This little encapsulation of Marxism was offered up by Bishop Randy Day, who heads the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church.
The funny thing about this resolution is that some members of the Global Ministries committee actually voted in non-concurrence. Most, if not all, socialist and U.S.-bashing and Israel-bashing statements vetted by the Global Ministries committee and like-minded Church & Society committee were endorsed without committee opposition. One would like to think that, okay, the committees are filled with pacifists and marxists, but the average delegate should have a clue. Apparantly not. There must have been only a few Methodist delegates with a combination of brains and morals on the floor of the convention, as the looniness coming out of committee was usually approved by wide-margin plenary vote.
Mike Barker Lay Member, Trinity UMC, King George VA
It looks like the UMC is headed south with the Epicopalians. The leadership was always left wing, but there were lots of conservative congregations. It looks now like another schism developing.
This is the kind of stuff that is pushing me out of the Methodist Church. This is not the church I grew up in anymore.
Maybe a lot of them had trouble deciphering what this resolution is actually saying and just didn't bother. I had to read some parts twice to see exactly what they were getting at.
titled changed
I understand your sentiments, but please don't change titles - it leads to duplication. Thanks.
The Evangelical Lutheran church is almost as bad. Some of the stuff on their website looks like it was lifted right off the UN website. I'm with you, though, I wish people would stay and fight instead of just leave.
Nuff said.
The statement makes no economic sense, and its tie to the scriptures is forced.
If we - as Christians - are concerned about the poor, it is about ALL the poor of the world, not simply about those within any national border. No self-respecting Christian can say that we should re-distribute the wealth only among the people of the several nations of the world. As much as I love the United States of America, and respect the goodness and necessity of civil government, a defining characteristic of Christian faith is the universal brotherhood of mankind.
Once we accept universal brotherhood, then the enormous poverty in the world makes nonsense of any scheme to redistribute wealth. All that would happen is that everybody in the world would be made poor. When you have a global perspective, the challenge is not redistributing wealth, but is the creation of wealth.
Now, if anybody would but look at the scripture cited by the UMC in this manifesto, you will see their abundent wisdom: We should enable the people of the world to work and be paid. This is called the free enterprise system. We should liberate all people from slavery and feudalism and all other forms of state-ownership of the human means of production. Free labor (as well as free capital) is the way to create wealth to abundence.
Now, Jesus tells us that the poor will always be among us. So, I think that even if we were to free the world, we would have to deal with powerty. But, this would be dealing with individuals who are poor, not dealing with mass poverty. If we are rich materially, and rich in our hearts, I am absolutely confident that we will take care of those among us, whether through our families, private charities or governments (although I would prefer the first two ways to the third).
But, for us be rich materially means capitalism, and for us to be rich in our hearts means Christian (or some other form of belief that accepts universal brotherhood).
BTW There was a time in my life that I stopped attending church because the particular church to which I joined was overcome by socialist nostrums. As an economist, I knew they were wrong, and it made me doubt everything else they had to say. I have since found my way back to church, but during that time in my life I was lost.
Church leaders who pretend that they more more about economics than economists, or more about any science than scientists, are saying that God is not the God of science. They are saying that not all truth testifies to God, but that there is a cleavage between faith and science. They are, in my opinion, denying a part of the Oneness of God.
This is exactly how the Democrats plan to embrace faith and God in the coming years. I think it was Rush who played clips of Clinton's pastor, who was using his faith in a similar manner...saying that God wants government to take care of the lesser among us. It fits right in with their message (socialism) of so-called compassion.
My wife and I joined a Methodist Church earlier this year. Neither one of us grew up Methodist. We started going to the church because it's close to our house. We like it, but I really wonder about the leadership at the national level.
The area of Virginia that our church is in is very conservative, so I'm fairly confident that most of the members are conservative also. However, I'm not so sure about the pastor. He's done pretty well at staying away from political issues, but I still wonder. He did attend the Air Force Academy and was a fighter pilot, so that gives me hope, but I just have a feeling. One of these days soon I'm going to ask him for his thoughts regarding the leadership and some of their left-wing positions.