A Check In After the United Methodist Special General Conference

 

For the past several years I have been a volunteer mediator with New York State Unified Court System's Community Dispute Resolution Centers Program. My role is to help parents have the best conversation they can have about how to jointly parent their children, once they are no longer sharing the same household. Often these parents are able to come to agreement about how to organize time and care for their children. Sometimes one of the parties leaves the conversation abruptly. Sometimes parties decide to submit the decision-making to Family Court.

Since the Special Session of General Conference, I have been thinking a lot about the ways in which the situation we face as a denomination is similar to the situation separated parents face in coming to agreement on a parenting plan for their children. In particular, I am reminded of a mediation session with a couple who needed to revise the parenting arrangements to which they had previously agreed. Within moments of the start of the conversation they found themselves in a heated back and forth, quickly exchanging accusations and recalling past hurts and betrayals. But soon – without any real intervention on my part – the conversation calmed, and they began to settle into the cooperative task of setting a weekly custodial schedule and allocating holiday times for each of them to be with their children.

The Special Session of General Conference was a very heated conversation. Accusations, recollections of hurts and betrayals, and attempts to shift blame came to the fore. It became clear to me that the dominant motive of many of the speakers on the floor was to win control of the denomination. To my mind, the One Church Plan (or the Simple Plan) was proposed not as a way for progressives to win, but to allow room within the denomination for those with differing views on human sexuality to have space to live out their position. However, it also became clear to me, that supporters of the Traditional Plans did not believe that the One Church Plan gave them the room that they wanted (or needed). And in the end, it does not matter what I think that they ought to believe. I cannot convince or change them at this point in the midst of the conflict.

Perhaps we as United Methodists are not yet ready to turn from our conversation based in our grief, our hurt feelings, our outrage at injustice and the harm done by traditionalists, our sense of betrayal, a belief that our denomination has been stolen by fundamentalists, and our fear that we and our friends are going to be unjustly treated by the enforcement of new Disciplinary rules. All this is real and important. Yet, as important as this conversation is, we must also engage in another conversation.

If I had an opening to intervene in the heated conversation between the parents I mentioned, I might have used an intervention called a “check in.” Again, my job as a mediator is to help the parties have the best conversation they can have, not to control the conversation. In that spirit, I might ask, “You’ve spent some time talking about hurts and disappointments. Would you like to continue to talk about these topics, or would you prefer to work on coming up with a weekly parenting schedule?” In offering an opportunity for the parties to refocus, I empower them to make a choice about how they want to use the time to engage one another. They do not have to be locked into a primary agenda of blame and accusation. Each parent may still carry the same hurts and disagreements that remain, but the focus turns toward the task of managing how they move forward.

Parents try to create and live up to joint parenting agreements for a variety of reasons, but certainly one reason is their recognition that they are stewards of precious and vulnerable children. Even after the parents have split up, they share responsibility for their children. Parents remain connected through their children. Most parents feel obliged to share the care of their children despite the failings and misdeeds they attribute to their former partners.

Our connectional polity makes it difficult for us United Methodists to disentangle ourselves from one another. We, along with our traditionalist fellow United Methodists, are jointly stewards of some precious and vulnerable persons and institutions. We have local churches and members thereof. We have agencies that fight for justice on many fronts, ministries of compassion that help hurting and desperate people. We have camps and conference centers, chaplaincies, and ecumenical partnerships with important ministries. We have a Wesleyan theology that still has something to offer to the larger Church.

What sort of “parenting plan” will we agree on? How will we proceed to take proper care of the precious and vulnerable persons and institutions that are entrusted to the United Methodist Church?

Some have said that we have been having the same conversation around human sexuality for 47 years. That is simply not true. It is true that the parties have come to a stalemate with respect to many of the theological and doctrinal arguments. More important, however, is the fact that we now have many called and gifted queer pastors and lay persons, whose contributions are no longer closeted, but visible for all to see. We have come to know gay couples in our congregations who are clear examples of the Spirit’s fullness. These people have grown up within our church, or have chosen to join our church as adults, despite the fact that we have such hurtful language in our Book of Discipline that attempts to compel unjust, exclusionary practices. [Note: It is this development that has made Traditionalists feel disempowered and led to their reactive attempt to double down on punitive measures, as they become increasingly self-absorbed, refusing to see the fruit of the Spirit’s activity among us.]

It is true that, as positions become entrenched, the theological argument becomes increasingly less helpful. Traditionalists feel increasingly disempowered by increasing conscientious disobedience among progressives and the steady growth of LGBTQIA membership. Progressives fear increasing disempowerment in the wake of the actions of the traditionalists at the Special General Conference. Our mutual self-absorption and mistrust make a convincing arguments for our positions futile at this stage. It is time to check in with ourselves about the most helpful and appropriate conversation we need to have with our counter-parties going forward. We are free to have another, different conversation.

A foundational issue between separated parents is whether custody of their children will be joint or whether one of the parents will have sole custody. Roughly speaking, sole custody means that one parent has the decision-making power over the children. Joint custody means that both parents will share in making important decisions. Neither will have full control. A decision for joint custody entails that the parents will need to work together to share decision-making, even when they have experienced hurt and betrayal from the other parent. 

The Special General Conference was a heated conversation with each party fighting for sole custody. The Special General Conference was a clarifying moment in which we learned that neither side can win sole custody. The progressives do not have the votes to pass the One Church (or Simple) Plan convincingly. Neither do the traditionalists have a constitutional way to impose their will on those who believe differently. Again, I believe traditionalists are mistaken in thinking they cannot live with the One Church Plan. But I cannot force them to realize that. Perhaps it’s time we considered joint custody; a way to share the responsibility for the care of that with which we have been entrusted.

How shall we responsibly share that responsibility? I believe that something like the Connectional Conference Plan allows us to separate in a way that allows us to have a quasi-denomination (or we might think of it as an Order) that empowers bishops, jurisdictions and central conferences, annual conferences, local churches, clergy, and lay people, to choose a congenial connectional home.

This connectional plan honors that we are stewards with joint responsibilities to safeguard vulnerable and important persons and institutions. It invites us to shift the conversation from an "all or nothing" argument about who is right to seeking a way forward that is equitable and makes space for groups of people who disagree to live out their call as they understand it.

This is certainly not a perfect solution. Traditionalists will continue to live out what I take to be their mistaken and harmful theology. Under the traditionalist plan they will continue to live that out under a United Methodist umbrella. If I had the power to keep that from happening, I might want to do so. But I don’t. If the One Church Plan had passed, perhaps many traditionalists would have left, and the United Methodist Church would have become more congenial to progressives. But that did not happen.

Theoretically, progressives might leave and start their own denomination. But the legal and administrative costs are significant. The Connectional Conference Plan offers as close to a turnkey operation as we are likely to get.

Finally, we may find that once we stop trying to impose our wills and consciences on one another, we will be able to have a more fruitful theological argument. Our conversations across connectional conferences may surprise us. I believe that in so doing our witness as progressives will be more creative and stronger.