Methodists Grope for a Common Center

United Methodist officials frequently describe their church as “united in its diversity.” A one-day slice of life at the denomination’s quadrennial meetings last month would attest, at least, to the diversity:

• Following breakfast in a nearby church, supporters of the evangelical caucus Good News pray for their denomination and—as challenged by their devotional leader—that God would allow them to bear witness to their faith to at least one person that day.

• About 200 gay men and women participate later the same day in a noon worship service sponsored by the United Methodist homosexual caucus, Affirmation. The group sings, “We are a gay and lesbian people.” Some tears are evidenced by those protesting “homophobia” in the church.

• Beside their 30-foot-high tepee outside the convention center, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) protest mistreatment of and the church’s insensitivity toward native Americans.

• A confused African delegate interrupts debate on the conference floor, asking respectfully, “Would someone tell me please, just what is this Equal Rights Amendment?”

Considering the smorgasbord of racial, theological, and special interest groups present at the 1980 General Conference in Indianapolis, and, considering the many controversial issues facing the 1,000 delegates (half laity and half clergy), the outcome might have been like the misspelling on a local hotel marquee: “Welcome Untied Methodists.” Instead, the nation’s second largest Protestant body emerged more united than expected.

Early in the 11-day meeting the delegates settled the crucial issue of homosexuality. They overwhelmingly voted to reaffirm an eight-year-old Social Principles statement that “we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” The church’s policy-making body also retained the ban on denominational funding of gay organizations and use of church funds to otherwise “promote the acceptance of homosexuality.”

Long-time Methodist observers called this a “centrist” or “status quo” General Conference. By their voting, the delegates seemed intent on “balancing out” the issues, to prevent any faction from gaining an advantage.

Feminist groups, for instance, were pleased by legislation encouraging church boards and agencies to meet in states that have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, but they lost their bid to change “sexist” language in the Social Principles from “God the Father” to “God the creator.” Conservatives at the grassroots level heralded passage of a financial disclosure policy: all church agencies, boards, commissions, and committees will be required to account for their receipts and expenditures in a quadrennial report, and each must make available upon request an annual audit. Yet, the advocates of bureaucratic accountability and increased local church autonomy lost in their bid for a so-called designated giving policy, which would have given churches greater choice over where their apportioned funds are spent.

Even the ever-present caucus groups, with their literature and in-the-hall lobbying, failed to upset delegates. These groups included the gay caucus Affirmation, the Coalition for the Whole Gospel, and the Methodist Federation for Social Action on the left wing: Good News and the fledgling Esther Action Council, representing the conservative evangelical viewpoint; and the many ethnic caucuses: Black Methodists for Church Renewal, the Hispanics’ MARCHA, the Native American International Caucus, and Asian American United Methodists.

The delegates plowed through a five-pound, 1,000-page workbook of agenda items—as well as 60,000 coffee break cookies baked by central Indiana Methodist women’s groups—without the divisive rhetoric and tangles that have characterized other quadrennial sessions. They even voted to allow speaking privileges to AIM founder Clyde Bellecourt, a non-United Methodist and follower of “traditional Indian religion,” who took full advantage of his 20 minutes in an emotional, podium-pounding speech, in which he said, “The extermination of Indian people is taking place right here in America in the land of the free where you came to seek religious freedom.” (Later in the conference, when delegates voted against establishing a separate Native American Commission, an angry Bellecourt called for the removal of United Methodist churches from Indian lands.)

While observers commend United Methodists for their efforts to be inclusive, some question to what extent the church can be truly united in mission and identity. The profusion of doctrinal viewpoints—or lack of them—within the church led at least one group, the Good News theology task force, to draft in 1975 a doctrinal restatement of the Wesleyan, Reformed theological tradition: its “Affirmation of Scriptural Christianity for United Methodists.”

Alan Waltz, research expert in the General Council on Ministries, told a reporter that United Methodists “don’t have a clear sense of our own identity. We don’t know who we are; therefore, we can’t move with significant purpose or resolve.” Waltz has said that United Methodism has a “lack of will and leadership to overcome a state of ‘malaise’ ” within it and lacks a clear sense of direction.

At least in terms of membership, the UMC direction is down. Before their merger in 1968, the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren had a combined membership of 11.1 million (1964 figures). Since then, the Methodists have experienced annual declines resulting in the loss of 1.5 million.

