Same-sex Marriage

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Trigger warning! New Crossroads podcast contains dis-United Methodist time travel

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I don’t need to write a new GetReligion post about this week’s “Crossroads,” do I?

After all, this podcast conversation with host Todd Wilken (click here to listen) focuses on why United Methodists on the doctrinal left and right, as well as establishment players in the middle, are now bracing for divorce. In one form or another, I’ve been writing this post since the early 1980s.

What we need is a time machine (I’m a fan of Doctor Who No. 4) so that I could let readers bounce around in United Methodist history and see why all those new headlines about a proposed plan to break-up this complicated church need to be linked to trends and events in the past.

So here we go. Stop No. 1 in this time-travel adventure is Denver, in the year 1980 (care of a GetReligion post with this headline: “United Methodism doctrine? Think location, location, location”).

… It was in 1980 — note that this was one-third of a century ago — that Bishop Melvin Wheatley, Jr., of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church announced … he was openly rejecting his church's teaching that homosexual acts were "incompatible with Christian teaching."

Two years later, this United Methodist bishop appointed an openly gay pastor to an urban church in Denver. When challenged, Wheatley declared: "Homosexuality is a mysterious gift of God's grace. I clearly do not believe homosexuality is a sin."

This date is crucial, because it underlines the fact that the United Methodist Church’s doctrine that homosexual acts are “incompatible with Christian teaching” has been on the books for decades.

That’s why the following passage — from the New York Times a few days ago — is so misleading. The wording here gives the average reader the impression that this doctrine is something that conservatives pulled out of their hats in 2019. This Times report stated that a global split has been:


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After decades of fighting, United Methodists avoid a visit from ghost of the Episcopal future?

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It’s the Methodist question I have heard the most from GetReligion readers (and even locals here in East Tennessee) over the weekend.

I will paraphrase: If the conservatives have been winning the big votes at United Methodist conferences for the past couple of decades, then why are news reports saying that the traditionalists have agreed to “leave the United Methodist Church”?

This is the response that popped into my head a few hours ago after round of news reports, Twitter and online buzz: Basically, I think conservative Methodists have been visited by the Ghost of the Episcopal Future.

Methodist traditionalists are not interested in 50 years of hand-to-hand legal conflict with the entrenched United Methodist principalities and powers. Hold that thought. Meanwhile, I will admit that it’s hard to see the logic of this statement in any one news report. Let’s start with some math from the Associated Press:

Members of the 13-million-person denomination have been at odds for years over the issue, with members in the United States leading the call for full inclusion for LGBTQ people. 

The rift widened last year when delegates meeting in St. Louis voted 438-384 for a proposal called the Traditional Plan, which affirmed bans on LGBTQ-inclusive practices. A majority of U.S.-based delegates opposed that plan but were outvoted by U.S. conservatives teamed with delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines.

By the way: The numbers in that first paragraph are accurate, as opposed to the following circulated by Reuters: “The United Methodist Church lists more than 13 million members in the United States and 80 million worldwide.” That’s way off, but quite a few online and broadcast outlets picked up that error and ran with it.

Accurate math really is important here. So are the doctrines that are at stake, which are much broader than battles over marriage and sexuality (see my two “On Religion” columns about these trends here, and then here).

The key is two realities that are in constant tension.


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Big news in 2020? Thinking about the religious left, Mayor Pete and black churchgoers

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Think of it as a kind of “small-t” end of the year tradition here at GetReligion.

Toward the end of the annual podcast addressing the Top 10 religion-news events of the year — this year it’s “Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)” — host Todd Wilken always asks me the same question, one built on the assumption that journalists have some ability to see into the future. In other words, he asks something like, “What do you think will be the big religion stories of 2020?”

Like I said in the podcast post last week, news consumers can almost always count on the following:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God. …

You can’t go wrong with that list — especially with all of the ink being spilled, again, over Citizen Donald Trump and the great big monolithic “evangelical” vote.

However, there’s another political story that has, in the past three decades, become almost as predictable. It is, of course, the fill-in-the-blanks political feature about the rise (again) of the religious left (lower-case status) in the Democratic Party to do combat with the Religious Right (upper-case status).

These days, there is a bigger story that looms in the background of that old standard. Think of it as the Democrats trying to make peace with the religious middle in the age of the growing coalition of atheists, agnostics and the “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated). This coalition is now the most powerful religion-related power bloc in that party. The big question: How will this coalition, which includes the least religious congregation of Americans, get along with another crucial grassroots group — African-American churchgoers, who are among the most religious people in our culture.

That brings us to this weekend’s think piece, care of advocacy journalism team at The Daily Beast, that ran with this headline: “Mayor Pete Turns to God to Win Over Black Supporters.”


