Reconciling Ministries Network Convo

This is my report of my experience in Convo, held just outside Washington, DC this past weekend.

Friday, August 30
The Reconciling Ministries Convo “ChurchQuake” started today. I attended a day-long workshop on how to be a reconciling process coach. So, I know the basics of how to help a church become more welcoming. And I'm ready to be put to work... The materials for the workshop are much more comprehensive than I had gotten in previous such workshop. The guidance is much more step-by-step. The back cover of the booklet shows it was developed in conjunction with several other denominations.

We listened to Alton Pollard talk about what he learned from his mentor Howard Thurman. He suggested Thurman's book Jesus and the Disinherited. Some of the comments that caught my attention: Live the Village! There are no divisions in humanity even though we keep constructing new ones. Celebrate the rainbow. The church must be forever built, destroyed, and renewed. We think the destroy part means we've failed and avoid it. Playing is safe is destroying us. Be at home within yourself. Know who you are, know your home, then open your door and knock on another door. There are examples of communities without walls: those campaigning for the Dream Act, the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, the Marriage Equality movement, and the March on Washington a few days ago. There is a problem in our language. “Diverse” is a noun, we need a verb.

Convo officially opened in the evening with a worship service. Rev. Vicki Flippin of Church of the Village in New York City gave the sermon. The Scripture was Acts 16:23-34 (though you might start a few verses before). Paul and Silas are beaten and thrown into prison. An earthquake opens the doors and breaks their chains. The jailer is afraid they had escaped and moves to kill himself. Paul says “We're still here.” The jailer becomes a follower.

Rev. Flippin (saying it much better than I could) proposed a new interpretation: The jail is the church that has become rigid, trusting rules more than love. The jailer believes he must support the church or chaos will result. Paul and Silas represent the gay people who have been chained by church doctrine. But when they break free they don't flee quietly into the night. Instead, they boldly proclaim we are still here, ready to build a new church out of the old one, a church with a foundation of love.

Peterson Toscano is our Bible study leader this weekend He talked about the sexual minorities in the Bible. In the Old Testament there were three sexes – male, female, and eunuch. Many times when the Bible mentions “official” or “government official” the Hebrew word was the equivalent of “eunuch.” So consider a story form Jeremiah (chapter 38). The prophet had upset the people in power (which is what prophets do). He was kidnapped and dumped down a well where it was expected he would die. But it was a eunuch who planned and carried out a rescue operation. One of our people.

Saturday, August 31
The morning worship service featured the story of Esther. Preacher Karen Oliveto expanded on the story. Her main point was: Perhaps you are where you are for such a time as this.

Peterson Toscano was back with a couple more stories about gender minorities in the Bible. This time he acted out the role. In the first story he took the part of the head eunuch in the court of Xerxes at the time Esther became queen. He played the character as really gay. His point was there are huge numbers of eunuchs in the story. Without them the story would fall apart.

In the second story he took the role of the manly Esau telling us about his nephew Joseph. Even though scholars say they don't know the proper definition of the Hebrew word translated as “coat of many colors” the word is used in the Bible one other place and there it clearly is described as “princess dress.” Yes, that implies Joseph was transgender. In addition, when the brothers find Joseph in Egypt Joseph rejects what all the other men in the family tend to do which is retaliate. Instead, he forgives.

The morning plenary session was a roundtable on the state of the movement. A few of the comments: Matt Berryman, new executive director of RMN, called on us to be Biblically obedient (as in the message of love) because we know how the story ends. The theme of Biblical obedience returned several times.

Randall Miller said this movement is greater than changing a few paragraphs in the Book of Discipline. It is also larger than gay issues. RMN should be larger too. We are not alone in this struggle. But we face problems. The United Methodist Church is aging, its population centers (thus more votes at General Conference) are in the South and in Africa, and the American church policy is based on a world vote.

Kristian Clauser is a transgender man. He said that when we get involved in trans issues, we will do such things as get involved in challenging voter ID laws, which will get us involved in issues of the homeless, the blind, the elderly, and immigrants. We're all connected.

