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.

[cornfedcowboy]

Does an ETF that double shorts the Methodist Church exist? I want in big time.

[some tech guy]

eejit also works.

[jagusafr]

You are correct - I have thanked God for the Africans on many occasions over the last 5 years. And for Maxie Dunnam for 20 years. My conference keeps saying “ the Book of Discipline still forbids it”, but it sounds like whisting past the graveyard. There will be a full-court press both ways next year.

[Blood of Tyrants]

They haven’t?

[stanne]

eejut. That’s actually better.

[Blood of Tyrants]

UMC is traditionally a mostly white denomination.

[JudyinCanada]

No need to ask Jesus to define marriage. That was done, a long time ago. He just needed to read the book.

[GreyFriar]

If Medford had read the old and new testaments, he would know what God and Jesus say about marriage. And it is not what he has decided it should be.

[Mmogamer]

Dear Lord..

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

And I heard that very thing coming out of my FUMC pulpit this very morning. We live in a very conservative area. A lot of the congregation are ticked. He told us that we had to abide by the ‘law of the land’. If not, quit our jobs. Then said ‘tbey’ should have ‘liberty’ and we shouldn’t block them.

What about OUR liberty????????

I was pissed beyond belief when I left this morning.

The early service I attended is done by an asst. He was more fire and brimstone about it (which is why his services are FULL and the 11:00 isn’t).

[goodnesswins]

Hhmmm...Did Jesus return and I missed it? How else would he ask him?

[terycarl]

The Methodists never asked Jesus to define anything, they relied on the Wesley brothers to guide them.....how’s it working out?????

[Chode]

Christ looked at it as Settled Law (as the RATS like to say) in the Old Testament

[Celtic Conservative]

Do Protestant sects anathemize? If so, Meffords is a good candidate.

CC

[Secret Agent Man]

He didn’t have to wait to be asked, it’s already defined multiple places in HIS WORD. Maybe the Rev should pick it up and read a little more thoroughly like the Bereans.

[Celtic Conservative]

Or Romans: 1?

CC

[The_Reader_David]

Of course one wouldn’t “ask Jesus” to define marriage, one can look up His answer in the Scriptures and find that He defined it in terms of biology. “Male and female He created them. For that reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.”

[Catmom]

Anybody who has one of these blasted rainbow avatars has already told you plenty about themselves.

[Theodore R.]

I haven’t heard of many Methodists leaving Methodism over its liberalism.

[fini]

The Higher-ups in the UMC have been trying for years, but the representation from the local congregations keep voting them down. If the UMC ever votes for homosexual marriage, it as a denomination will go like the Episcopals and UMC members will vote with their feet. Since the mid 1970s, the higher ups in the UMC have been much more liberal than the local congregations.