GetReligion
Friday, April 04, 2025

United Methodists

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

United Methodist pastor dives into HBO drag-queen culture, drawing joyful RNS applause

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
United Methodist pastor dives into HBO drag-queen culture, drawing joyful RNS applause

Religion news consumers who have been alive for a few decades are probably aware that — on issues related to the Bible and sexuality — United Methodists are, in fact, not united.

Anyone looking for deep background on that topic can turn to a classic document from the mid-1980s entitled “The Seven Churches of United Methodism.” Click here for the first of two “On Religion” columns I wrote about the continuing relevance of that report, which was written by Duke University sociologist Robert L. Wilson, who died in 1991, and William Willimon, now a retired bishop.

Of course, there are bipartisan plans for a United Methodist divorce that would create a more LGBTQ-friendly version of the current denomination and a global Methodist body that would retain traditional teachings on marriage and sexuality. Hold that thought.

Every now and then, Religion News Service — one of the definitive sources for news on the Christian left — produces a news report that perfectly illustrates just how divided Methodists are on edgy issues related to sexuality. This brings us to the following dramatic double-decker RNS headline:

Meet the United Methodist pastor featured on HBO’s drag reality show ‘We’re Here’

Performing in drag was an ‘incredibly wonderful, refreshing, deepening, powerful spiritual experience,’ said Pastor Craig Duke of Newburgh United Methodist Church in Indiana.

Let me note, right up front, that this story opens all kinds of doors to discussions of the two doctrinal approaches that — on issues of biblical authority and a host of other issues — can be found in the current United Methodist Church. However, the story includes absolute zero voices from Methodists on the traditional side of these debates — even from members of the pastor’s own congregation who can be expected to ask questions about his TV leap into the world of drag culture.

Here is the overture to this advocacy-journalism report. This is long, but essential:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Notable omission among liberal religious voices in phase 2 of Supreme Court abortion case

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Notable omission among liberal religious voices in phase 2 of Supreme Court abortion case

The media are prepping for the U.S. Supreme Court's December 1 hearing on the strict Mississippi abortion law and the subsequent ruling.

In a prior Guy Memo on religious "friend of the court" briefs filed on the pro-life side, I promised a second rundown when pro-abortion-rights activists weighed in with their views. Now that second wave of religious arguments has landed — with a notable omission in those ranks that journalists will want to pursue.

To explain, we'll need some religion-beat history on this issue.

In 1967, two years before NARAL Pro-Choice America was founded, the 1,400-member Clergy Consultation Service formed to help women obtain abortions and fight legal barriers. After the high court legalized U.S. abortions in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision currently at issue, the related Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights was founded to campaign for moral acceptance. (In 1994 it dropped the A-word and was renamed the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice or RCRC).

Founders included a significant chunk of "mainline" and liberal Protestantism, including the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Mission Agency, United Church of Christ and several independent Protestant caucuses. The United Methodists' General Board of Church and Society hosted the founding, and the Methodist women's division also joined, but both later backed away. The Coalition also included major non-Orthodox Jewish organizations and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

In the new Court filings, abortion-rights law gets continued support from RCRC, UUA and Jewish organizations. But no Protestant denomination that favors abortion choice has joined to support Roe. Reporters should find out why they sidestepped this historic showdown. For example, have complex schism talks led to silence on the United Methodist left, as opposed to earlier debates (see YouTube video at the top of this post)?

The silence from "mainline" churches deprives the high court of in-depth moral thinking from pro-choice Christians that answers conservatives on issues that make abortion unusually difficult for public policy, among them: Does a genetically unique and developing human embryo or fetus have value? Why, or why not?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Any religion ghosts here? Martin Methodist College joins University of Tennessee system

, , , , ,
Any religion ghosts here? Martin Methodist College joins University of Tennessee system

For years, parents have been asking me a logical question, in light of my quarter of a century teaching in Christian liberal arts colleges and programs. The question: How do we know which college is right for our kid? They often link this to questions about how small colleges can compete in the modern marketplace.

Hang in there with me, since — for me — these questions are linked to the news coverage of an interesting higher-education story that is unfolding here in Tennessee.

In my experience, Christian liberal-arts colleges are not for everyone. The key is whether a private school’s academic strengths (most schools are stronger in some areas than others) match a student’s needs. It’s also important to know if an academic subject is a good fit with that school’s history and sense of mission.

