Antioch exits National Council of Churches

Summer is the season for church conventions that talk about hot issues.

Last week's 47th convention of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America passed a resolution that addressed both sexuality and the Iraqi war. But this time the lofty words led to an historic change.

The assembly voted to oppose "divisive and dangerous" positions taken by "left-wing" and "right-wing" groups. To be specific, it rejected "support for same-sex marriage, support for abortion, support for ordination of women to Holy Orders, support for the concept of war that is 'pre-emptive' or 'justifiable' and the labeling of other faiths and their leaders with hateful terminology."

The archdiocese – a blend of Arab-Americans and many converts – vowed to avoid groups that "promulgate these extreme positions" and renewed its commitment to seek Orthodox unity in North America.

Then the delegates cheered as Metropolitan Philip Saliba announced his decision to withdraw from the National Council of Churches USA.

The archdiocese joined the old Federated Council of Churches in the 1940s and had been active in the ecumenical movement ever since, said Father Olof Scott, of the church's interfaith relations office. But recent decades have been tough.

The Orthodox believe "we're getting further and further away from the primary goal of looking to bring Christianity back into a unified fold," he told AncientFaithRadio.com. Now, the "churches of the mainline Protestant world really don't want to hear our message. It is with that frustration that we felt that we can put our efforts to better use elsewhere."

The national council has not responded to the departure of one of its 36 churches, said the Rev. Leslie Thune, its spokesperson in Washington. General Secretary Bob Edgar – a former Democratic congressman – is currently out of the office, but has promised to meet with Metropolitan Philip as soon as possible to discuss his concerns.

"We did not even know that this was in the works," said Thune.

However, she noted the council's oft-repeated stance that it does not take stands on divisive doctrinal issues, since many of its member churches have clashing beliefs on such matters.

Nevertheless, Scott said the Antiochian archdiocese quit the council, in large part, because of what he called an "almost a politicized agenda" under Edgar – with a strong emphasis on sexual liberation and opposition to conservative Christianity.

A turning point came in 2000 when Edgar removed his signature from "A Christian Declaration on Marriage," a statement signed by representatives of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals. The text defined marriage as between man and a woman.

After speaking at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Breakfast during an NCC general assembly, Edgar issued an apology and affirmed his support for same-sex unions. He told Presbyterian News Service: "I support marriage, and I support more than marriage the love between two people, and I don't differentiate whether it is between a man and a woman or a woman and a woman or a man and a man or whatever. We need fidelity and care in relationships."

There have been many signs of tension. Two years ago, the Russian Orthodox Church cut all ties with the U.S. Episcopal Church following the consecration of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Russian Patriarch Alexy II recently said he was worried about the leadership role that churches offering a "free interpretation" of sexual morality hold in the World Council of Churches.

Last month, the Orthodox Church in America – which has Russian roots – studied a document that said the "most advisable course" for its ecumenical work "would be eventually to withdraw from the NCC and the WCC." After all, said this "Orthodox Relations" text, there are more Protestant and Pentecostal Christians outside of these councils than there are inside and neither includes the Roman Catholic Church.

The Antiochian archdiocese agrees. Decades ago, said Scott, Orthodoxy needed a seat in the National Council of Churches in order to "put a face" on its often mysterious rites and parishes. But now the momentum is toward work with more conservative believers.

"We don't need the NCC," he said, "for the identity of Orthodoxy in the new world. People know who we are. We are strong. We are vibrant. We are growing."

Reagan: Messiah? Antichrist? Normal mainliner?

As a Baptist preacher's kid who grew up in Texas in the 1970s, I had plenty of reasons to reject Ronald Reagan.

That may sound strange, since the Southern Baptist Convention and the Republican Party that Reagan built now appear to be wedded at the hip. But people tend to forget that Jimmy Carter really is a Baptist. So are Al Gore, the Rev. Bill Moyers and Britney Spears, while we're at it.

People also forget that Reagan was not a Southern Baptist or even what most would call an evangelical. He grew up in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in the Illinois heartland of mainline Protestantism.

Still, I believe it's safe to say that America's deep political divisions on moral issues are the result of three cultural earthquakes – Woodstock, Roe vs. Wade and the Reagan revolution.

These events shaped modern Democrats as well as Republicans. They shaped religious conservatives and the growing bloc some researchers are calling the "anti-evangelical voters." And these events created or deepened cracks in most religious sanctuaries that remain today and have, if anything, only gotten worse.

Take the Southern Baptists. I believe the rise of Reagan split that massive flock of 16-million-plus believers just as much, if not more, than doctrinal debates about "biblical inerrancy."

