General Conference 20/24 Report 5

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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.

General Conference 20/24 Report 4

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By Lonnie Brooks

The plenary process this morning at the United Methodist General Conference was unprecedented in recent times, and, though I haven't checked and don't intend to check, maybe for all of the history of the branch of the Methodist movement that has become The United Methodist Church. For one thing, it began at 8:00am with a worship service, and then, without a break, it didn't end until well after 12:30pm, blowing right past orders of the day in the burst of enthusiasm to complete the work on worldwide regionalization of the Church.

Another thing that happened was a really strange anomaly. We've fairly recently set up a system to correct for past disregard for the importance of those United Methodists from parts of the Church outside the United States, called central conferences. The heart of that system is the creation of a Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters. It was empowered to review legislative proposals from other committees when such proposals related to Central Conferences, but ever since its creation, its mission has expanded, and now it has original jurisdiction over many petitions. And what's really strange is that unlike other legislative committees, it exists year round. And as a perpetual committee it not only has authority to submit legislation, it DID submit all 8 of the petitions for Worldwide Regionalization, then 5 of those petitions that it submitted were referred to it by the Petitions Secretary for a recommendation. It doesn't take a genius to figure what its recommendation was going to be. The vote was unanimous!

All five of the eight regionalization petitions SCCCM recommended were adopted by the plenary session by very wide margins, including the one that was the heart and soul of regionalization, the amendment of the Constitution of the Church. The margin was pushing toward 90%, way beyond the 67% requirement for sending the constitutional amendments to the annual conferences for ratification.

Notably, an amendment that proposed to add a provision to remove from the Constitution the authorization of jurisdictions in the United States failed, so the proposal moves forward with its call for a single regional conference in the USA and 7 regional conferences in the rest of the world--3 in Africa, 3 in Europe, and 1 in the Philippines.

Additionally, it is noteworthy that none of these regionalization petitions proposes to regionalize the episcopacy. There are other petitions outside this package that propose to do that, so there's still hope for that idea.

So, the plan from the Commission on the General Conference to have each legislative committee at the beginning discuss regionalization as a principle was made moot, and my informal proposal to form a committee of the whole was, in fact, realized by having the whole General Conference deal with the substance of the matter in its first plenary session dealing with legislation, given that the committee that made the recommendation on the petitions was the body that submitted the petitions.

General Conference 20/24 Report 3

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By Lonnie Brooks

A couple of things that seem to me to be important have now happened at the General Conference since my last report. First in a move that was predictable, given the polarized nature of this event, in keeping with the polarization of the whole Church, the Committee on Reference that is charged with overall management of the petition process declared on a hugely one sided vote that any petition that was submitted by an individual, local church, or annual conference that has subsequently left The United Methodist Church will be declared to be invalid and will not be processed.

While that point of view is defensible, it leaves some important questions on a theoretical basis that have practical implications. Sometimes petitions are submitted by an individual who dies before the General Conference convenes, and such a person is no longer a United Methodist. Moreover, many of the people who have recently withdrawn from the Church, some because their beloved local church of a lifetime's ministry or even multigenerational ministry to their family, withdrew, submitted petitions that became United Methodist law long ago. Are we now to go into our Book of Discipline to discover such law and expunge it from our law? Historically we know, for example, that two of the greatest of our early Christian theologians of the young church, Tertullian and Origen, both were declared to be heretics after most of the work for which they are celebrated had been done. And the church has never seen fit to declare their work tainted by what happened to them later in life.

This strongly seems to me to be following the fallacious path known in analysis of forms of argument as the "poison the wells" approach. People often resort to this method when they can't successfully refute the merit of the opponent's argument. So, in the alternative, they argue something like, "You know that my opponent is an untrustworthy person who associates regularly with people who are nefarious and wrong headed. So, that means you cannot trust anything that comes from that source." You might recall that Jesus's opponents used that argument against him claiming that he regularly associated with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners and didn't even fast as the good people did.

In a move that was a bit of a surprise, one of the committees that processes legislation prior to its being sent to the full plenary for final decision had on its slate five of the many petitions dealing with regionalization of the Church. It approved all five of them by overwhelmingly one sided votes--a large enough margin to put them on what is called the "consent calendar." Being on the consent calendar means that it will be one of many petitions included in a block, and there will be no debate permitted in the plenary session on either the whole block or on any petition thereon. When the consent calendar is presented, the vote will be called, and all of the items on it will be accepted or rejected. A consent calendar is always approved.

This strongly suggests that regionalization will be passed by a large margin, probably including even those petitions that call for amending the Constitution. But all the regionalization petitions that call for amending the Constitution will have to face ratification votes in the annual conferences, and that's likely to be tougher sledding for this concept.

Lastly, today was when all the legislative committees elected their officers, and though not all of them have reported yet, the trend seems to be strong that the Progressive wing of the Church is running the table and capturing all the leadership positions. That's understandable, given that most of the disaffiliations and withdrawals from the Church have been Traditionalists and Conservatives.

General Conference 20/24 Report 2

By Lonnie Brooks

Lonnie Brooks, a member of St. John and a lay reserve delegate to the General Conference, is offering his insights on daily sessions.

Day 2:

Today's opening plenary session of the United Methodist General Conference was mostly an opening worship session that featured a sermon by the President of the Council of Bishops, Tom Bickerton, followed by a series of presentations from some of the committees that are there to keep the process flowing before, during, and after the Conference.

