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By Lonnie Brooks
If you are United Methodist and have been staying up even a little bit with events leading up to and during the General Conference now underway in Charlotte, you are probably aware that the General Board of Church and Society has proposed a total revision of the Church's Social Principles. This is a part of the Book of Discipline that is not Church law, but instead is a statement of positions the Church has taken on various social and political issues of our time. As would have to be true of any such set of policies and positions intended to represent consensus for a large group of people there is likely to be nobody, or very few people, if there are any, who would subscribe to the whole set of principles without reservation or objection.
Whereas I think those who worked on this project did a very good job, I am bothered by two things. I really don't like the manner in which the final proposal has been presented. For the whole time I've been aware of the way proposals are made to the General Conference when there already exists a product that is being changed, the practice has been to show the old and the new in such a manner that a reader can clearly and easily see what is being changed and how. In this case, no attempt whatsoever has been made to do that. The new is simply presented as a replacement for the existing Social Principles as a whole, and that document takes up 61 pages of the Book of Discipline. So, yeah, a dedicated individual can print out one of the documents and go through piece by piece and find the changes, but that's not going to be an easy task. So, this part has a bad odor, since it looks to be an effort to obscure what is being done, whether that is the truth, or not.
The second thing with which I have a problem is a matter of substance, not form. You see, I did do some line by line comparisons, and this one is troubling.
Here's the old:
QUOTE
G)Human Sexuality—We affirm that sexuality is God’s good gift to all persons. We call everyone to responsible stewardship of this sacred gift.
Although all persons are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.
END QUOTE
And here's what is proposed to replace that statement:
QUOTE
C. Human Sexuality
We affirm human sexuality as a sacred gift and acknowledge that sexual intimacy contributes to fostering the emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being of individuals and to nurturing healthy sexual relationships that are grounded in love, care, and respect.
Human sexuality is a healthy and natural part of life that is expressed in wonderfully diverse ways from birth to death. It is shaped by a combination of nature and nurture: heredity and genetic factors on the one hand and childhood development and environment on the other. We further honor the diversity of choices and vocations in relation to sexuality such as celibacy, marriage, and singleness.
We support the rights of all people to exercise personal consent in sexual relationships, to make decisions about their own bodies and be supported in those decisions, to receive comprehensive sexual education, to be free from sexual exploitation and violence, and to have access to adequate sexual health care.
END QUOTE
The position of The United Methodist Church, that is consistent with the position of the church through its entire 2,000 year history, that human sexual relationships are to be affirmed within a covenant of monogamy has been abandoned. Now mind you, this statement also abandons the commitment exclusively to heterosexual relationships, and I'm ok with that change. But I have to tell you that the abandonment of our commitment to monogamy is really troubling.
One of the reasons this is so highly significant is that whereas one could argue that the monogamy/polygamy debate is not getting much attention in the United States, this is a really big issue in Africa where the majority of United Methodists now live.
This part of the Revised Social Principles was presented for General Conference decision on Petition 20730 on page 208 of the ADCA, and it was considered by Church and Society Legislative Committee 2. The Committee approved it by a vote of 45 to 15, without amendment. Because there were more than 10 persons voting in opposition, the item will not be on a Consent Calendar. It will be individually calendared for presentation and debate in the full plenary, so it will be of great interest to me, and many others, I expect, to see how this fares. This will, perhaps, be even more of a bellwether of the nature of this General Conference than was the proposal for regionalization.