Who owns church property? – an institutional response… July 9, 2008
Posted by Mike Weaver in Uncategorized.add a comment
Comments by Virginia UMC Bishop Charlene Kammerer
July 7, 2008
On June 27, 2008, the Circuit Court of Fairfax County declared constitutional – as applied to the case before it – a Virginia statute which gives ownership of church property to breakaway congregations of a church denomination, which for years had held the property in trust for the purpose of worship within the denomination, according to denominational doctrine. The statute, known as “the Division Statute,” was enacted by the Virginia legislature only a few years after the end of the Civil War, and was used then as a vehicle for seizing church property by local churches separating from their denominations, in an era of disputes within denominational churches over issues including pro-slavery and anti-slavery doctrinal positions.
The Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is very disappointed and deeply troubled by this decision of the Virginia Circuit Court. We believe, as we argued in an amicus curiae (”friend of the court”) brief to the Court, that the Virginia Division Statute is in direct violation of the First Amendment. We believe that the Virginia state government – through its legislature and its courts – has unconstitutionally inserted itself into the polity and doctrine of the Episcopal Church, and entangled itself in the process of discernment and discipline of that church.
In the current case, a majority of the members of 11 congregations of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia had voted to separate themselves from the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America (”Episcopal Church”) – with whom the churches had been associated for decades, or in some cases for centuries – and to become member churches of a different church, namely, the Anglican Church in Nigeria. The Court had previously held that the Division Statute would allow these separating local congregations in Virginia to retain the church’s property, thereby ignoring explicit language in the Canons of the Episcopal Church, which provides that all church property of any local congregation of the Episcopal Church in America shall be held in trust, for purposes of worship in the faith of the Episcopal Church.
The Virginia Annual Conference strongly believes that theological disagreements within any denomination should be resolved according to the polity and discipline of the denomination itself, and not by the Court’s imposition of itself as arbiter of those disagreements, or by civil legislative mandate. This is true especially where such intrusion by the state courts and legislature permits the Court effectively to nullify the doctrine and discipline of a religious denomination, under which churches have been acting in agreement for years. Such a role by the state government and secular courts is inappropriate, and offends the First Amendment principles of separation of church and state which have been central to the religious freedom of Americans since the founding of our nation.
As this case goes forward, we pray that the Courts of Virginia, and other courts throughout this country, will recognize and affirm these fundamental First Amendment principles, and refrain from intruding upon matters of church organization, faith, and doctrine.
Charlene P. Kammerer
Resident Bishop Virginia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church
W. Clark Williams, Jr.
Chancellor Virginia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church
Jesus, forgive my cussin’… or not September 11, 2007
Posted by Mike Weaver in Discipleship, Mission.add a comment
I must admit that I sometimes have to watch my language. I do have a tendency to spew out a “dirty word” from time to time, though not with the explicitness nor frequency I seem to encounter on the streets or subway system of DC, where the F*bomb sometimes seems to proliferate from the mouths of people who don’t seem to recognize the violation.
Ironically, in my career as a pilot, an occasional slip-of-the-tongue by one of my more colorful colleagues was often followed by a sincere apology, as if his words were an offense to my well-known religious sensibilities. While I never wore my faith on my sleeve, neither did I hide my beliefs or the lifestyle choices which accompanied them. Nonetheless, my more sensitive fellow pilots reckoned that my “Christian” ears were not fit to hear the occasional blasphemy uttered by accident.
The unfortunate myth that surrounds my colleagues’ concern for my sensitive ears is that Christians are “nice” people who “do not cuss, or chew, or go out with girls who do.” In the minds of many non-Christians (and some believers), niceness has come to represent the essence of Christianity. As Rodney Clapp recounts in his book “Peculiar People,” he was raised to believe that Christians are those folks who are “nice to the postman.” Lots of Christians reinforce that image of niceness each Sunday as they faithfully dress in their Sunday best – and tell their children to behave because they’re “in church.” Niceness is actually a lot easier than the gospel alternative.
I suspect that the world, and the deceiver, are quite content for us to keep on being “nice.” Niceness, it turns out, might be the first-cousin of harmlessness. The gospel that Jesus preached is far from harmless – the coming of God’s Reign invites us to some hard choices: will we continue to participate in the destructive and demeaning waywardness of the world, or will we join the journey of righteousness, justice and peace that God is inaugurating? If we think that gospel-love is “being nice to one another,” we might be tempted to gloss over the real tragedies of the world – something like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The gospel of Jesus addresses, and begins to genuinely heal, the real brokenness of the world, and Jesus invites us to join him in this task. I’ll ask Jesus to forgive my occasional fowl word, but I suspect he’s got bigger fish to fry than that.
Ordained confusion… August 20, 2007
Posted by Mike Weaver in Methodism.2 comments
I was a lay delegate to the General Conference back in 1996, when the United Methodist Church decided to create a new order of “deacon,” eliminating lay “diaconal ministers” and transitioning the deacon from merely a transitional step on the way to elder’s ordination. Looking back over the past decade, I think the change has been good, even though considerable confusion still exists about the role of the deacon in relation to both elders and laypersons in local churches. Deacons are not allowed to administer either sacrament, and, as a former seminary professor of mine mentioned several times, deacons are not empowered to do anything a layperson cannot already do. In fact, he cautioned, the creation of the order of deacon might possibly detract from the ministry of the laity and discourage laypersons from taking the necessary initiative in Christian leadership that the church needs in this new missional time.