Millions of Southern Baptists saw Reagan as a near messiah. For Southern Baptist conservatives, Reagan offered hope that the cultural revolution of the Woodstock-Roe era might in some way be overturned. They were wrong, of course.

Nevertheless, these conservative Baptists lost their historic fear of politics and jumped into the public square. But while the conservative grown-ups created the Religious Right, their children were in their multi-media bedrooms watching HBO and MTV.

The parents thought they could vote in the kingdom, but things didn't work out that way. What they got instead was "I Love the '80s."

There were some Southern Baptists who saw Reagan as the Antichrist.

I saw this close up. I had a friend in graduate school who literally lost his moderate Southern Baptist faith because of the election of Reagan. How could he believe in a just and loving God, if a Reagan could be elected president?

After all, the Reagan loyalists hated the really cool movies and they liked the really bad movies. They didn't read the proper books and magazines or laugh at the hip comics. And Reagan was embraced by all of those "fundamentalists" who wanted to ruin the Southern Baptist Convention, which they believed was poised to achieve mainline Protestant maturity.

Most of all, they believed that Reagan was dumb. And if Reagan was dumb, that meant that hating Reagan was smart. Everyone who was smart agreed. If you didn't agree, then you were dumb.

So defeating Reagan was part of voting in a smarter, more nuanced kingdom.

What these anti-Reagan Baptists and new evangelicals really needed was a progressive, smart, complex Southern Baptist in the White House – someone like Bill Clinton. That would be perfect. But things didn't work out precisely as they imagined, either. They got "Sex & the City."

Many of them liked it. Many didn't, but the alternative was worse. The alternative was being labeled a religious conservative, the kind of person who liked Reagan.

There seemed to be no other option, no middle ground.

But perhaps Reagan wasn't a messiah or the Antichrist. What if he was just a normal mainline Protestant churchman from the 1950s?

Maybe he had good intentions and he did his best. Maybe he accomplished many things on the global level and didn't do so much on the cultural level. Maybe his beliefs were sincere, but not very specific. Maybe he made some people feel good and others feel bad. Maybe his greatest domestic political legacy is the Religious Right and the Religious Left.

But questions remain. Was Reagan truly a cultural and moral conservative? Did he cause the "pew gap" the researchers find in all the polls of modern voters? Could Reagan, if he had really tried, overturn the culture of Woodstock and Roe? Could he have helped Americans do a better job of focusing on their families? I have my doubts.

There are things that politicians cannot do.

It's a culture thing. It's a moral thing. It's a faith thing.

United Methodists do the math

From coast to coast, United Methodists are doing the math.

America's third-largest flock just survived another quadrennial General Conference rocked by media-friendly fighting over sex. Now it's time to dissect the numbers.

Delegates voted 570-334 to affirm the historic doctrines of the Christian faith.

Efforts to back laws defining "marriage as the union of one man and one woman" passed on a 624-184 vote. Same-sex union rites fell – 756-159. Should the church delete its "faithfulness in marriage and celibacy in singleness" standard for clergy? Delegates voted 806-95 to say "no."

The big news was a 579-376 vote against weakening the Book of Discipline's law that self-avowed, practicing homosexuals cannot be clergy because homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching." Delegates also rejected a resolution from gay-rights supporters that said: "We recognize that Christians disagree on the compatibility of homosexual practice with Christian teaching." That vote was 527-423.

After three decades of pain, it seemed the numbers were stacking up for United Methodist conservatives, whose churches are thriving in the American Sunbelt and the Third World.

But a final plot twist remained in Pittsburgh. A key leader caused fireworks by saying it's time to end the war over the Bible and sex – by separating the armies.

"Our culture alone confronts us with more challenges than we can humanly speaking confront and challenge. That struggle, combined with the continuous struggle in the church, is more than we can bear. Our people, who have been faithful and patient, should not have to continue to endure our endless conflict," said the Rev. William Hinson, retired pastor of the 12,000-member First United Methodist Church of Houston, at a breakfast for conservatives.

"I believe the time has come when we must begin to explore an amicable and just separation that will free us both from our cycle of pain and conflict. Such a just separation will protect the property rights of churches and the pension rights of clergy. It will also free us to reclaim our high calling and to fulfill our mission in the world."

To understand the roots of this move – which parallels divisions looming in other oldline Protestant churches – it helps to dig a little deeper into the United Methodist numbers.