This brings me to this recent headline in the Gannett newspapers here in Tennessee: “University of Tennessee adds fifth campus with Martin Methodist College merger.” Here’s the overture:

The University of Tennessee System has added a fifth campus, the first addition to the statewide higher education network in more than 50 years.

Martin Methodist College, located in Pulaski, will join the system as the University of Tennessee Southern, a nod to the regional identity the system hopes to create. The merger with Martin Methodist College is intended to bring affordable higher education to southern Middle Tennessee. The school is located about 75 miles southwest of Nashville, near the Alabama border.

The UT board of trustees unanimously approved the merger … after nearly a year of collaboration with Martin Methodist.

I’ve been following this story throughout the year and the coverage has, to use one of the defining images of this blog, been haunted by religious questions linked to this merger between a Christian college and a massive, secular university system. In this case, “haunted” means the coverage hasn’t mentioned these issues at all.

I am really curious to know what will happen to programs at Martin Methodist — academic and service oriented — that were linked to its Christian identity and ties to Tennessee United Methodists. I would imagine that there were also changes in some campus policies linked to moral and social issues.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yearenders-palooza finale: 2020 Top 10 religion-news lists from several Getreligionistas

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Yearenders-palooza finale: 2020 Top 10 religion-news lists from several Getreligionistas

OK. This is it. I promise. This is the last GetReligion #2020 Top 10 religion-news post that you’re going to see. I think. And sorry about the Kiss 2020 goodbye concert video with this post (I could not resist).

Let me be clear what this is. A few of us have already written columns or posts evaluating the results of the Religion News Association poll, like this “On Religion” column that I shared here: “Of course the pandemic was top 2020 religion-news story: But which COVID-19 story?”

However, each of us — when creating our own personal lists — saw the religion-news landscape through our own lens. Thus, I thought readers might enjoy seeing all of the RNA poll items — 27 news events and trends were on the ballot — and how some of us arranged them. Some readers, for example, have expressed a desire to explore what was left OFF the list and how the items were described on the official ballot. Read it all at the RNA.org website.

As I said earlier, in the GetReligion podcast and post in which I shared my own ballot (“The year when religion news went viral, and that was a bad thing”), I thought the key was that the COVID-19 crisis was several stories in one. I thought the most important angle was the First Amendment fights, so I wrote:

According to journalists who cover religion, this was the year's biggest story: "COVID-19 pandemic claims lives of many religious leaders and laity, upends death rituals, ravages congregational finances, spurs charitable responses, forces religious observances to cancel or go online and stirs legal fights over worship shutdowns."

But there was a problem on my ballot. The RNA list included another coronavirus item focusing on religious liberty. In some cities and states, officials created pandemic regulations that claimed many institutions — from grocery stores to casinos — provided "essential services." Meanwhile, other institutions — like churches and synagogues — were deemed "non-essential."

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that religious institutions shouldn't face tougher rules than secular groups and activities. It was wrong, for example, to ban masked priests from hearing confessions – outdoors, 10 feet away from masked penitents – while consumers were lined up at liquor stores.

Ryan Burge, in a post this weekend, had a similar take at the top of his list, stressing First Amendment and Supreme Court issues. The key, he said, was this: “I made a list based on what I thought would have the most lasting impacts into 2021 and beyond.”

So that brings us to new material from other members of the team, starting with Julia Duin. She sent me an email raising another issue with the RNA results:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Final #2020 podcast: The year when religion news went viral, and that was a bad thing

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When you have been studying the Religion News Association’s Top 10 religion stories poll for as many years as I have (starting around 1980), it’s easy to spot patterns.

In normal years, religion-beat specialists tend to place several familiar items at or near near the top of the poll. You can see that by looking at Internet-era polls (click here). Like what?

* Whatever the pope did or said that drew headlines, especially if there was a USA tour.

* Religion affecting American politics (especially following the birth of the Religious Right after Roe vs. Wade). Big Supreme Court decisions often fit into this niche.

* Major religion-related wars or acts of terrorism around the world.

* What happened with liberal Protestantism — especially Episcopalians — and the whole God vs. the Sexual Revolution thing?

