Acts of Repentance and Costly Discipleship

 On Thursday, April 27, the United Methodist News Service reported an “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples” by those attending the UM General Conference meeting in Tampa, Florida. 

Native American theologian, George Tinker, told almost a thousand delegates in this quadrennial meeting of the denomination’s top legislative assembly

“If United Methodists are serious about repenting for past injustices against native peoples, they must prepare for a long and painful journey.”

As he stood alone on the stage holding a traditional feather fan, he told stories of Native Americans being hurt in the name of Christianity.

One particular dark spot in United Methodist history is the Sand Creek Massacre. A Methodist pastor was ordered by a Methodist governor to kill more than 160 mostly women, children and elderly at Sand Creek. The massacre occurred a month after the Native Americans surrendered. “That is the history we have to deal with,” Tinker said, “Not just Sand Creek, but Christian conquest of North America.”

Representatives of the United Methodist Council of Bishops shared the council’s own statement of sorrow and commitment to repentance.

“We are here to commit ourselves to addressing the wrong and asking for the forgiveness of those who have been wronged by failing them so profoundly.”

There is much for those who are living today to learn about this sorrowful history of injustice. If this “act of repentance” generates a new honesty and broader awareness, then in my view, the time of the General Conference was well spent.

I found it ironic that the “act of repentance” followed two days after a time of “holy conferencing” [Methodist jargon for a serious and respectful conversation] about policies of the UMC on homosexuality. Those policies may be summarized:

“The United Methodist Church officially affirms the sacred worth of every person, regardless of sexual orientation. The denomination condemns homosexuality as incompatible with Christian teaching, and it forbids the ordination of self-avowed practicing homosexuals and the performance of same-gender unions by its clergy and in its churches.”

According to many who participated, the “conferencing” was anything but “holy.” Advocates for equal rights without regard for sexual orientation were sometimes bullied, scorned, and not given time to speak.

A gay delegate from New Jersey, Mark Miller, was later given the privilege of the assembly floor and said,

“The need for authentic conversation about human sexuality is so important. However, the process that we attempted yesterday failed us. It failed because of our lack of leadership and oversight, because the process did not respect people and didn’t plan for the care of those who were hurt by the process.”

The next night on April 26, as delegates left the closing worship, they had to walk between rows of demonstrators who quietly lined the hall and steps outside the assembly area in the Tampa Convention Center. One held up a chain with 40 links, one for each year since 1972 when the General Conference began adopting policies that discriminate against gays and lesbians.

After most of the delegates had left, the demonstrators began singing softly,

“We are gentle, angry people, and we are singing, singing for our lives.”

Maybe it was just me when I read about it, but maybe there were others who juxtaposed the “act of repentance” for what was done to Native Americans with the un-“holy conferencing” about the discrimination against gays and lesbians. Perhaps they also wondered how many years would pass before a similar “act of repentance” at General Conference would ask forgiveness for this discrimination.

Why did it take so many years to have this “act of repentance” for what was done to Native Americans? It seems inconceivable, but is it possible that too many people called Methodist over the years didn’t acknowledge the wrongs done to Native Americans by people of their tradition?

Why did it take so many years to have an “act of repentance” for this institution’s toleration of the institution of slavery and the segregation that followed it?

Has there yet been an “act of repentance” for what state laws against inter-racial marriage did to the families of such marriages?

The great Italian astronomer, mathematician, and physicist, Galileo (1564-1642) was born just twenty-one years after the death of Copernicus. It was through his persistent investigation of the natural laws that he laid the foundations for modern experimental science. But that was not all. What he saw through his telescopes – he was the real inventor of them – plus his mathematical calculations led him to conclude that Copernicus was right: the earth is not the center of the universe.

  

For that scientific conclusion, which was in conflict with the Church's worldview, Galileo’s writings were condemned and he was put under house arrest for the rest of his life in a vain attempt to prevent the spread of his dangerous ideas.

The Roman Catholic Church took over three hundred and fifty years to rescind the action against Galileo by the Inquisition taken in 1633.

Will it be that long before an “act of repentance” for the years of discrimination against gays, lesbians, and trans-gender people is solemnly conducted at a United Methodist General Conference?

From the beginning, Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer not only spoke loudly against Hitler’s rule, but in April of 1933, Bonhoeffer raised the first and virtually only voice at the time for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews. He declared that the church must not simply "bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam a stick into the spokes of the wheel itself.”

To have an “act of repentance” so long after the sin/crime that there is no real possibility of making things right with those wronged is what Bonhoeffer might have called “cheap grace.” Bandaging the wounds of victims hurt by the wheel of injustice is essential, but Bonhoeffer reminds us that there comes a time to “jam a stick into the spokes of the wheel itself.” That, he might say, is “costly discipleship;” and Bonhoeffer would know. Where is that voice at the General Conference?

