(without debate)

“Without debate, General Conference removed the UMC’s ban on the ordination of clergy who are “self-avowed practicing homosexuals”

The action of the United Methodist Church (UMC) to remove all anti-queer legislation from the Book of Discipline sparked a release of tears and pain in me. I had not expected this reversal so soon, if ever. My body and spirit were not prepared for it, nor for the intensity of my emotional response, sitting on a couch, reading the news on my phone. Having returned my clergy orders to the UMC in 2019, I thought I had done my grieving. I became less and less interested in the church’s politics. I would have told you that I was pretty much over it. Apparently not.

Love Prevails team in 2013, after one of first actions to disrupt the Connectional Table of the United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN. Front row, LR: Alison Wisneski, Mary Anne Balmer, Haven Herrin (Soulforce), Julie Todd, Sue Laurie; Back row: MaryLou Taylor, Amy DeLong, Wesley White, Brenda White. Photo taken at Edgehill UMC, Nashville, TN.

I was concerned about my queer friends who were at the quadrennial denominational meeting this year, knowing full well the violence they might face yet again in working to change the denomination’s anti-gay policies. I was paying attention. I had spent every year since attending my first of seven General Conferences and my ordination in 1996 fighting to change the hateful policies and practices of the church against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and queer folx. In the years 2012 to 2019, I was part of the direct action group Love Prevails. Unsatisfied with the old, tried, and tired niceness politics and practices of the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), this small and mighty group of warriors flew around the country to disrupt the leadership of the UMC at its highest levels – the Council of Bishops, Connectional Table, and denominational boards. Our primary targets were the liberal bishops and other bureaucrats who mouthed the words of inclusion but turned their power into the maintenance of the institution when it came to queer inclusion. I get it, institutional maintenance is their job. To travel and engage in those upper management circles for numerous years was to witness and experience some of the most malicious and morally bankrupt institutional violence towards queer folx imaginable. In those moments, it was often directed at us in the form of hate speech and engagement with law enforcement when we disrupted their church law and order.

When the votes came down last week to clear all that procedural hate out of the church’s formal polity, I experienced a confusing mix of sadness and relief, healing and sharp pain, like a knife being pulled back from a stab wound. This sense of relief was not pleasant, not celebratory, not joyful. For a moment, I actually felt sick. I could not make sense of the mixed emotion at the heart of what felt also like some kind of miracle. I processed some memories with Sue Laurie. She asked me what had a hold of me the most in my confusion. Through all of my scrolling on Facebook, what made me the angriest was seeing the bishops. The violence that I as a straight ally, and so many queer and gender non-confirming folx had witnessed and experienced at the hands of bishops, came roaring back to my consciousness. I was surprised by my disgust for them, people who, to be honest, I barely even know. To watch the perpetrators of such immense bureaucratic and ecclesiastical violence celebrate was the kind of hypocrisy that I spent 23 years holding in contempt. I thought I had let that contempt go, but I had not. I refuse to herald them for their leadership. To watch the perpetrators pray over the decision process, to join the sea of rainbow umbrellas in the post-decision celebrations made me want to vomit. I wanted to see them all laying on the dais in the plenary session, robed in sackcloth and ashes in repentance for the violence they literally presided over – the material, administrative procedures enacted to destroy the lives and ministries of queer people and some of their allies. The complaints. The trials. The “mediation” and “conflict resolution” sessions. The lies. The silence. The feigned powerlessness.  The annual conference plenaries. The clergy executive sessions. The impacts on physical and mental well-being. The ministries undermined. The sins of episcopal commission and the omissions of their consistent failures to lead prophetically. In service to the institution to maintain the order of the church. For this, I rebuke them.

I know that people are people, and people and institutions are complicated, but: Y’ALL. So many people’s lives were devastated because of bishops. In this moment I am only referring to the queer and trans lives they have damaged, much less the many other lives lived in resistance to euro-christian norms; the lives their patriarchal order has crushed through their Father God hierarchy.