Fewer professions of faith partly explain the drop: the 196,000 faith professions in 1978 were the lowest reported “in a number of decades,” said Board of Discipleship executive Warren J. Hartman in a comprehensive study of UMC membership trends. Coupling that figure with a 44 percent drop in church school membership since 1965, Hartman concluded: “Since the majority of the professions of faith come from the children’s division of the church school, the [decline] cannot help but produce continued reduction in the number of professions of faith.

Hartman does see signs of a turnaround in the church school, and predicts the church membership decline will bottom out within the next several years. In the meantime, the church bureaucracy’s worries about depleted church rolls may push it toward continuing the renewed emphasis on evangelism for which conservatives have asked. In Indianapolis, the General Conference delegates approved two multi-million-dollar programs that are expected to bring in new members.

They adopted as the church’s single mission priority for the 1981–84 quadrennium, “Developing and Strengthening the Ethnic Minority Local Church.” The General Conference allotted $5 million annually for purposes including recruitment of ethnic ministers, new forms of ethnic evangelism, and education and training in ethnic church needs.

Some conservatives would have preferred a four-year emphasis on the Christian family. They believed this need is more crucial, and one affecting a larger number of UMC members. (Ethnic minorities comprise about 5 percent of United Methodist membership. With 375,000 blacks, 38,000 Hispanics, 18,000 native Americans, and 12,000 Asian Americans, the denomination reportedly has more ethnic minority members than any predominantly white U.S. Protestant body.) However, a conference report cited ethnic minorities as the “area of highest potential for church and membership growth.”

Researcher Hartman has documented that the two UMC conferences with the strongest growth are Hispanic—Puerto Rico and Rio Grande—with nearly twice as many annual professions of faith per 1,000 members (49.2) as other conferences. Church executive Melvin G. Talbert, in introducing the ethnic outreach program, said it would allow the church to address “the root causes of racism,” show its inclusiveness, and test its commitment to evangelism—and predicted the nation’s population will be 35 percent ethnic minority by the year 2000.

In what some observers called a reaction against the electronic church, the delegates also took steps toward a “national television presence and ministry.” They voted to establish a three-year fund-raising campaign, beginning in 1981, to raise at least $21 million to purchase a “high-quality, commercial” television station. The profit-making station is intended to generate enough income eventually to build a group of stations, said key organizer Charles Cappleman, general manager of Television City, the CBS-TV network’s broadcast and videotape production facility in Los Angeles.

Cappleman used as a model the Mormons, who own radio and TV stations in eight major U.S. cities. He cites the Mormons’ phenomenal membership growth as an indirect result; and even though, in essence, the television station will not be religious, he believes it can be a primary vehicle for outreach.

Homosexuality: Studied Ambiguity?

Questions on homosexuality remained following the 1980 General Conference. Despite their censure of homosexuality, the delegates defeated a proposed amendment that would have specifically forbidden the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals. Wesley Seminary professor Bruce Birch expressed the view of others: “I urge us to resist the listing of such prohibitions as a response more at home with the Pharisees and the Law than with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The delegates did approve the addition of a footnote to the Book of Discipline, adding to a list of ministerial offenses “practices incompatible with Christian teaching.” Asked for a specific yes or no as to whether the footnote would allow ordination of practicing homosexuals by annual conferences (two have done so), the presiding officer, Bishop Roy C. Nichols of Pittsburgh, said only that the guidelines would be used by annual conference boards of ministry and other groups that examine candidates. Observers believe the answer may come when well-known, self-avowed homosexual pastor Paul Abels of New York City comes up for reappointment in early summer.

Charles Keysor of Good News opposed this position of denominational “ambiguity.” He asserted that 3,000 of the 20,000 petitions (resolutions) submitted by churches, agencies, and individuals prior to the General Conference had asked for a specific ban on ordination of practicing homosexuals: “The church has spoken in thunder, and the delegates heard only a whisper.”

Still, sympathizers with the 14-year-old, Wilmore, Kentucky-based Good News movement generally came away from the conference “feeling very good,” said Keysor. (He had predicted an exodus of conservative pastors and laypersons if the General Conference loosened its stance on homosexuality.) Good News ran its most extensive conference caucus operation yet—mailing in advance 18,000 packets with sample petitions suggested by Good News, and manning a national telephone prayer chain and strategy office throughout the 11-day meeting.