Our afternoon was spent on a field trip. My group of a dozen went to the Sewall-Belmont House. It is across the street from the Supreme Court, though the Court was elsewhere when the house was built and used for its memorable purpose. That purpose was to serve as headquarters for the Suffrage movement of the turn of the last century. It is now a museum of that cause. Our tour guide told us of some of the events and described some of the interesting characters.

One of the women, with Vanderbilt in her name somewhere, hosted parties and at each one talked incessantly about a woman's right to vote. Finally, many of her friends said that unless she stopped talking about it they wouldn't come to any more parties. She agreed to be quiet. At the next party she displayed new china and every piece had the words “Votes for Women.” Of course, copies are on sale in the gift shop.

Another interesting character was cartoonist Nina Allender. Her job was to explain the movement to the country as concisely as she could. She always portrayed the women with dignity. This one is my favorite. Uncle Sam says:

American women. You are our inspiration. You give us our soldiers. You conserve our food. You work in our munition factories. You serve our sick and wounded. Accept this bouquet!

Her bindings say:

Unequal political rights. Equal work, unequal wages. Kindly omit flowers.

In spite of the cuteness of those two stories these women sometimes faced severe trials. That included a protest march that turned into a riot, sending 100 women to the hospital. Another march resulted in arrests ("obstructing traffic") and harsh treatments, including forced feedings. They asked to be labeled as political prisoners so their conditions would approve. The slipped notes of their treatment to the press, resulting in more converts to their cause.

The amendment granting the vote to women was approved by Congress on June 8, 1919. Two days later Wisconsin and Michigan ratified it. Enough states ratified it by August of 1920, only 14 months. Those that didn't ratify it (or didn't need to because there were already enough states that did) are mostly in the South. Alaska and Hawaii weren't states yet, though Hawaii did ratify it in the 1960s.

That evening Rev. Sam Offer led a plenary session on Embracing Connectedness. We each have a variety of identities, such as white, male, straight, middle class, well educated, Christian, etc. All these identities speak with one voice. They can't be separated. They influence how I relate to others who are not like me. We show up as an individual, but are frequently seen first as a member of a group which hides our individuality. Because of that we need to understand what the culture is saying about each of the groups in our identities.

A panel session featured people from organizations related to RMN – the youth MOSAIC group, the transgender group, and United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church. They were asked how they felt about the denomination and what they bring to the discussion.

MOSAIC feels they are being silenced and ignored by the church. They feel dismissed as the “future” but they're ready to work for justice now! The people of color feel between worlds. Because of their stance on gay issues they feel shut out of their old world, but not quite embraced by the new. Yet, they know discrimination and want to end discrimination towards gay people as much as they want to end discrimination based on race. We need to create safe spaces to hear other voices. Trans people prompt discussions of gender and gender oppression.

How do we avoid tokenization? Are we talking to a person to check off a box or are we interested in their voice? The solution is to get to know more than one of us.

Sunday, September 1
The sermon in the morning worship was given by Marcus Briggs-Cloud of the Muskogee Nation. He gave the native view of America and Christianity and it wasn't always pretty. In native culture is the celebration of people described as one who stands between genders. They were integral to society and were assumed to have entered the world that way. This is a sharp contrast to the homophobia taught by the church. Though the Muskogee had men's work and women's work they didn't have a word for gender. Which means perhaps some of their stories are mistranslated. That includes the one about the spirit animal that liked to look up dresses. Europeans will say that animal is male. But maybe it was lesbian. Much of Western Society is built around oppression and that includes oppression of the Earth. If there is no Earth there is no life. Listen to the wind and rain.

Here is the altar and backdrop of our worship space.

Peterson Toscano was back with another story. This one was about Jesus instructing his disciples to prepare the Passover meal that would be the Last Supper. He tells them to go into the city and talk to a man carrying a water jug – but that was women's work! Peterson proposes this was a transgender person. Just before the Last Supper it is possible a transgender person played a key part of the story.