I personally believe that deacons have an important role to play in the church today, and perhaps may actually help move the church out of its maintenance-focused Christendom mode into a more modern missional stance. As an example, Steven Croft sees the possibilities in recovering of the office of deacon-evangelist in his own Anglican tradition.
Within United Methodist circles, confusion about the deacon’s role in the church continues. Increasing numbers of deacons argue for the authority to administer the sacraments, particularly in their own settings of ministry which are sometimes outside of traditional churches. When student pastors, local pastors, and lay supply pastors (none of whom are formally ordained) are offered the authority to administer sacraments, some question why deacons, all of whom with extensive theological education and training, would not also be fit to do the same.
A recent study of ordained ministry commissioned by the General Conference and conducted by a committee of pastors and laypersons took on the task of reviewing the denomination’s theology and practice of ordained ministry in light of the decade since the sweeping changes of 1996. In spite of the numerous requests and arguments by deacons for the authority to administer sacraments, the committee decided not to extend sacramental authority to deacons, and instead recommended making changes to how sacraments are administered by pastors who are not full elders. In essence, they took the arguments of the deacons about non-elders presiding at the sacraments at face value, but their recommendations had the effect of “closing the loophole” that deacons were using as part of their argument for sacramental authority.
Such a move is really unfortunate. It smacks of turf-protection dressed in theological garb. I suppose if deacons were allowed to administer the sacraments, there would be no real difference between elders and deacons (in the mind of elders). I hope I’m not jaded enough to actually believe that such a perspective informed the study committee. I would rather like to believe that missional, theological reflection formed the heart of their conclusions and recommendations.
The problem for me is that I see no biblical warrant for reserving sacramental authority to either deacons or elders. There are certainly practical considerations which, over time, would have led the early church to reserve these practices to representative leaders of the various church communities. It’s easy to see how these practices were eventually reserved specifically for ordained leaders of the community. There’s nothing terribly wrong with this development, as long as the church institution maintains a missional connection with its surrounding community.
And there’s the rub. The western church is slowly coming to grips with the death of Christendom. The cultural power that the western church has enjoyed (and depended upon) for 15 centuries is coming to an end and a new frontier is opening up. Like the Israelites fresh with memories of the “security” of Egyptian bondage, we peer restlessly into the land of God’s promise with evidence of both grapes (reward) and giants (risk). It is quite possible that the institutional structures (buildings, ordination, etc.) that brought us through the Christendom era simply are not fit to take us into God’s preferred future for the church.
If, as some suppose, God is moving in new ways to create new forms of Christian community, are we willing to move with God? If a “church” consists of a small network of home-based communities, apart from any physical buildings, can our forms of ministry (elder and deacon) respond to the “new thing” God is doing? My sense is that these “new things” will challenge us to rethink old categories that make the argument about whether deacons should administer sacraments seem pale and uninteresting.
What we can learn from E. Stanley Jones August 17, 2007
Posted by Mike Weaver in Evangelism.add a comment
A few years ago, a trip to the Middle East gave me an opportunity to get to know a number of Muslims who lived in Saudi Arabia and surrounding countries. The conversations that I had with some of those Muslims were rewarding, intense, and quite theological. We explored one another’s religious backgrounds, discovered significant differences, and even some similarities.
Today, within our neighborhoods and communities, the number of committed believers of other faiths is steadily increasing. We no longer need to travel to the Middle East or Asia to find passionate Muslims, Hindus, or other non-Christian believers. Some of them are right next door, and this new situation presents a crisis of faith for many of us.
I suspect that none of this would be a great surprise to E. Stanley Jones. He spent many years in India doing his best to “offer Christ” to those who did not know Christ, including the leader of India at the time, Ghandi. This great Methodist evangelist and missionary probably knew that the diversity of religions he experienced in India would soon enough find its way to the great social melting pot of America.
In the midst of religious diversity, I suspect that we are prone to chose from one of several extremes. We might, on the one hand, decide that theological integrity requires us to separate ourselves from those who believe differently. Pointing out our differences, our fear of being “unequally yoked” might prevent us from even becoming friends with neighbors who regularly attend temples, mosques, or even synagogues.
On the other hand, our desire to pursue unity, and even civic responsibility, might encourage us to set aside our differences and find the common ground. The uniqueness of Christ and his work on the cross for the salvation of the WHOLE world might well fade away in the passion of interfaith activity. Jesus’ call to make disciples of ALL nations might be neglected for fear of the offense that it might cause.
I believe that E. Stanley Jones can help us to navigate this new religious frontier. He ministered in colonial India, a country where Christianity was a marginal minority. Every day he rubbed elbows with Hindus and Muslims, many of them some of the most influential men and women in the country. He established retreat experiences called Ashrams, where people of various faiths came to talk and learn from one another. He created roundtable discussions for people to share their own religious story no matter what their faith.
But what I find remarkable about Stanley Jones was that in the midst of all this “dialogue” – which he considered so essential to establishing relationships with others – he never lost his passion to lead people to Christ. He never surrendered the centrality of Christ for the salvation of the world. He never put down other religions or called them false. But he always pointed to Christ as the final answer and kept offering him to friends and acquaintances. He even offered Christ through his friendship with Ghandi. It pained him dearly that Ghandi never accepted the offer.
Can we follow Jones’s lead? Can we become good friends with those who believe differently from us? Can we advance social causes through cooperation with people of other faiths? And, just as importantly, can we find the courage, in the midst of our friendships and dialogues, to offer Christ to ALL who do not know him?Maybe it’s time for the church to learn how to be witnesses again. Maybe we can teach them about the witness of E. Stanley Jones.