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What U.S. presidential candidates will be doing to court religious voters in 2020

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President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponents are courting voters with less than a year before the 2020 election, and many of them are chasing support from a variety of religious voters — in pews on the right and the left.

For example, all eyes are on Mayor Pete Buttigieg and his attempts to build trust with African-American churchgoers — a crucial part of the Democratic Party base in the Sunbelt and elsewhere. We will return to that subject.

But first, the Trump campaign announced recently that the president's re-election efforts would include launching three coalitions: “Evangelicals for Trump,” “Catholics for Trump” and “Jewish Voices for Trump.”

Despite being impeached by the House, the Trump campaign’s focus on these three religious groups aims to expand the president’s support, especially in battleground states where the former real-estate mogul won in 2016.

An analysis of the 2018 midterm elections conducted by Pew Research Center found continuity in the voting patterns of key religious groups. For example, white evangelicals voted for Republican candidates at about the same rate they did in 2014, while religiously unaffiliated voters and Jews again largely backed Democrats.

There’s plenty that Trump and the crowded field of Democrats challenging him have done over the past few months, and are continuing to do as we head into 2020, to court religious voters. Expect that to intensify with the start of the primaries next years and in the months before November’s general election.

Below is a look at Trump’ efforts, along with those of the seven Democrats who qualified for the next debate on Thursday night in Los Angeles.  


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CNN's religion editor delves into Salvation Army's effort to change its 'anti-LGBTQ' reputation

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“As Chick-fil-A capitulates, should press characterize Salvation Army and FCA as anti-LGBTQ?”

That was the title on a post I wrote last month after news broke that Chick-fil-A would stop donating to certain groups deemed anti-gay, including the Salvation Army.

Chick-fil-A’s decision has continued to make headlines since then, including an interesting story last week in World magazine. The evangelical news publication noted that despite the recent severed ties, most of the fast-food chicken chain’s charitable giving still goes to Christian ministries.

The chicken sandwich brouhaha is a part — but not the whole, um, chicken enchilada — of a big report out today by CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke.

Instead, Burke focuses on the bigger issue of the Salvation Army and its effort to change its “'anti-LGBTQ” reputation, as CNN describes it:

(CNN) Salvation Army bell ringers, the folks you see jingling bells by red kettles at Christmastime, will be carrying a new prop this year: A card explaining the Christian church and charity's approach to LGBTQ people.

Designed to help bell ringers answer questions from passersby, the cards include a link to online testimonials from LGBTQ people helped by the Salvation Army's array of social services, from homeless shelters to rehab clinics and food pantries.

"For years, Facebook posts, forwarded emails and rumors have been leading some people to believe the Salvation Army does not serve members of the LGBTQ community," the cards read. "These accusations are simply not true."

To many Americans, the Army's social services may be far more familiar than its politics or theology. Ranked number two in the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of "America's Favorite Charities," it raised $1.5 billion in donations last year. The Red Kettle campaign began 129 years ago, when a Salvationist put out a pot for the needy on Market Street in San Francisco.

But to some in the LGBTQ community, the Salvation Army has another reputation. For decades, they've accused Salvationsts of denying some services to same-sex couples, advocating against gay rights and adhering to a traditional theology that considers gay sex sinful. At times, LGBTQ activists have dropped fake dollar bills or vouchers protesting the Salvation Army in the red kettles.

First off, kudos to Burke for noting way up high that the Salvation Army is a church as well as a charity. Many people don’t know that.


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Sad puzzle: Washington Post crime story mixes politics, religion, tolerance and personal pain

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I love a good detective story.

The Washington Post ran an incredible feature story recently that was, first and foremost, a detective story that offered piece after piece of a complex puzzle that mixed politics, religion, crime, clickbait news and an agonizing family drama.

I’ve been thinking about “The confession” for some time now, trying to figure out what to say when praising it. First of all, this story itself is about crime that rocked a rural heartland community and the struggles of the gay organist who faked an attack on the tiny liberal church that had hired him to help lead worship, even though he was not a believer.

The story of Nathan Strang and why he did what he did is, of course, at the heart of this feature. But what haunted me was what this story reveals about America life right now and all of the forces that are making tolerance and public discourse so difficult.

This is a must read and I will not dwell on all the details. What I want to set up is the pivotal moment — part politics, part religion — when a detective takes the first big step in solving the crime. Here is the overture:

BEAN BLOSSOM, Ind. — The knock on Nathan Stang’s door came just after 1 p.m. Stang, a doctoral student in music at Indiana University, answered the soft rapping that Friday wearing a blue bathrobe. Standing outside his apartment was a clean-shaven man dressed in beige slacks and a pink, checked shirt. 

“Hi, Nathan,” said Brian Shrader, a deputy with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department. “Remember me?” 