The General Conference didn’t detour from UMC social and ecumenical causes, reaffirming UMC support of the National and World Councils of Churches, adopting a policy against racism in all of its forms, and continuing nonrestrictive language on abortion. It also listened to complaints that the church has become unresponsive to local church needs.

Providing the most dramatic interlude of the conference was an eight-person delegation headed by Bishop C. Dale White, which met with President Jimmy Carter and the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations. The delegation had urged restraint in the hostage crisis, and praised Carter’s patience in a press conference on their return.

When they learned a few hours later of the aborted helicopter rescue operation in Iran, the delegation termed the President’s action regrettable. But they declined to condemn him for it, and counseled continued restraint.

Many member United Methodists hope their disenchanted elements also practice restraint, and that all 39,000 churches will hearken to the “united” of their denominational banner.

JOHN MAUST

Liberia

An Abrupt End to the Rule of Africa’s ‘Mr. Baptist’

There was no evidence of religious motivation for the coup in Liberia last month in which President William R. Tolbert, Jr., 66, was slain. But Liberia being what it is, the secular shakeup had noticeable religious ramifications.

President Tolbert had been president of the Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention for 22 years. The military forces led by Army Master Sergeant Samuel Doe ransacked the converted former Tolbert residence that served as the convention headquarters, removing records from files in Tolbert’s office.

During 20 years in the largely ceremonial post of vice-president prior to his presidential inauguration in 1971, Tolbert had risen to prominence on the Baptist world scene. He served as Baptist World Alliance vice-president from 1960 to 1965, and as its president from 1965 to 1970—the first black and the first native African to hold the post.

BWA officials therefore admitted to being “quite shocked” by the revelation in a January CBS-TV “Sixty Minutes” report that Tolbert had sired children by women other than his wife, and by commentator Morley Safer’s assertion that Tolbert had felt no moral or ethical conflict.

Tolbert’s Liberian Baptist Convention had been scheduled to break ground for a new headquarters building the day after Tolbert’s death as part of a three-week centennial celebration of Baptist work in the country. R. Keith Parks, president of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, was flying to Monrovia to participate in the event when the coup took place. His plane was diverted to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, instead. It is now thought unlikely that construction will begin.

Liberian Vice-president Bennie D. Warner also had an ecclesiastical connection as a United Methodist bishop. Soldiers broke into his house as well during the coup, apparently unaware that he and his family had left the country. Warner at the time was attending the UMC Council of Bishops in Nashville, Indiana. He remained to attend the UMC General Conference in Indianapolis, with security guards assigned to him. But four days before the conclusion of the sessions, the guards reported that Warner and his family had checked out of his hotel room and departed. (His whereabouts was unknown at press time.)

Not so fortunate was the head of the Presbyterian Church in Liberia, who was among the 13 executed. He, too, held a government post, in the senate.

John Mills, Southern Baptist board secretary for West Africa, who has visited Liberia since the coup, attributes the noticeable presence of clergy in the ousted regime not to a religious thrust in the government but to a phenomenon in the churches. Almost universally, he says, they do not provide salaries for their ministers. It is therefore normal for pastors to hold a full-time job in another capacity.

The coup itself probably resulted from Tolbert’s wavering on recently instituted reforms. In January he had authorized registration of an opposition party—the People’s Progressive Party—for the first time. But after the ppp called for a general strike and for his resignation, he reversed himself—banning the party, arresting some of its leaders, and offering rewards for capture “dead or alive” of those still at large. The new army-imposed People’s Redemption Council said it had taken power to deal with “rampant corruption.”

Two weeks after seizing power, the new regime was holding Tolbert’s wife Victoria under house arrest, and was searching for other family members. But it also asked the churches to observe a week of prayer on behalf of the nation. That was one directive being followed with fervor.

Latter Day Saints

The Un-Mormons Also Celebrate

Most new religious movements do not long outlast the lifetimes of their founders, but the Latter Day Saints are more vigorous than ever 150 years after their founding in upstate New York. On Easter Sunday the Mormons and the various smaller LDS groups celebrated the anniversary with pageantry and prayer.

The 220,000-member Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the largest of the less-known groups of followers of the revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr. The Independence, Missouri-based denomination held its anniversary celebration in conjunction with its biennial world convention, an event that brought nearly 3,000 delegates (together with an entourage of another 15,000 or so) from 34 countries to the site where, Joseph Smith once said, the Second Coming of Christ will take place.