Hinson is president of the "Confessing Movement," with 1,400 churches with 650,000 members. Gay-rights supporters have a Reconciling Ministries Network of 192 churches, with 17,000 members.

But there are 35,000 congregations in all, with 8.3 million members. Sickened by decades of decline – membership was 11 million in 1970 – the last thing Methodists in the institutional middle wanted to hear was the word "schism." Before the conference closed, delegates linked hands, sang a hymn and passed a symbolic call for unity, 869 to 41.

And there was another number that deserved study. General Conference voted by a narrow 455-445 to clarify which Discipline violations can lead to a trial. The list of chargeable offenses now includes failing to be "celibate in singleness or being unfaithful in a heterosexual marriage; being a self-avowed practicing homosexual; conducting ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions or performing same-sex wedding ceremonies."

But leaders on both sides noted that about 20 percent of the delegates this year came from Africa, Asia and Latin America – where churches are more conservative. Efforts to enforce the Discipline's teachings might fall short, if left to delegates from North American churches. United Methodist progressives also continue to dominate the church's bureaucracies and seminaries.

So be it, said theologian Thomas Oden, a former United Methodist liberal who now is a conservative strategist. The key during the next four years is for local church leaders to weigh options for how to end the national warfare over the Bible and sex.

"We don't particularly care about the powers that be. What we care about is the doctrine and the Discipline in our church," he said. "That's were our focus is and that's where it will stay. ... But the actual enforcement of those teachings remains a problem for us, as it is for most Protestant churches today.

"We know that we will be struggling with that issue for decades. That's the question: We know what our church teaches, but do we have the will to enforce it?"

Life in the Methodist Minefield

The Rev. Julian Rush watched the headlines as 13 United Methodist pastors in the Pacific Northwest judged the fate of one of their colleagues.

Few, if any, facts were in dispute. The Rev. Karen Dammann was living openly in a lesbian relationship and leveled with her superiors. And everyone knew, after a generation of bitter strife, that their Book of Discipline banned "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" from ministry, because gay sex is "incompatible with Christian teachings."

Rush wasn't surprised by the trial and he wasn't surprised by the verdict – not guilty.

After all, he survived a similar ecclesiastical minefield two decades ago in Colorado.

"What surprised me was the way the news reports brought it all back," said Rush, 67, who rocked the whole United Methodist Church when he left the closet in 1981. "It was spooky, like a flashback. ... I remembered that whole feeling of powerlessness and total vulnerability.

"I think that's probably a good thing. No matter how much progress we've made, we need to be reminded that things aren't settled yet."

Rush eventually retired with his clergy credentials intact. In the mid-1980s, his peers in the Rocky Mountain region twice ruled that there was "insufficient evidence" to bring the AIDS activist and former youth pastor to trial. After all, church law focused on "self-avowed practicing" homosexuals and Rush simply declined to answer questions about his sex life.

"I remember my lawyer saying, 'Make them prove it,' " said Rush, whose easy-going manner still betrays his Mississippi roots. "What were they going to do, hire a private investigator? No one wanted to do such an unseemly thing."

The Dammann jury found a similar technicality. While the Discipline says "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings," the jury ruled that it never formally, legally, makes a "declaration" of this. But the jury did find this declarative statement: "Inclusiveness means openness, acceptance, and support that enables all persons to participate in the life of the Church, the community and the world. Thus, inclusiveness denies every semblance of discrimination.''

Based on decades of experience, Rush knows what will happen next. Furious conservatives will, on April 27, arrive at the two-week national United Methodist General Conference "with their nostrils flared and breathing fire," he said. At the same time, the confidence of the church's progressive establishment will "move up a notch or two" after a much-publicized victory. Both sides will go to Pittsburgh "with their guns loaded," he said.

The Internet is buzzing with drafts of resolutions to fix the Discipline and to force the bishops to get their flocks under control. Leaders on both sides acknowledge that the evangelical, growing churches of the heartland and Bible Belt hold a clear majority. Some of their leaders will call for repentance and reform in the Pacific Northwest.

"Fact is ... we don't need anything more in the Book of Discipline. We just need folks who are willing to abide by it or enforce it," said the Rev. James V. Heidinger II, president of the Good News renewal movement. "We could tweak and tighten, but unless folks are willing to abide by the will of General Conference, they will always find some words to parse or interpret differently."

Strangely enough, Rush basically agrees with this legal opinion. Laws cannot hide the fact that the United Methodist Church contains two radically different approaches to the faith, he said.