“Yeah,” Stang replied. It was Shrader who had interviewed him after an appalling act of vandalism at St. David’s Episcopal Church, where Stang played the organ and directed the choir.


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Here we go again (again): RNS/AP offers doctrine-free take on George Fox LGBTQ battles

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It’s the same story, only set on a different campus (this time with a special guest appearance by Taylor Swift).

Once again, we have LGBTQ activists who want to modernize the ancient doctrines that define their Christian college. Of course, the word “doctrine” does not appear in this news feature — it is not marked as “analysis” — from the new Religion News Service-Associated Press team. As always, the word “rules” is used when describing the school’s teachings on marriage and sexuality.

Once again, the activist students are given lots of space to describe their convictions and complaints — as they should be be. Once again, however, the only material offered defending the school’s doctrinal stance comes from online documents and email from a campus spokesperson. Once again, it appears that there are no flesh-and-blood human beings who can provide quotes and personal stories in support of a traditional Christian school.

Oh, and this story does not answer a question that is essential in serious news coverage of this topic: Do students and faculty sign a doctrinal or lifestyle “covenant” when they choose to study or teach at this private university? Yes, this post is a flashback to the major themes in this post: “Here we go again: When covering campus LGBTQ disputes, always look for doctrinal covenants.” It’s deja vu all over again.

Here is the overture for this report — “Viral video reignites LGBTQ debate at Quaker school” — as it ran at The Washington Post:

The video begins with Reid Arthur striding on stage in shorts and a glittering, iridescent hoodie. The George Fox University senior was participating in a lip sync dance number at his school set to Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down,” complete with a troupe of backup dancers. As the auditorium speakers blasted the lyric “’cause shade never made anybody less gay,” Arthur spread his arms wide and let the dancers tear off his top, revealing rainbow-colored streamers that draped from his arms.


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Press doesn't get why a Catholic priest would withhold Communion from outspoken gay judge

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Debates about Catholic priests denying Holy Communion to U.S. pro-choice politicians or public officials have been around for more than a decade; indeed I covered that exact issue back in 2009. It was quite the raging issue in 2004 as well when the archbishop of St. Louis refused Communion to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

The issue hasn’t faded at all; in fact this Washington Post piece, published a few months ago, notes that Democratic politicians are still being denied the sacrament if they have come out in favor of abortion.

Now there’s a priest in East Grand Rapids, Mich., who is doing something similar — not about abortion, but same-sex marriage. Here is how one TV station covered it. It happens to be the local NBC affiliate.

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Judge Sara Smolenski, chief judge of the Kent County District Court, has been denied Communion at the church where she has been a parishioner for more than six decades because she is married to a woman.

It is a move that for many was the final straw in a pattern of behavior that has them calling for the removal of a priest — a priest who came to St. Stephen Catholic Church about three years ago.

Right there you can see where this article is a set-up. The second paragraph could also read that: “It is a move that several in the parish applauded because they felt it was high time St. Stephen’s took a stand on crucial Catholic doctrines.”

Instead, you hear the dissidents’ point of view for the entire first half of the story.

In 1966, under the leadership of Rev. Msgr. Edward N. Alt, St. Stephen Catholic School became the first integrated Catholic school in Metro Grand Rapids and had a student body that was nearly 40 percent non-Catholic.

This tradition of inclusion and acceptance would be the essence of the school and the church for 50 years.

But now, some here say that is changing.


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Thinking along with Stephen L. Carter: What's at stake in Salvation Army culture wars?

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We live in an age, alas, of predictable reporting and predictable opinions coming from the keyboards of predictable writers.

However, Yale University law professor Stephen L. Carter has, for a couple of decades, been one of the pundits who — in his essays, columns and books — very, very rarely fit into the predictable molds seen in the chattering classes.

This weekend’s think piece is a perfect example of Carter doing that thing that he does, in a Bloomberg column that ran under this double-decker headline: “The Salvation Army's Actions Speak Louder Than Its Theology — Judge volunteers on their actions, not their religious beliefs.”

The hook for the piece is, logically enough, the Thanksgiving weekend and the appearance — from coast to coast — of the familiar Salvation Army red kettles and the bell ringers asking shoppers to make donations to help the poor and needy.

This image of American life and community has, of course, become controversial in recent years for a simple reason — the Salvation Army is a church that clings (hello President Barack Obama) to traditional Christian teachings on the Bible, marriage and sex. Toss in the decision by Chick fil-A leaders to add some waffling to their chicken and you have a mess in the public square.

So what does Carter have to add to this discussion?

… (In) keeping with the season of giving thanks, I want to focus on a different problem: the effects on the volunteer sector of any boycott based on the teachings of a religion. 

Religious groups, regardless of their theology, provide assistance to millions who are unable to help themselves. Without religiously motivated volunteers, we would have scarcely any volunteer sector at all.


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