What made me sicker in watching these episcopal minions celebrate is my sense that not one of them will ever be held accountable for their harm, active and passive, in 52 years of their morally injurious leadership on these matters of life and death. Love Prevails had a particular and up-close view of episcopal (in)action in the years we put ourselves in their literal faces. How many face-to-face conversations we had with liberal bishops who we pressured to take more active roles to actively and publicly advocate for queer folx in direct opposition to the denomination’s position, and they would not. The tables we sat at with them, listening to their endless rationalizations and denial of their role in the violence. “Did you not know that I said this thing in public once? I took a lot of shit for that.” “You have no idea what I have done for the closeted clergy in my conference.” “You have no idea what we have done behind closed doors.” Exactly. Bishops thought they were doing good to mitigate harm by using procedural maneuvers to avoid charges and endless, expensive trials that brought bad public relations to their doorsteps. They were stewards of violent, managerial policies and processes and rationalized what they did in the best interest of the institution and themselves. Evasions. Obfuscations. Backroom deals. Their justifications were always political and never theological, because of course none of this was ever justifiable theologically. Bishops failed to enact the fundamental tenet of Methodist life together: do no harm. They invisibilized the violence, attempting to bury harm and to coerce confidentiality. Many of these bishops have already retired and many of them soon will retire to their livable pensions. The material, physical, and psychological damage they have done will never be addressed in any significant way.

Amy DeLong has likened this all to an oil spill. The UMC is an oil tanker which ran aground in 1972 and has been senselessly, callously, capriciously spewing its heteronormative, transphobic poison into the world. With General Conference 2024, the active leak has been largely contained. What matters most, now, is what the church will do to clean up the profoundly devastating mess caused by that 52 years-long toxic spill. The theological and spiritual damage wrought is far-reaching, deep, and long-lived. Those harmed are legion.

To my knowledge the 2000 General Conference Act of Repentance for Racism and the 2012 Act of Repentance towards Indigenous Peoples has led to exactly no material or psychological reparations. If I missed the part about the United Methodist Church engaging in #LandBack, please correct me. If queer folx decide to move forward with a call for repentance and reparations, I would hope that they do not fail to work in intersectional cross-solidarity with all of the communities against whom the United Methodist Church and its predecessor denominations have wielded the euro-christian, racist, and genocidal domination of centuries.

“Without debate, General Conference removed the UMC’s ban on the ordination of clergy who are “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” “Without debate” said so much about what felt hollow in this victory. Wesley White helped me to sense how it felt more like a political decision than a theological commitment to liberation. It smelled like more episcopal backroom deals. It felt like the further invisibilizing of fifty-two years of violence. I had followed and celebrated the relative lack of acrimonious debate in the first week’s committee work to remove all of the old, hateful policies from the church’s policies and structures. Those legislative committees were where so much violence took place at General Conferences over the years, where the conservatives and liberals in the denomination verbally battled over the sinfulness of god’s queer children. I would not wish that kind of procedural and verbal harm on anyone. The fact that the conservative disaffiliation from the denomination over the last few years created a space this year for the denomination to emerge so relatively quickly and smoothly “without debate” only goes to show that “homosexuality” had been a wedge issue all along for the neoliberal white-right-wing agenda. These wedge issues continue to fuel white christian nationalism we see surging across the u.s. now. As a member of Love Prevails, whose confrontation with conservatives and bishops alike was a critical part of forcing conservatives to exit the denomination, without debate, I offer: you’re welcome. To all the warriors who in those hallways and conference rooms battled with body, mind, and soul to arrive at this turning point of change, I honor each and every one of you. At some point in the inevitable Act of Repentance for queer violence, I hope every single one of your names will be lifted in honor. So many leaders and faithful lives lost.

Love Prevails team after the special session of the General Conference in 2019 in St. Louis, MO. L-R: Laci Lee Adams, Tyler Schwaller, Laura Ralston, Wesley White, Will Green, Amy DeLong, Sue Laurie, Brenda White, Marla Marcum, Julie Todd, Ravi Roelfs

I am surprised that my body and spirit decided this anger at the bishops was what I needed to articulate for my own healing. I honestly would have wished to not have wasted my thoughts and my energy on a single United Methodist bishop for the rest of my life. I recognize that this is a visceral reaction and release of the emotions of witnessing and carrying a tremendous amount of violence over the years in solidarity with the movement for the full inclusion of queer folx in the denomination. I recognize that it is probably only one among a whole host of other truths that I am ready to name and release. I recognize that this truth, like all truths I hold, is partial. This is what I needed to speak into the air at this time to release the denomination which formed and held me. I am so grateful to the queer people who continued to stand in and see this fight through to this point. I thought I was over it. Your continued work has contributed so much to healing the generations before and the generations to come. It helps me to remember that our collective work for liberation is not in vain.