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.

[AIL]

I bet they have. They are truth suppressers. Romans 1:18 to the end of the chapter. When you reject truth aftwr having light that is really bad. Apostasy is what it’
s called.

[arthurus]

No. I suppose in his pride he reserves that to himself.

[make no mistake]

In the 80’s, I had a Methodist friend who was disappointed in her church because they believed that sewing on the Sabbath was a sin.

[freeandfreezing]

He told us that we had to abide by the ‘law of the land'...

That seems to be a recent invention by the left. Americans used to believe in striving for a moral nation, and battling injustice, even if the Supreme Court, state and federal government thought otherwise. That's what ended slavery. After all, owning slaves, and even rounding them up and returning them to their owners after they escaped was once the 'law of the land'.

Back then people opposed to slavery didn't feel that they had to "abide" by the law if it offended their morality.

[mdmathis6]

New discoveries at “Tel Hamman” which is Northeast of the Dead Sea suggest it was there that the Cities Of Sodom and Gomorrah lay. Discoveries include High heat vitrification of pottery...melted bronze mail(such as soldiers might wear)...bone fragments of humans suggesting that humans had “exploded” from the inside out...ash with fine microscopic particles of iron(such as blood spray instantly vaporized), trinitite glass(only produced by meteorite impact or by atomic explosion.)

//P The area of the Mouth of the Jordan forms a circular flat “bread” shaped or plain or disc(kukkar) where numerous springs and streams come into that area forming some of the richest farmland in that area. It was the Eastern area of the “disc” that showed a 700 year period of arrested development from 1700BC to about a 1000BC where a “tax house”(House of Desolation was the translated name...why “Desolation, HMMM?)(where Moses had pleaded with the Amorites to let them pass thru and were refused.....they later destroyed it, the charred cedar beams archeologists found there serving as mute witness) had been built at Tel Hamman with signs that an area roughly 500 square miles had suddenly been wiped out by a high heat event and stayed that way until 700 years had passed. Minoan influenced artifacts have been found at “Tel Hamman” and the high heat impact occurred at the same time as Santorini blew up causing the instant destruction of the Minoans!(according to the dating!). //p

Continuous settlements are shown to have continued on the western part of the “disc” plain thru that same 700 year period that showed no settlements on the Eastern half. Sodom and Gomorrah has been found and evidences of its corruption...Minoan style have been found.(It might have been a Minoan Satellite colony). They are technically calling it a high heat Meteorite impact which was said to have come in from the Southwest and took out precisely all the settlements in that area...Sodom, Gomorrah and the associated little towns related to the cities...they were all corrupt..with a precision that gives the lie to claims of just random circumstance! When I heard that they had found trinitite in that area(which forms at 10 to 15000 degrees Fahrenheit)I knew it had to be Sodom!

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Indeed!

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

That didn’t seem to be a problem when it comes to illegal immigration. It’s about butts on seats and money in the plate. The high-ups in the clergy were right there.

[Albion Wilde]

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?

I knew a Methodist pastor who was closeted (but with the door ajar) who had pictures of nude men and boys all over his house, where he hosted church meetings.

[Albion Wilde]

Ping

[Albion Wilde]

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.

I finally left the UMC in 2002 when the church I was attending (a very old church with a graveyard) chose an openly lesbian pastor after the previous two barely closeted gay pastors left. One of the older ladies was quite obviously grieved about it, and I asked her why not find another church, and she said, "My parents and my husband are in their graves just outside, and my plot is waiting for me next to his, so I guess I'll have to stay."

Elder abuse. So sad.

[Albion Wilde]

Was just thinking. How they spell idiot in Irish dialect.

"Idjit."

[xzins]

As a Methodist pastor, it breaks my heart to see Dr Dunham belittled by this non-Christian Methodist. My fear is that the cultural Christians in Methodism who were elected this summer to represent us next year will be pushed over the tipping point by the Scotus decision. Holding the line will be the African churches. Despite this, I have a very uneasy feeling about next year. Obviously, if Methodism approves homosexual pastors, weddings, etc., I will be gone.

I would probably turn toward some variety of free evangelical, but I’m being convinced of Orthodoxy more every day by the faithfulness of Middle Eastern Christians who refuse to deny their relationship to Jesus.

[Albion Wilde]

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

LOL!

[Albion Wilde]

eejit also works.

County Down dialect...

[stanne]

That’s it. I read it in a short story some years ago and find I would like to use it here quite often, for instance, in reading this headline

its a good one That is, for those who prefer to destroy culture or news with natural law

[Albion Wilde]

UMC is traditionally a mostly white denomination.

"Whiteness" or European racial background had nothing to do with doctrine, but was rather a reflection of the historical situation — Methodism is one of the oldest American denominations, since 1784, and up until it veered sharp left in the 60s, was one of the largest in the US when the free US society was vastly majority white. Methodism had been founded in England as a reform movement of the Anglican church, so obviously it was a church with "white" (European) members there, and of course family members tend to continue in the same faith.

Also, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in America was founded in 1816, so it has been a long-established and well populated Methodist church for black Americans, and has long had its own hymnal and musical traditions, among other cultural adaptations. The fact that the AME has long existed would tend to discourage blacks from joining a majority-white church if they wished to worship with similar folks, even though they are free to do so since the 60s and even before. The big push to integrate the UMC came along in the early 1960s and was accepted readily in the North, West and mid-states. I do not know about all the South, but I've attended UMCs in the Carolinas that had persons of color in the congregation.

[Albion Wilde]

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

Because, as a Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ was present at creation, when God created man and woman and told them to be fruitful and multiply. This is reflected again in Matthew 19:4-5 when he referred to the creation of man and woman and said directly to the disciples, "for this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife."

[Albion Wilde]

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

Wesley certainly did not approve of gay marriage, if that is what you are saying. He did a great service in England in lifting up the oppressed and illiterate and impoverished laborers who were socially rejected by the Anglican Church, literally bringing about a labor revolution and great support for the end of the slave trade; his efforts were commended recently by the Anglican priest at Margaret Thatcher's funeral.

The American church now claiming the name "United Methodist" is vastly different from the original Methodist Episcopal Church in America (1730s-1968). The great majority of true Methodists have left it in droves since it veered leftward in the 60s. The Methodist Church was infiltrated by communist agitators at high levels starting in the 1920s, and although it took until the 80s for their poison to reach the people in the pews, their work is now readily apparent.

The RCC has been under attack by communists for many years now, as well. I pray both churches, in fact all churches, can recover, strengthen their remnant of faithful, clear out the usurpers and press on in mutual respect.

[Albion Wilde]

I quit attending the UMC I grew up in about 15 years ago when she (the pastor) told us to say a prayer to “Mother Earth” for earth day

Lord have mercy, was it that dingbat Susan Cole?

[Chode]

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