Although there was little overt discord during meeting sessions, some controversy was in the air. Gregory Donovan of Detroit, one of several conservative critics of leadership they see as drifting in a liberal direction, identified RLDS membership in councils of churches and ordination of women as the two major specific issues this year, within a larger context of “extensive and continual” drift away from RLDS traditions. “The current leadership tends to play down the early teachings of the church in favor of ecumenism. They seem to be less proud of their origins,” he said.

By the end of the week the church had not changed either policy. Ordination of women was deferred indefinitely, and the delegates decided not to try to join the National or World Councils of Churches, but to allow local churches and ministers to join local ecumenical agencies (the situation now prevailing).

The RLDS church was “reorganized” in 1860 when Joseph Smith II, the founder’s son, gathered a remnant of the faithful who had not followed Brigham Young to Utah. The group settled in Independence because of the location’s special importance to all Latter Day Saints and finally built the 5,800-seat auditorium where the world conventions are held. It was there that president/prophet Wallace B. Smith, the great-grandson of Joseph, Jr., presided over the week’s transactions.

The Reorganized Saints see themselves as very different from the Mormons. In an interview just before the opening of the convention, Smith said, “People often look for our links with the Mormon church, but we think of ourselves as separate. There are more differences than similarities. The Mormons have developed a new theology involving a plurality of Gods, sealing for eternity, and many other things. We do not accept any of that. Today our theology and doctrines are quite divergent.” The differences have grown steadily greater since Brigham Young took over the leadership of the main faction, Smith said.

Richard Howard, the official historian of the Reorganized church, supported Smith’s analysis. Speaking of the Mormons, he said, “They live in a different universe. We have different doctrines of God, the world, you name it. The only thing we have in common is our historical origin, and we even interpret that differently.”

However, the relatively greater success of the Salt Lake City group has not escaped the notice of RLDS members or officials. The leadership of the church has adopted “Faith to Grow” as its theme for the 1980s; it is understood that the slogan refers both to growth in faith for current members and growth in overall numbers for the church. Missionary activities are being stepped up at home and abroad, particularly in East Asia and Oceania.

Despite the resolution—at least for the time being—of the major controversial issues, other issues face the denomination over the longer run. One will be the problem of the succession. To date the leadership has passed down through direct male descendants of Joseph Smith, but Wallace Smith at age 51 has no sons (he has three daughters). Technically, Smith noted, a current leader can designate any successor, who need not be in the Smith family. However, he conceded, the “Smith leadership has been helpful in preventing rivalries and in assuring continuity in the church.” No one knows how the problem will eventually be handled.

Another relatively long-term situation is the construction of the temple. In 1831 Joseph Smith announced that God had revealed the proper site for the eschatologically important Independence Temple; all LDS believers agree that the site—now principally owned by the RLDS church, to Salt Lake’s chagrin—remains unchanged. In 1968 the RLDS church announced a revelation to W. Wallace Smith, then president, that it was time to begin planning the long-awaited edifice. A building fund now contains slightly over $2 million.

A plot of land—now mainly a parking lot—within the original 61-acre “Temple Lot” designated by Joseph Smith has tentatively been designated as the site. Some work on a temple site master plan was undertaken in 1974; plans for the complex show several buildings, including worship space, a facility recognizing and encouraging world brotherhood, a school, and research facilities. One official, when pressed, said that he “hoped” that ground could be broken in the 1980s, but there is no timetable, partly because, as Wallace B. Smith stated, “We’re not entirely sure what the role of the Temple should be. We have not defined all its functions. We need to consult with and inform our people about it.” However, Smith did vow that the project would not be much like a Mormon temple, noting that “We don’t believe in secret rites,” the hallmark of the Mormon temples.

Despite the heady plans, the future is unclear for the RLDS church. Even during the convention more dissidents were pulling away from the leadership. One, Eugene Walton, 52, a former middle-level RLDS official who was excommunicated in 1974 for opposing the leadership, announced that he had received a revelation on Easter Sunday telling him to proceed with the development of a new splinter group; he and his congregation of 25 have already withdrawn and formed the “Restorationists United.”

Clearly the vast majority, however, will stay with the church as it enters its 151st year. Like the Mormons, the RLDS delegates are proud of their church with its unorthodox teachings and will continue to work to make it prosper.

TIM MILLER

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