With all the talk of division in the UMC, I really don’t think this is what most people want. I think it is the will of the most vocal among us. Nevertheless, I would like to know what readers of this blog think. Therefore I’ve decided to conduct an entirely unscientific poll asking readers to opine on this matter. I’d appreciate your sharing this post with others because more participants will hopefully mean a better cross section of perspectives. Yes, I know the answers you give may be contingent on a number of factors, but just give it your best shot.
71 thoughts on “Reader’s Poll: Do We Really Want Division?”
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David F. Watson 
We can’t seek holiness but reject its implications. To seek the Spirit’s work opens all of life to God’s scrutiny. The very areas we reserve for human agency, human agendas, come under judgment. Our very attempts to skirt and mitigate the Spirit’s potential betrays a divided love. On the one hand we want God to bless our fractured “unity,” but we don’t want too much of the Spirit’s convictive meddling. In this way, the United Methodist Church refuses the holiness it prays for. Our elite scholars must stop saying that the questions dividing the church are of no account, because they DO matter.
You could write this comment from either side of the big unnamed issue. What if the Spirit is convicting the church of injustice against its LGBT members?
But I would argue that holiness conceived scripturally will not contradict itself. That’s why I would (respectfully) contend that homosexual practices cannot be made compatible with holiness. To try to do so is “not to think straight.” See N. T. Wright, Paul & the Faithfulness of God, pages 1121-1122.
A toast to the few people who admitted “I don’t know.”
(I wasn’t one of them, though. I voted that I don’t want division, and I agree with you David, that most folks probably don’t want a split.)
Slightly unrelated: A great Freakonomics podcast on learning to say “I don’t know”: http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/15/the-three-hardest-words-in-the-english-language-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
Hi Greg, I wasn’t sure if you received David Watson’s writings. I’m forwarding so you can participate in David Watson’s pole, in case you don’t.
What a great day! I am so thankful and grateful for the opportunity to work with the confirmands, and I always enjoy the Laity Banquet. Now, I’m really tired. Keith is popping popcorn and we’re going to watch the movie Frozen. I’ve heard many good things about it, and supposedly one particular song keeps getting attention on Facebook, so we’ll see.
I’ll be heading to Arcade so I can meet Stan at 10:00, then back to IF to get Myra to go to visit at Greenfields. Ad Council tomorrow night….
Talk soon. Blessings, Karen
Dr. Watson,
I fear things may be worse than you hope they are. If there is not a planned, humane, respectful separation, I believe there will be a mass exodus born of conscience and accompanied by anger and likely multiple millions of dollars worth of lawsuits over property. I, for one, would prefer a planned separation to a bloody division like the Episcopalians are going through.
I believe we are stuck in the first of Wesley’s three admonitions: “In essentials, let there be unity.” We cannot agree on what the essentials are, let alone unify around them. For some, it is essential that the UM Church welcome LGBTQ persons fully. For others it is essential to follow what they consider the plain teaching of Scripture on sexual morality. We may all agree on the points of the Nicene Creed and all consider ourselves therefore to be “orthodox” and unified in those “essentials,” and still have deep division over what defines Christian morality and behavior.
There is a foundational difference in the way progressives and evangelicals approach the Scriptures, especially related to the relationship between Scripture and experience in determining doctrinal truth. While I realize I am painting with a broad brush here, there is a real difference between those who believe experience trumps Scripture and those who believe Scripture trumps experience. I believe we will never agree on this underlying difference, and as a result, there will be no fundamental unity in our future.
In the meantime, the fighting over the issues on which we find no middle ground is destroying our witness and distracting us from unified mission and ministry. In my opinion, a relatively peaceful separation (recognizing that no separation will happen without some pain) and more unified witness in the resulting separate groups would be a better future than ongoing, escalating conflict in the name of a unity that is not really unified.
For what it’s worth, there are more than two sides to this. It doesn’t fall into an either/or between scripture and experience. As a progressive evangelical, I hold scripture to be primary though I also hold a different interpretation of scripture than conservative evangelicals. I would say that Methodists already decided to interpret Paul’s 1st century Jewish perspective on gender as culturally contextual when we decided to ordain women and that we’re hedging our bets with an incoherent “moderate” position by ordaining women but not LGBT people. If we look more deeply at the underlying logic of the relevant scripture, then we see that the prohibition of homosexuality stands or falls on the question of whether patriarchy is God’s permanent design for how men and women are supposed to live together. There are Christians who believe that men should be the heads of their wives and there are Christians who believe that there are no hard and fast rules from God for gender. Conservative Methodists want to have it both ways. http://morganguyton.us/2013/08/20/what-is-the-burden-of-proof-in-the-methodist-homosexuality-debate/
Morgan, I dislike your categorizations. None of them represent me. I am NOT a traditional “evangelical”, and I am generally “liberal”. But I STRONGLY affirm St. Paul’s teaching about appropriate sexual expression by Christians (and United Methodist teaching). I affirm the teaching of our church–that does not make me “conservative”. You, Sir, are just plain WRONG.
Did you really just “You sir” me? You can have your personal collection of opinions about the Bible, but I think I’ve made a compelling argument for why the prohibition of homosexuality is always coterminous with a patriarchal view of gender from a Biblical perspective. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t allowed to have an eclectic collection of scriptural interpretations; it’s just that they aren’t coherent according to an overarching Biblical account of gender and sexuality. If I recall, you read two paragraphs of my argument and said you couldn’t read the rest. Maybe try again: http://morganguyton.us/2013/08/20/what-is-the-burden-of-proof-in-the-methodist-homosexuality-debate/
David, this is poorly worded. No one. “Wants” division. It is being forced on the church by rejection of covenant.