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A UMNS Report
By Heather Hahn*
7:00 P.M. ET Aug. 24, 2012
Bishop Melvin Talbert (right) prays with a delegate during evening
worship at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Fla. A
UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
More than 70 United Methodist clergy and lay people in the United
States have sent an open letter to the Council of Bishops accusing
retired Bishop Melvin G. Talbert of encouraging disobedience to the
denomination’s stance on homosexuality.
Specifically, the group’s letter
takes issue with Talbert’s May 4 remarks at a United Methodist
gathering outside General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking
body. The document also criticizes Talbert’s June 16 sermon at the ordination service of the California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference, in which he reiterated his earlier remarks.
Talbert said Aug. 24 that he stands by his statements. “General
Conference made its decision in Tampa,” he said. “I was there. I heard
the debate, and in spite of that, I made my decision on May 4, and I
stand by that.”
The letter urges the bishops when they next meet to “publicly
censure” Talbert. It also asks the executive committee of the Council
of Bishops to file a formal complaint against Talbert.
The letter requests the bishop be charged with violating his
responsibility to uphold church law, disseminating doctrine contrary to
the standards of The United Methodist Church and engaging in behavior
that undermines another pastor’s ministry.
“The derogatory rules and restrictions in the Book of Discipline are
immoral and unjust and no longer deserve our loyalty and obedience,”
Talbert said in May at the Love Your Neighbor Tabernacle outside
General Conference. “Thus the time has come for those of us who are
faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ to do what is required of us… .
The time has come to join in an act of biblical obedience.”
Talbert called on the more than 1,100 clergy who signed pledges to officiate at same-sex unions to “stand firm.”
The Book of Discipline,
the denomination’s law book, says the practice of homosexuality is
“incompatible with Christian teaching.” The book prohibits United
Methodist churches from hosting and clergy from officiating at
“ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions.”
The 2012 General Conference, when it met April 24-May 4 in Tampa, Fla., rejected efforts to change that language, including a proposal to say the church was in disagreement about homosexuality.
“We are deeply concerned that Bishop Talbert has undercut that very
discipline and order, by encouraging dissension, disunity and
disobedience, and advocating anarchy and chaos in response to the
actions of the 2012 General Conference, taken after focused prayer,
study, and holy conferencing,” the group’s letter said.
Talbert, a veteran of the U.S. civil rights movement to eliminate Jim
Crow laws, said he is not concerned with the possible negative reaction
of other clergy.
“My only concern is doing what is right and just in the sight of
God,” he said. “That’s simply the way I take it. I think the day has
come for us to stop hiding behind an unjust law and do what is right.”
How letter came to be
Retired Bishop Melvin G. Talbert (right) joined 14 other United
Methodist bishops at a gathering on May 4 outside the 2012 United
Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Fla. The gathering was organized
by groups that want to see the church change its stance on
homosexuality.
A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.
View in Photo Gallery
Organizers mailed their letter of complaint to the denomination’s active and retired bishops on July 19, at the time when U.S jurisdictional conferences were gathered to elect 11 new bishops.
After a month with no formal response from the Council of Bishops,
the group decided to make its letter public Aug. 24, said the Rev.
Thomas Lambrecht, one of the organizers. He is the vice president and
general manager of the unofficial evangelical caucus Good News.
“We were waiting for the council or any of the bishops really to
step forward and say that this was not appropriate, and there has been a
deafening silence from the Council of Bishops,” Lambrecht said.
“As a result of that, some of us felt like we needed to get this out
in the public arena and make it clear that the actions Bishop Talbert
is advocating are contrary to United Methodist doctrine and
discipline.”
The Rev. Tom Harrison, pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church in
Tulsa, Okla., and another organizer, said he wants the Council
of Bishops to ensure all clergy — including bishops — uphold their
covenant to follow church law.
“We just want to know: Do we or do we not have to adhere to our Book
of Discipline?” he said. “If everybody gets to pick and choose based
on conviction and not on the response of General Conference, then we
have total chaos.”
Harrison later added that his large congregation expects to pay more
than $1 million in church apportionments this year. “If you can pick
and choose what you want to do, then we might say, ‘Hey, we don’t want
to pay apportionments.’ What authority does anybody have to come after
us? ‘No, you must because that’s the covenant that binds us together.’ ”
Many of those who signed the letter against Talbert also were
organizers of the FaithfulUMC petitions, which in September 2011 urged the Council of Bishops to respond to clergy’s pledges to officiate at same-sex unions.
In response, the council released a statement after its November 2011 meeting declaring the bishops would “uphold the Book of Discipline as established by the General Conference.”
Reaction of other bishops
The letter against Talbert also noted that 14 other active and
retired bishops stood beside Talbert as he made his remarks on May 4 at
the Love Your Neighbor Tabernacle. Groups that have sought to change
the denomination’s stance on homosexuality set up the tabernacle.
“We have corresponded with all the bishops who stood with Bishop
Talbert and received replies from most of them. Some did not know ahead
of time what Bishop Talbert was going to say and do not support his
call for disobedience,” the letter said. “Others did know and do
support that call. Without a public statement clarifying where those
bishops stand, however, it appears to our church that all were
supportive.”
Los Angeles Area Bishop Mary Ann Swenson, who leads the
California-Pacific Conference, was among the bishops who were there.
She said that at the ordination service that followed, Talbert’s sermon
was well-received.
“He really is making a call for scriptural obedience and faithful
witness,” said Swenson, who will retire Sept.1 and become the
ecumenical officer for the Council of Bishops. “We had further
conversations about that at the Western Jurisdictional Conference.”
The U.S. Western Jurisdiction, which encompasses much of the western United States as well as Alaska and Hawaii, has asked Talbert to oversee a grassroots movement
that challenges bishops and other clergy, laity and local churches and
ministry settings to operate as if the statement printed in the
denomination’s law book — Paragraph 161F — “does not exist.”
San Francisco Area Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr., president-elect of
the Council of Bishops, was also among the bishops standing next to
Talbert when he made his remarks in Tampa.
He had no prior knowledge of what Talbert would say, Brown wrote in a letter to leaders of Good News and the Confessing Movement, another evangelical caucus within The United Methodist Church.
“I will administer all disciplinary processes with integrity and
fairness in the future, as I have in the past,” his June 15 letter
said. “I also will act consistent with my understanding of scripture and
in the spirit of our Social Principles which affirm, ‘That all persons
are individuals of sacred worth created in the image of God.’”
Individual bishops are not of like mind on the topic of homosexuality.
However, the “Council of Bishops is committed to lead the church as
we seek to live in the unity, which is given to us in Christ,”
Germany’s Bishop Rosemarie Wenner, Council of Bishops president, said
on Aug. 24.
“We — the bishops of the church — uphold the Discipline of
the church. We give pastoral care and we offer theological teaching to
all the people in our connection. We connect with various groups in our
church, inviting them to talk with each other so that we are able to
continue the journey together even in our struggles to live with the
differences in the questions around human sexuality.
“And we engage in robust conversation with each other, modeling that
we — even though divided on the question whether or not the Book of
Discipline should be changed so that same-sex marriages should be
possible where the state law allows to do so — are united in Christ,
and one-minded in responding to the call of making disciples for the
transformation of the world.”
She added that the disciplinary responsibility for overseeing
bishops lies within the U.S. jurisdictions and the central conferences
in Africa, the Philippines and Europe.
“At the council meetings, we engage with each other in theological
reflection on many challenging questions, including the unity of the
church,” she said.
The Council of Bishops will next meet as a body the first week of November.
*Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service.
News media contact: Heather Hahn, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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