METHODIST OFFICIAL: “I NEVER HAVE ASKED JESUS TO DEFINE MARRIAGE”

First Things ^ | July 4, 2015 | Matthew Schmitz

[NYer]

One measure of the decline of mainline social justice activism can be found in a recent Facebook exchange between the Methodist civil rights leader Maxie Dunnam and the Methodist civil rights official Bill Mefford. Dunnam was a heroic opponent of Jim Crow as a young pastor in Mississippi and went on to become the president of Asbury Theological Seminary. He also happens to believe in the historic Christian understanding of marriage, so in response to Obergefell v. Hodges, he made the following post on his Facebook wall:

To which Mefford, the “Director of Civil and Human Rights” for the United Methodist Church's General Board of Church and Society, replied:

It is hard to see why anyone who professes a faith in which Christ is lord would say, “I never have asked Jesus to define marriage.” 

Harder yet is the question of why someone who confesses the Trinity would pit the Holy Spirit against Jesus Christ while elevating the U.S. Supreme Court to the status of a new Word. 

This is not Mefford's first such performance. On January 22, 2015, he responded to the annual March for Life that seeks to end the legally sanctioned killing of the unborn by holding up a sign that said “I march for sandwiches.”

Contrast this statement with another, from January 1963. Dunnam, then a young pastor in Mississippi, invited three other Methodist pastors to his river camp in order to draft “Born of Conviction,” a historic challenge to Jim Crow amid one of its darkest moments. Only a few months before, rioting had broken out when James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. A few months later, a white supremacist shot and killed Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers (whose wife would later honor Dunnam). 

“Born of Conviction” cited the official Methodist teaching that all men were equal, denounced resegregation under the cover of Christian schooling, and rejected the charge that the civil rights movement was Communist. Several of the twenty-eight Methodist pastors who subsequently signed the statement were forced to leave the state. Some received death threats.

The distance between Dunnam's statement in 1963 and Mefford's in 2015 provides another measure of the loss of moral seriousness in mainline social justice activism. The comparison is not, I think, an altogether unfair one. Mefford's official position makes it impossible to dismiss his comments as the mere product of one man's glibness, rather than to admit them as evidence of a church bureaucracy that has lost touch with scripture, tradition, and the believers it purports to represent.

[NYer]

FYI ping!

[madprof98]

I am astonished the United Methodist Church has not just come out openly for gay marriage. I am also astonished that any real family would attend services at one of their churches.

[NewHampshireDuo]

ping

[umgud]

Most reasonable people don’t need Jesus to define marriage.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I knew a Methodist pastor who had Christmas cards from Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro and other noteworthy communists on his mantel. Does that tell you where they’re coming from?

[Bryanw92]

>>To which Mefford, the “Director of Civil and Human Rights” for the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society, replied:

The General Board of Communists and Socialists is not Christian. I left the UMC last year, but I still have some acquaintances in that social club, so I’ve been asking them about the SCOTUS decision. Like every Prog win, they all say that the time for debate is over and now we need to come together to “heal”. Notice how its never “over” until they win?

[Darksheare]

How is if that he never read Mark 10:6 and Matthew 19:4?

[windsorknot]

I know better than to question a “Methodist official”. Ooooooooh!

[CatherineofAragon]

If that’s not blaspheming the Holy Spirit, I don’t know what is.

[stevem]

METHODIST OFFICIAL: “I NEVER HAVE ASKED JESUS TO DEFINE MARRIAGE”

Jesus never asked you to ask.

[KC_Lion]

You knew Bill Ayers?

(Zing!)

[C. Edmund Wright]

...nor does Jesus need permission from this fruit loop in order to define it.....which He did through His revealed Word.

[Vigilanteman]

My guess is that he’s never asked Jesus anything else either.

[beethovenfan]

Many will say to me “Lord, Lord.....”

“...I never knew you. Depart from me.”

[RansomOttawa]

Jesus doesn’t need your help, either.

[Bryanw92]

>>I am astonished the United Methodist Church has not just come out openly for gay marriage.

They can’t until they change their Book of Discipline at next year’s General Conference.

[plain talk]

Some people choose these churches for some reason. But there is also a segment that grew up in a particular denomination or faith and feel a cultural attachment or some tradition and continue to go there. Makes no sense to me either.

[chajin]

Notice how its never “over” until they win?

No issue is ever settled until it's settled the way liberals want it settled--then suddenly, it's settled, and we're all supposed to "move on" to the next issue that isn't settled, because that next issue hasn't been settled the way the liberals want it settled.

I have been a former Methodist for 26 years--no, I take that back: the United Methodist Church has been a former Methodist church for at least 26 years.

[Ransomed]

Aren’t they one of the ones with tons of African members, if I recall? And they keep voting it down? I bet there is generally a pretty wide divide between the Africans and US types.

Freegards