My first workshop was on Will Africa Always be Anti-gay ? It was an important topic because the African vote was a seen as a big reason why the gay affirming vote failed last year at General Conference. What do we do about that so we can avoid the same result in 2016? The discussion was lively. Some of the comments and questions: Should we be imposing our culture on another country? How do we share without exporting Western values? Perhaps we should break all ties? What do Africans think about possible separation? Would they feel free of our culture or miss the money we give them? What happens to our relationships when the size of our donations shrink? How can we be a worldwide church with a single nomenclature when differing cultures would seem to prevent that? Didn't our missionaries create this mess? How do we clean it up? Do we take the blame? If the only thing that seems to be part of the worldwide denomination is our social principles (even though they feel free to ignore the parts that don't fit their culture) what happens when that document is no longer world-wide?

Alas, a lot of our perceptions of Africa are negative and most of them appear to be wrong. Issues of literalism, sexuality, and polygamy aren't as black-and-white as they are frequently made out to be. The denomination has seen huge growth in Africa and Philippines. But in Europe and America we are shrinking. How is the relationship faring now? Even so, there are stories of hope. What should we do now? Talk.

The second workshop was about mercy and justice. The leaders asked us to define both terms. Then we were led an exercise. What do congregations do to help those in poverty? We came up with a long list. Then we were asked to name causes of poverty. That list was even longer. Then the discussion got interesting.

Why don't we church people work to eliminate poverty? That was a long list: The things we do to alleviate the basic needs of poverty are easy and allow us to feel good. We are sometimes given awards for it. But work to reduce poverty requires risk and sacrifice. It can lead to arrest. It might alienate us from friends. It is seen as too radical and too political. It requires building relationships with the poor, which we don't have. We fear the other. Some people feel the poor deserve their plight. It takes too long to see results. We might get compassion fatigue. We have no way to measure success. We don't know what to do when they ask for more.

When might we work towards elimination of poverty? When it is someone with whom we have a relationship. We want change that lasts for the people we love.

Charity work, or mercy, is never enough. It leaves the root cause in place and allows us to feel we've done enough. We can step up to self-help projects, such as community gardens. We can educate ourselves for transformation. We can step up to advocacy. Best of all is when we organize to advocate together. As a team we can name a specific change and create a strategy. We work up from one person to a team a district, a conference, and a nation.

How do we start? With a buddy. Share each other's story. My story includes the people and experiences that shaped me, my understanding of oppression, my vision, dream for change, and my hope. We look for points of connection and talk about who else cares and what's next. As we invite more people to the cause we share stories again, then develop a plan. Systemic problems are caused by real people and real people can be challenged.

Back at General Conference Bishop Melvin Talbert called for Biblical obedience over church laws. If we weren't able to change an unjust law, it was time to start ignoring it. Talbert was with us to renew that call. Oppression is a opportunity for all of us to practice what we preach. He and Bishop Mary Ann Swenson talked about how they came to support Biblical obedience. A panel told their own stories. One of them explained that no matter how much he checks the labels on clothing he can't eliminate foreign sweatshops. We as individuals cannot live ethically, the powers will make us complicit in their oppression. We can only end injustice together.

We had an evening service at one of the several Reconciling churches in Washington. The choir was a combined group from all such churches. Bishop Talbert was the preacher. The general theme was a celebration of how far we've come in marriage equality, including a recognition of the gay couples in attendance.

Monday, September 2
After a gathering by jurisdiction (USA is covered by 5 of them) to share a few ideas and meet our RMN jurisdiction coordinator, we had one more story from Peterson Toscano. He told the story of the Ethiopian eunuch recorded in Acts 8, which includes a discussion of Isaiah 56. This passage in Acts is usually seen as evangelism or as describing the atonement of Jesus. Perhaps, as Peterson told it, it is about an outcast seeing himself in the text of Isaiah and knowing he is welcome, that we are all welcome.

I talked to Peterson a bit after lunch. His catalog of sexual minorities in the Bible was much longer than he could share with us. He's done some serious scholarship here. You can find a few of his stories on YouTube. They're about 5 minutes each. He is writing a book as well, though I didn't hear a date for publication.

The closing worship featured a rousing Evangelical-style sermon by Rev. Joseph Tolton. He used the theme of the service "Recreating Resolve." It was an enthusiastic ending to the whole event.

Many of the plenary sessions and worship services were live-streamed. Videos will probably be posted on the RMN website soon (though you may have to pay for them).