* For a decade or so, Southern Baptist warfare was a year-to-year story (stay tuned for future developments).

* Sex scandals involving bad conservative religious groups or leaders (since hypocrisy is more newsworthy than mistakes made by good liberals as they evolve).

As always, the year’s final “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on the results of the RNA poll and what might happen in the year ahead. My own “On Religion” column about the 2020 poll is running in mainstream newspapers this weekend and it will be posted here and at Tmatt.net in a day or so.

This was not, as you would expect, a “normal” year in the poll — unless you want to say that, instead of wars or acts of terrorism, the world experienced a pandemic. COVID-19 showed up twice in the RNA poll and even those two items understated the size and complexity of this story.

Looking forward: How many congregations and clergy will we lose in the next few years because of the impact — in terms of stress, as well as finances — of this pandemic?

Anyway, I thought GetReligion readers might want to see my own ballot in this poll, which was similar to the poll final results (click here for those) — but with some crucial variations. For starters, I took the two RNA coronavirus pandemic stories and turned them into items 1(a) and 1(b) by placing them at the top.

I have added a few bites of commentary to this list. Let me stress that this list is my ballot, but features the RNA-poll wordings that describe each “story” or trend.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

RNS finds trans clergy struggle for support, after leaving liberal seminaries (#WhyIsThat)

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Back in my Colorado days, I spent lots of time covering the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary that was and is known as a hub for liberal Christian theology. A student — in the late 1980s — estimated that the student body was close to 50% gay and lesbian.

The problem, of course, was that there weren’t enough “urban” churches in Denver to handle all the students who needed to work part-time, serve in parish residency programs or be placed in their first pastoral positions (if they wanted to say in that regional conference). I once heard a feminist lesbian student, near tears, describing her attempts to preach to a small-town congregation out on the high plains of eastern Colorado. Some people even believed in hell.

What I realized was that this was not a story with two sides — liberal clergy vs. old-school locals. It was a story with, at least, three sides — liberal clergy, conservative laity and seminary/denominational officials caught in the middle. The liberal powers that be, you see, wanted to help the graduates, but they couldn’t afford to run off legions of ordinary church members. They had to be careful, for reasons linked to institutional survival.

I thought of those stand-offs while reading the recent Religion News Service feature — I am not sure that it is a “news” story — that ran with this headline: “As seminaries welcome openly transgender students, church lags behind.” Here is the overture:

When Austen Hartke arrived at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, he knew it was the only Lutheran seminary that didn't participate in his denomination's LGBTQ+ welcoming program. But as his awareness grew that he was transgender, so did his conviction that Luther was the right place for him.

Hartke, who had come out as bisexual years before applying to seminary, had specifically picked the school, he said in a recent interview, so he would learn to navigate his identity and ministry while being exposed to “the Midwestern attitudes I lived with every day.”

Still, said Hartke, who today runs the Transmission Ministry Collective, a community that supports transgender and other nonbinary Christians, “I didn’t come out as trans until I was holding my diploma, because I didn’t know what would happen.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Thinking with Ryan Burge: Why it would be dangerous for most churches to reopen

, , , , , , , , , , ,

If you read newspapers, the world of coronavirus-era religion appears to be divided into two worlds.

On one side are lots of crazy white evangelicals — you know, the people in MAGA hats — who want to return to face-to-face worship and, thus, risk the lives of ordinary people in their communities. These are the bad guys in this drama.

There have been a few news reports that note that quite a few black Pentecostals are part of this camp, but, well, nevermind. That information just complicates things.

On the other side are the good guys — mainline Protestants and Catholics who have embraced online church life and deserve to be cheered.

Now, where does the following information from Baptist Press — the media arm of the giant Southern Baptist Convention — fit into this picture? This is from a story on initial discussions, among SBC leaders, of reopening the doors of their churches. That’s right — the Southern Baptists (I haven’t heard of any exceptions) have been worshiping online. This is long, but the details matter:

Michael Lewis, pastor of Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., said his team is cautiously planning to reopen as early as May 10, though the date is tentative and dependent on progress as measured by the official guidelines for reopening set out by the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Lewis said Marietta, one of Atlanta's northern suburbs, is almost through the Phase 1 of the COVID-19 guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reopening states. When the city enters Phase 2, Roswell Street Baptist, which averages about 700 in attendance Sunday morning, would conduct two worship-only services.