- Milo Thornberry

How Does a Lame Duck Walk?

 Yes, I know; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as are those acts that help overcome the past by adding something better.

In the early hours of December 24, 2009, the Senate passed the health care reform bill. In the eye of this beholder, it was a wonderful Christmas gift. Republicans, however, thought its passage meant that the Grinch had stolen Christmas; not one voted for it. Some liberal Democrats thought the same thing for entirely different reasons. There was much to dislike from both perspectives, including mine, but I believed that getting this much was a monumental achievement and portended adding something better to a past that had repeatedly failed to pass any kind of health care reform.

Three months later House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got the House to pass the bill on March 21 and two days after that President Obama signed it into law. In spite of that monumental victory, the year 2010 didn’t look like a banner year for the Democrats, one of which I am because their legislative vision for the country seems more in sync with mine. Even before the November election, I went into a blue funk and for the first time in years didn’t want to watch or read the news. The election confirmed my fears. Except for a few races where deep corporate pockets, conveniently out of public sight, couldn’t overcome a semblance of common sense, the electorate went on an anti-Democrat binge. Republicans didn’t see it that way; most of them thought it citizen retribution for Democratic spending and supporting wrong causes (anything the Chamber of Commerce didn’t like).

 And then came the six week lame duck session of Congress that was expected to reflect a weakened President and Democratic Party. I don’t purport to know how it happened. I’m hoping some of you will help me understand. Within a matter of weeks, significant legislation passed and was enacted into law. Perry Bacon of the Washington Post reported it this way:
  

On Wednesday [December 22], Obama signed into law the repeal of the military's ban on openly gay service members, and the Senate approved a new nuclear treaty with Russia that the president had declared a top priority.

Those accomplishments come after Obama successfully negotiated a free-trade agreement with South Korea, reached a deal with Republicans that extended unemployment benefits and prevented a tax hike for millions of Americans and signed a bill that will make school lunches healthier.


This blitz of bill signings completes a dramatic first two years for the nation's first black president that included the enactment of arguably the most major liberal policies since the Johnson administration but also the Democrats' biggest loss of House seats in 72 years…


"With the lame duck, the 111th Congress may even surpass the 89th [of President Lyndon Johnson] in terms of accomplishments," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute. 

The conspiracist within me wondered if the log jam broke because of Obama’s deal with the Republicans on the tax bill. While I was more reconciled to its passage than its defeat and wanted to support my President, I cheered for the two Democratic senators from Oregon who voted against it. Especially in congressional actions, overcoming the past with something better is rarely an unambiguous good.

There was no ambivalence in my endorsement of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I had been disappointed that Obama had not found a way to end this antiquated policy so far in his first two years, and I had given up hope that this Congress would end it. But it happened, and we didn’t have to wait for the courts to decide the matter as we did with racial segregation and laws banning interracial marriage. President Truman’s executive action in 1948  ended racial segregation in the military. As Truman said “Get over it!” to a protesting military, so I would say to those who object today. And to the United Methodist Church whose laws still maintain that homosexual acts are sinful and that gays are unworthy to be ordained ministers, I say “Stop the hypocrisy and change the law!”

Looking at the list of the lame duck accomplishments, Ezra Klein said that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham didn’t have it quite right when he said, "Harry Reid has eaten our lunch."

It was the Republicans. DADT repeal passed because Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Scott Brown voted with the Democrats. The tax deal went through because a host of Republicans voted with the Democrats. Same for START, the food-safety bill and the DoD authorization. If the bill helping 9/11 responders get medical benefits passes, that too will be because of Republican support.

And after it seemed that all they could say was “No!” why did these Republicans help this lame duck walk? After ruminating, Klein said this:

The answer, I think, is that there are plenty of Senate Republicans who aren't too comfortable with the class of conservatives who got elected in 2010. These legislators knew they had to stick with McConnell before the election, as you can't win back the majority by handing the president lots of legislative accomplishments. But now that the election was over, the bills that had piled up were, in many cases, good bills, and if they didn't pass now, it wasn't clear that they'd be able to pass later.

The incumbent -- and the outgoing -- Republicans know that the fact that Republicans will have more power in 2011 doesn't necessarily mean that they'll use that power to pass sensible legislation. So those of them who wanted to pass sensible legislation decided to get it all done now, even if that meant handing Reid and Obama a slew of apparent victories in the lame-duck session.

I wonder! In the meantime, while disappointed that the Dream act didn’t get passed, I think the chances for adding something better to the present is greater because of the of these victories. What do you think?

- Milo