Traditionalists believe there is an "established," "infallible" and "permanent core of doctrine that people have to believe if they are going to be Christians," said Rush. But the "liberal side of the church sees itself as open and expansive and its doctrine, quite frankly, is not as well defined. It sees faith as a kind of process and it is constantly changing. ...

"One side knows how to lay down the law and the other side knows how to emote."

But the infighting will continue, said Rush, because everyone is afraid to push the scary button labeled "schism." That would be financially devastating.

"Everyone dances around that button," he said. "They really aren't trying to be clear and specific. They have to keep the Discipline vague enough to keep everyone in the tent. You end up with a kind of spiritual schizophrenia, but it holds things together."

Boomer bishops on the rise

Some of the lessons Father Kevin Martin learned in seminary have faded with time, but he remembers when the future Episcopal priests were taken to see Catherine Deneuve play a Paris prostitute in the soft-porn "Belle de Jour."

The late 1960s were heady times at Yale University's Berkeley Divinity School, he said. The sexual revolution inspired people in clerical collars to do things that, today, would turn a sexual-harassment attorney into a pillar of salt.

"It was the spirit of the day," said Martin, who leads a renewal group called Vital Church Ministries near Dallas. "We were supposed to be broadening our theological horizons and getting in touch with our feelings and all that.

Pulpits, pews and CEOs

Anybody who knows anything about religion knows that people in pulpits have a different view of the world than people in pews.

Years of data and front-line reports have yielded two clich? The first is that most ministers in the old mainline Protestant churches are more liberal on matters of doctrine and morality than their people. And the second is that most evangelical and fundamentalist pastors are more conservative than their people.

"There's actually a lot of truth in both of those, especially if you fine-tune the second one," said Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research (www.ellisonresearch.com) in Phoenix. "It's probably more accurate to say that most evangelical pastors are more conservative than the lives their people are living. ...

"But any way you look at it, there is a gap between the pulpits and the pews. What fewer people seem to realize is that there is an even bigger gap between pastors and the people who are leading their national churches."

Thus, Sellers and his team recently raised eyebrows with data reporting that 40 percent of Protestant pastors say some of their beliefs clash with official positions taken by their national denominations or conventions. Theologically, 19 percent say they are more liberal and 23 percent say they are more conservative, while 59 percent mesh with their leaders.Politically, 16 percent of the pastors say they are more liberal and 27 percent more conservative than their national churches.

This 50-state survey was not large enough, said Sellers, to provide individual results for all of America's Protestant flocks.

But there were glimpses of life in some of the trenches. For example, United Methodist pastors were the most likely to clash with their leaders. Only 33 percent felt their theological positions matched the hierarchy, with 25 percent saying they are more liberal than the denomination and 42 percent saying they are more conservative. A mere 29 percent felt their political beliefs matched stances taken by the national church.

The survey raised far more questions than it answered. One reason is that most of the labels that have defined Protestantism in America are becoming increasingly blurry. Clergy simply do not know what "conservative," "liberal," "evangelical," "charismatic," "traditional" and even the newer term "seeker-friendly" mean anymore.

"Things are too complex out there," said Sellers. "Even when you try to define the basics words like 'evangelical' or 'mainline' – everything breaks down. Just to give one example, there are many conservative, evangelical pastors out there in the Episcopal Church, even though that seems to make no sense whatsoever when you look at the national church."

The bottom line: A sign in a church's front yard is no longer a dependable indicator of what is happening inside the doors.

Listening to a few sermons may not even do the trick, since many pastors seem to be using highly personal dictionaries. The survey found "seeker-friendly" Lutherans, "charismatic" mainline Presbyterians, a few Southern Baptists who do gay union rites and many other examples of clergy and their churches that refuse to fit into familiar boxes.

Nevertheless, many clich?did ring true. Conservatives preach longer than liberals. Older, smaller congregations are more devoted to traditional hymnody than younger, larger congregations. Bible Belt pastors like religious television more than their Frost Belt counterparts. Clergy in the National Association of Evangelicals are twice as likely to vote Republican as clergy in the National Council of Churches.

But the overall impression left by the data, said Sellers, is one of diversity. This is especially true among mainline Protestants, where hot issues – most linked to marriage and sex – are dividing clergy into warring camps of painfully similar sizes. This is making life brutal for national-church leaders.

"It's like in a large corporation, where the CEO is surrounded by people who share that vision," said Sellers. "Then the further you go down the food scale the more diversity you're going to find. By the time you reach the mailroom, people are going to have all kinds of opinions about what the CEO is saying.

"Precisely the same thing is happening today in all of these national denominations. No one is sure what the vision is and what all the words mean."