Two staff members would monitor two designated entrances. There would be no greeters, but those doors would remain open throughout the services. Attendees would be seated by household, with groups separated by at least six feet. They would be formally seated and dismissed in order to maintain social-distancing. Restroom use would be limited. The church would not print bulletins.

"We're going to adhere very strictly to the CDC guidelines," Lewis said, noting that the May 10 target date could be postponed if necessary.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Covering 'mainline' faith: Why do the old Protestant churches get so much news ink?

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Soon after I left the newsroom of the Rocky Mountain News to teach at Denver Seminary, in the early 1990s, a general-assignment reporter was asked to do a story about a trend in religion. It was something to do with prayer, if I recall, and editors wanted to run it on Easter.

The reporter went to three or four nearby churches in downtown. As you would expect, these were old flocks linked to Mainline Protestantism and one Catholic parish. All were, to one degree or another, both historic and struggling, in terms of attendance and membership. The city’s biggest churches were in the suburbs, especially in the booming territory between Denver and Colorado Springs — already a nationally known evangelical power base. The state included at least five internationally known centers on spirituality and prayer, one evangelical, one charismatic Episcopal, one Buddhist and two Roman Catholic.

The story ended up with voices from the dominant flocks of Denver’s past, when liberal Protestant voices were the statistical norm.

Many times, through the years, religious leaders have asked me: Why do the oldline Protestant churches receive so much news coverage? During my Denver years, Episcopalians and United Methodists did make lots of national news — as doctrinal wars escalated about sex and marriage.

These were subjects that editors considered news. Evangelical Presbyterian churches growing to 6,000-plus members in their first five years of existence? That might be worth a column. It’s not big news.

I thought of these discussions the other day when I read a Religion News Service — a long feature with lots of valid material — that ran with this headline: “As a pandemic peaks at Christianity’s Easter climax, churches adapt online.” Here’s the opening anecdote:

On Palm Sunday (April 5), the Rev. Ted Gabrielli, a bespectacled Jesuit with a bushy beard, stood in the bed of a roving pickup truck that traveled through Boyle Heights, a mostly Latino neighborhood on Los Angeles’ east side.

Gabrielli, a pastor at Dolores Mission Church, greeted neighbors from the truck and blessed the homes, alleys and streets he passed. He greeted many by name. One neighbor, caught on a Facebook livestream of the procession, stood from her home waving palms, the symbol of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem in the week before he was crucified.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Members, money and math: Are sex-abuse lawsuits the only cause of Scouting woes?

, , , , , , , ,

When it comes to the ongoing crisis facing Scouting — previously the Boy Scouts of America — it’s obvious that the big headline right now is the decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

I get that. However, I would like to ask a question once again about this complex story about an organization that, for decades, was a powerful sign of unity in mainstream American culture.

Has this bankruptcy been caused by waves of child-abuse allegations, alone? See the wording in the headline atop a massive USA Today feature the other day: “Boy Scouts files Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of thousands of child abuse allegations.”

Here’s another basic question: Would Scouting leaders be in better financial shape if their membership totals were way up above 4 million, where they were in the 1970s, as opposed to just under 2 million participants today? Would Scouting be better off if supporters in many large conservative religious groups — think the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and many Southern Baptist congregations — hadn’t hit the exit doors in the past decade or so? Do the math?

Yes, note that there is a religion-news component to this missing part of the story. If Scouting is going to survive, who will host these activities and provide the volunteers (and children) they need to thrive?

There is next to nothing about this side of the story in that long USA Today feature. Here is the overture:

Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy protection … amid declining membership and a drumbeat of child sexual abuse allegations that have illuminated the depth of the problem within the organization and Scouts’ failure to get a handle on it.

After months of speculation and mounting civil litigation, the Chapter 11 filing by the scouting organization's national body was unprecedented in both scope and complexity. It was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware overnight.

The exact effects on Boy Scouts' future operations are unknown, leading to speculation about the organization's odds for survival, the impact on local troops and how bankruptcy could change the dynamic for abuse survivors who have yet to come forward.

The story never focuses on membership trends and some of the changes in Scouting that critics link to the falling numbers.


Please respect our Commenting Policy