The one business of substance that was conducted was the adoption of the rules of procedure as they were presented by the Rules Committee. There were a few amendments suggested, which by the process previously adopted, are sent to the rules committee for consideration and report and recommendation back to the Conference within 24 hours. So, I think it's fair to say that the rules report was adopted provisionally, depending on what action follows when the Committee reports on the referrals it received.

The thing on which I want to focus, however, was what was reported immediately prior to the rules report.

Kim Simpson, the Chair of the Commission on the General Conference, the body that plans the General Conference, gave her report, and the section of it of most concern to me, and to many others, came packed with numbers. The numbers came fast and furious. No part of the report was accompanied by a written document, and nothing was visually projected so that a listener/watcher could closely follow.

But one thing I did catch was that Kim said that the attendance was 751 out of 862, meaning 87%. She said that was way down from previous General Conferences, but she didn't give us the figures for attendance of delegates from Africa. She did give figures for Central Conferences as a group, but the numbers came too fast for me to record them.

However, using the data we've got, we can make some estimates, and they're not very good or encouraging. This is not higher math, so I hope you'll follow me; it's important!

Of the 862 total delegates, 111 are absent. I know from a contact I have with the delegation from the Philippines that only 1 member of that delegation didn't show. We can be reasonably sure that there were few, if any, absentees from the United States--none because of visa issues. Likewise, though there might have been a few Europeans who had troubles, absenteeism there would have been few. Even if nobody came from Europe, that would have been 40 absentees. So, most of the absences were among the delegations from Africa. If 75% of the absentees were African, that means that 83 of them weren't able to attend, and with 278 authorized African delegates, 30% were absent by this reckoning.

That 30% is, in my judgment, a low end possibility, given what we know and I was able to capture from the data presented. It could be as high as 40%, depending on how close my 75% number is to the portion of absenteeism to attribute to Africa.

As I said in the lead up to this General Conference, the issue, at that time theoretical, in reality becomes whether or not decisions made under these circumstances can be considered to be the legitimate voice of the people called United Methodist. If 30 to 40% of one distinct group of United Methodists has been excluded from the process, does the process maintain integrity and credibility?

General Conference 20/24 Report 1

By Lonnie Brooks

The United Methodist Church lives connectionally primarily through a hierarchically structured system of conferences, at the top of which is the General Conference. It is the sole body of the Church with authority to speak for the whole Church, and it has the authority to adopt the laws that govern how the Church functions.

The General Conference is made up of delegates selected by each of the regional conferences throughout the world which are called annual conferences. The number of delegates allowed from each annual conference varies roughly with the size of the annual conference, meaning that the more members an annual conference has, the more delegates it has to the General Conference, with the additional provision that no annual conference has fewer than two delegates.

The bishops of the Church preside over the sessions of the General Conference which normally meets once every four years for about two weeks. One of the effects of the COVID pandemic was to preclude the regular meeting of the General Conference that was scheduled to take place in 2020. So, that meeting was delayed by four years, and the meeting of the General Conference that has now convened in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been declared to be the postponed session of General Conference 2020, not the General Conference of 2024.

Lonnie Brooks, a member of St. John and a lay reserve delegate to the General Conference, is offering his insights on daily sessions.

Day 1:

"I think the opening skirmish in the contest over regionalization at the United Methodist General Conference has just been engaged, and in what should be no surprise, the institutional position of supporting the Christmas Covenant proposal without amendment has carried the day.

The Alaska Conference submitted a petition that called for amending the Christmas Covenant in a couple of ways. First, we expanded it to include regionalization in North America by replacing the existing five jurisdictions with three Regional Conferences, one of which would also include British Columbia, and second, we included some provisions that were in the regionalization proposal from the Connectional Table that were not in the Christmas Covenant's legislation.

You can find our petition here:

https://app.box.com/s/jooj2w0863rwylm4ovc2ixsvfbhxk2wc

To see a graphic that depicts the effect of the proposed regionalization in North America, you can follow this link:

https://app.box.com/s/6oycin1qh5p6glq2ehnycbdd5mw1fv4i

Because the opening sentence in the petition referred to a petition previously submitted and recommended the Alaska petition be substituted for that one, the Petitions Secretary ruled the Alaska petition to be out of order and didn't assign a number or include it in the Advance Edition of the Daily Christian Advocate (ADCA). Alaska appealed that decision to the General Conference's Committee on Reference (COR).

Today the COR considered Alaska's appeal and received oral testimony from Alaska lay delegate, Jo Anne Hayden, and from Abby Parker Herrera, the Petitions Secretary, and it upheld Parker Herrera's rejection of the petition.

There is no other petition on offer that represents any real alternative to the Christmas Covenant. And that means that amending the Christmas Covenant legislation in the Legislative Committee, either by substitution or piece by piece, is the only way forward for those who want to see regionalization adopted but in a more complete manner than that proposed by the Christmas Covenant.

The Alaska petition does NOT propose full regionalization of the episcopacy, though it does make a move in that direction by proposing to amend ¶49 of the Book of Discipline by moving election of bishops to the Regional Conferences and deleting all the provisions in that paragraph relating to transfer from one Regional Conference to another of those bishops, essentially leaving that matter up to the General Conference to determine by majority vote outside the Constitution. I have submitted other petitions that are included in the ADCA that complete the regionalization of the episcopacy.

This decision of the Committee on Reference is highly significant, and it might well signal how the General Conference leadership is going to engage in this issue of regionalization."

Portions of the General Conference will be live streamed, and you can watch and listen by following this link:

https://www.resourceumc.org/en/churchwide/general-conference-2020/live-stream