commands, and promises.

Whatever happens, may we be renewed in the spirit of Methodists, the Spirit of God.

Endnotes

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[i] In the New Testament, when anyone tries answering the question what is essential to the faith, as in 1 John 4, the answer rests in Jesus’s life and death and rising in the flesh.  That’s about it.

[ii] We call ourselves a connectional church, meaning that each church is connected to every other through a tight relationship.  It's part of our strength and unity.  It's also nearly mandatory for a movement that cuts across theology and Christendom: if you leave town for some reason you need to know that there will be others committed in the same Spirit-led and Spirit-focused way in strange, foreign places.  A connection fuels a movement.). 

[iii] Sort of.  We still have Central Conferences.  They refer to non-U.S. based conferences, but most of the non-U.S. based conferences are in Africa, so...

[iv] If we were to talk about this in a more complex way, we should again turn to Kierkegaard.  I have heard a lot of people argue that the issue is that people in the church in favor of LGBTQ ‘rights’ are simply doing theology based on experience.  As in, “I’m a homosexual,” or, “I know a homosexual,” and “homosexuals are not bad, therefore let’s ordain them and marry them.”  By doing theology based on experience, these folks say, we are actively self-affirming rather than self-denying.  Besides the fact that Wesley and the Methodists have long advocated for experience to have a role in doing theology, as in the women story, many of these people have a point.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is not, at heart, self-affirming but self-denying.  As much as we might like him to, Jesus does not say, “Whatever you are doing and whoever you are, awesome!  Believe and you’ll be saved.”  Jesus does not offer a gospel of self-affirmation full of joy, salvation, and heaven.  Salvation, yes, but what comes before that salvation is self-denial, the cross.  Even before Jesus takes up his cross he tells us to take up ours.  To Kierkegaard, therein lies part of the offense of New Testament Christianity—we want to be affirmed and yet we are told to deny ourselves.  We are therefore theologically correct to say that Christians should deny themselves, including homosexuals and, also, including heterosexuals in the style of Jesus and Paul, though we conveniently skip the latter.  The strange part is that Kierkegaard also adeptly pivots and rails against theologians, assistant professors, and half-baked pastors (to him, all pastors) for creating a theological system, whether that system is one of self-denial or not.  What happens when we create a system, even of self-denial, is that we then transfer Christian discipleship out of the realm of the individual disciple and into a nebulous realm of nothingness.  We can point to the system as having the answer, thereby affirming ourselves by affirming the system, and instead of focusing on our own discipleship in Christ we focus on the system’s alignment with Christ.  Certainly, the traditional plan, the plan of denying self and experience rather than affirming, carries the greatest theological weight; at the same time, however, it points to a system.  Christ called you, individually, personally, to deny yourself and follow him.  If we sidestep the call in favor of a system of self-denial then we become nothing, we’re worse off than before.  When it comes to Christian discipleship, then, we must deny ourselves by denying our theological system.  It’s okay to have a system, perhaps, but not to make decisions based upon it.  Rather, we decide upon Christ, upon our discipleship.  You and I must do so.  Christ is not a system.  If we want to deny ourselves, we must deny our system in trying to make a decision for others and even ourselves.  The decision for or against Christ, cross and all, comes in the heart and mind of each person who would sell all they have to follow him. 

In sum, Christ does not want theological followers.  He wants “to pierce your heart also.”  How Christ acts and interacts with each true disciple, we cannot know—we must deny ourselves the possibility of knowing what Christian submission looks like in each person.

[v] And transgender issues, which are related.  Though the main topic is homosexuality, all along we’ve also essentially been talking about transgender issues as well.