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In this issue:
-Two points of interest to me Current internal arguments over the recognition and blessing of same-sex unions threaten to divide the United Methodist Church in the Unite States. Should there be any softening of the church's ban against same-sex unions and homosexual ordination, it is being said that conservatives would not hesitate to leave en masse. In my reading on the subject Saturday night on the BBC News, a couple of points struck me, as it were, right between the eyes. In the first instance, the governing General Conference of the church voted last May to make it a triable offense for Methodist clergy to preside over homosexual unions. The new mandate left conservatives in the church emboldened, liberals shell-shocked and the church fractured. Now, the church - the second-largest Protestant denomination, after Southern Baptists - is struggling to find the common ground that leaders say is necessary for the United Methodist Church to remain united. What struck me about that was its parallel to the recent electoral situation in this country. Precisely the same could be said, that conservatives in the United States have been emboldened and are forging ahead without apology in pursuit of the conservative agenda as though they had been given a mandate from the entire electorate to do so. Liberals, meanwhile, remain shell-shocked, suffering fresh blows almost daily from events in Washington and scarcely able to believe that what they feared most has come upon them. Certainly, also, the country is ominously fractured. In the second matter, a Methodist who was tried by the church and found guilty of "marrying" a same-sex male couple has now proposed forming a Professing Church modeled after the Confessing Church that existed in Nazi Germany. The Confessing Church remained Lutheran but rejected the official Lutheran Church's cooperation with the Nazis. Similarly, the Professing Church here would remain Methodist but resist the ban on same-sex unions and homosexual ordination. That fascinated me. I had never heard about the establishment of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. What a bold and courageous stand they took! I suppose it helped to relieve their consciences about the behavior of their government, but unfortunately it didn't do much for the Jews, gays, and other groups imprisoned, tortured, murdered by the Nazis. A few years ago, I saw a German film called "The White Rose" which told the story of German university students who were virulently opposed to the Nazi government and organized a resistance within the country. Their student leaders were eventually exposed, and the young people were executed by guillotine. What a price they paid for their belief in the equality of all men and women! If the United Methodists were to fracture in a similar manner here, I would hope that more benefit would derive from it for our community than for the European ethnic groups oppressed by the Hitlerites. At least same-sex unions would be offered the option of "church weddings" that so many aspire to. I don't, because my union with another man is blessed and held sacred in our own hearts, which is enough for me, but I do indeed aspire to the equality it represents in this society and to its basic benefits in such matters as the acceptance of our living wills, etc. It warms my heart to see so many decent people trying so hard to live by the tenets of their churches while at the same time making sacrifices and risking a kind of excommunication to recognize us as honorable members of American society.
We owe them our gratitude and, where possible, our support.
End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #128
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