A Case of Hypocrisy

I was listening to NPR the other day, specifically to On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti. I listened with special interest because the subject was religion, a particular concern of mine.

The episode was The Splintering of the United Methodist Church, and you can find it here. Her guests included Beth Stroud, a lecturer at Princeton and a UMC Pastor who was defrocked in 2004 2004 after revealing her relationship with another woman, and was just reinstated the day before the broadcast, and Bishop LaTrelle Easterling, episcopal leader of the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Conferences of the United Methodist Church.

Until recently, the church had a longstanding rule against LGBTQ pastors and same sex marriages, but in terms of members of the church, congregants, the same rules did not apply. This is what led to Pastor Stroud’s defrocking.

Quoting Chakrabarti:

Five years ago, at the UMC's 2019 General Conference, human sexuality surfaced as a key topic of discussion. The United Methodists have banned lesbian and gay clergy and same sex marriage since 1972, when the church deemed homosexuality quote, "incompatible with Christian teaching," end quote.

In 2019, they held onto their ban in a very close vote, but they also passed a disaffiliation plan, which would provide guidelines for congregations who wished to leave the United Methodist Church for, quote, "reasons of conscience regarding issues of sexuality."

So here's what happened.

Over the next four years, more than 7,600 UMC congregations disaffiliated from the denomination. That's about a quarter of the membership, and the largest denominational divide in the United States since the Civil War. Then, earlier this month, at the 2024 General Conference, delegates voted overwhelmingly, 692 to 51, to repeal that 52 year old ban.

So that’s the background, and it was a pretty interesting conversation, on the premise that the Pastor and the Bishop believe that in addition to its other functions, a church is a community and a Christian church should be as open and inclusive as possible. So far, so good.

Later in the show, Chakrabarti mentioned that she had received input from some present and past UMC members about the UMC reversing its ban on LGBTQ clergy and same sex marriage. She quoted from a letter from a former UMC clergyman who left and is now a United Church pastor. His comments were cogent and non-critical, but that’s not what bothered me. In responding to the comments, Bishop Easterling started with this:” I know Reverend Ponder Williams and love him very much and lament that he is no longer with the United Methodist Church.” She went on to say:

I think that if one accepts that every human being is created in the Imago Dei, in the image and likeness of God. And accepts that they are whole people in the way that God has created them, and does not allow there to be any hierarchy of human worth. Then one has to stand back and allow God to be preeminent.

It was the juxtaposition of those two statements that got to me. On the one hand, “[If one]accepts that they are whole people in the way that God has created them, and does not allow there to be any hierarchy of human worth,” and on the other “I lament that he is no longer with the Methodist Church.”

What I’m going to say here is not an attack on the Bishop, the UMC, or Christianity, because for me this paradox is at the heart of all institutional religion. Every church, synagogue, mosque, and temple proclaims in one way or another, we are all children of God. The Abrahamic religions go farther – all hold that there is one God, and whether you call him Adonai, Allah, God the Father, or any other name, we’re all talking about the same thing, and all three hold that people are created in the image of God – not that we look like that being, but that we are to reflect God in our lives.

So why lament? Why not rejoice that this man who was forced out of the UMC for his sexual orientation has found a home in another community? I can only make sense of this if I take the view that there is hypocrisy afoot – we want everyone in our big, inclusive, loving community, but only if they follow our rules. If they join another community with different rules, we mourn them.

How is what happened to this pastor different from an Orthodox Jewish community expelling someone who marries outside the community – even if they marry another Jew who is “less observant?” How is it different from honor killings or excommunication?

It’s all based in “we’re all included because we all agree with each other – violate that and you’re out!” That’s the hypocrisy. Famously, in George Orwell’s Animal Farm we are told that “all pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.” So if you’re my kind of (Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc.), you’re OK. If you’re another kind of the same religion, you’re still kind of OK. If you go over to one of the other religions, or no religion at all, you’re not OK, but I may tolerate you in the name of “no hierarchy of human worth” while I still hold the hierarchy of “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

That’s why there are so many religions, denominations, sects, cults, etc. They give people a place to stand smugly while implicitly or explicitly condemning others – or at least “lamenting.”