But the \u201cBible-believers\u201d won. May God, the one they don\u2019t believe in and have excluded from their fellowship, have mercy upon their souls.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n No. There is no future to the UMC.<\/p>\n It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p>\n No, because those \u201cBible believers\u201d who have taken over The UMC have also shaken their fist in the face of God and declared God a heretic and unacceptable in their church. Why? Because God doesn\u2019t create only in \u201cmale or female\u201d categories. Therefore, God has no place in a \u201cBible-believing\u201d church.<\/p>\n For \u201cBible-believers,\u201d only a rigid sexual binary, i.e., everyone is either unmistakably male (and desires only women for life partners) or entirely female (and desires only men for life partners), is acceptable. There can be no blending or spectrum of either sexuality or sexual desire in their world.<\/p>\n For some time now, I\u2019ve asked the question, \u201cWhat do we do with the intersexed?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m asking it again in light of a story that came across my news feed, \u201cCourt rules Olympic runner Caster Semenya must use hormone-suppressing drugs to compete.<\/a>\u201d Semenya is described as an extremely talented female athlete who has unusually high (i.e., male) levels of testosterone in her system. This factor, combined with top-class training and her general physical giftedness, gives her a substantial advantage over other female athletes who have the more usual amount of testosterone in their systems.<\/p>\n The article about Semenya spoke of her as one with a syndrome generally named, \u201cDifferences in Sex Development.\u201d Information from an NIH institution, the highly regarded Children\u2019s National Health System,\u00a0explains it more fully<\/a>. After describing how male and female genitalia begin to differentiate around the sixth week of fetal life, they note that the process does not always result in a baby that is either male or female.<\/p>\n Changes in a number of genetic or hormonal factors can affect this process, leading to ambiguous genitalia. Ambiguous genitalia, as the word implies, may make determining the child\u2019s gender more difficult. More recently, the term Differences (or Disorders) of Sex Development (DSD) has been used to describe conditions in which the child\u2019s genetics, hormones, internal organs or external genitalia are atypical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I strongly encourage you to read this entire informational page<\/a> but here\u2019s a fact that needs to be addressed: \u201cThese conditions are not as rare as most think and affect about 1 in 100 newborns.\u201d<\/p>\n One in a hundred. That\u2019s a lot of people. Those \u201cone in a hundred\u201d have now been declared \u201cnon-human\u201d by the right-wing \u201cBible-believers\u201d who have taken over The United Methodist Church. There is no space for them, just as there is no space for the far more significant numbers of gay and lesbian believers.<\/p>\n They use the biblical phrase, \u201cGod made them male and female,\u201d as an inviolable scientific fact rather than as a poetic way in a pre-scientific world of expressing the fullness of God\u2019s creative activity. Thus, the \u201cBible-believers\u201d morphed the Word of God into a hammer of death rather than an invitation to life.<\/p>\n In the process, these \u201cOnly-my-interpretation-is-right-Bible-believers\u201d have spat into the face of God, declaring God, who did indeed create some as male AND female rather than as male OR female, simply unacceptable in the Kingdom of Heaven.<\/p>\n This church that so spits in God\u2019s face must cease to exist.<\/p>\n I have been a United Methodist for 21 years, after spending many more years in the \u201cBible-believing\u201d world that also declared me, as a woman who knew I was called by God for pastoral leadership, \u201cunacceptable\u201d in the Kingdom of Heaven.<\/p>\n Yes, I came in knowing the discriminatory language was in the Book of Discipline<\/em>\u2013I had studied it thoroughly before becoming ordained. However, I honestly thought that, with its strong history of standing up for the rights of the oppressed, the UMC would eventually recognize that gays, lesbians, and the intersexed, among others, are also fully human, just as Methodists in years past had finally figured that out for people of color and for women.<\/p>\n I was wrong.<\/p>\n As much as I loved serving the UMC, I am at a point where I am embarrassed to carry now those ordination credentials. Like many others, it took me ten years, ten years of hard work, of study, of gaining more education, of serving, of leading, of papers and interviews and stumbles and missteps, to achieve what had long been treasured credentials.<\/p>\n But now? To be identified with those who openly declare that God can\u2019t be God by their \u201cBible-believing\u201d standards? That heresy surpasses them all.<\/p>\n The hard-right turn away from God by those \u201cBible believers,\u201d has destroyed the previous good reputation of Methodism as a place of justice and social holiness.<\/p>\n There is no future to The United Methodist Church.<\/p>\n At this moment, good people, identifying as centrists and progressives, are trying their darndest to salvage something out of this. I appreciate their hard work, their hope of institutional survival, the real concern over the work of the many people who do profoundly important work as part of the general agencies.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, I do not see a way to escape the carnage to come. Most of those working in the general agencies are likely to lose their jobs and livelihoods. The \u201cBible-believers\u201d see no reason to keep them employed, and the few they may decide to keep will likely need to sign doctrinal and loyalty oaths to the \u201cBible-believing\u201d victors.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s only the beginning of the likely damage. Without a unified worldwide church, pensions, especially for our oldest and most vulnerable, least financially secure retired clergy, will not be fully funded.<\/p>\n Younger clergy, of whom we have precious few, will not be able to align themselves with a church now almost wholly identified as \u201cgay-hating.\u201d In case you don\u2019t know this yet, the language of the traditional plan voted on and affirmed as constitutional by the Judicial Council makes the gay-hating bent clear: the word \u201cpracticing\u201d was dropped from their condemnatory words toward homosexuals. Now, it is homosexuals in general, celibate or not, who are unacceptable for ordination.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Yes, younger clergy will have to leave for the sake of their spiritual integrity.<\/p>\n Even though the \u201cBible-believing\u201d segment made sure that they could get out with their property if things had not gone their way, the reality is that the somewhat close to six billion dollars worth of church property will eventually become their assets. Many churches, facing dissent in their congregations over whether to leave or not, will give up, shut their doors and hand the keys (and often debt) over to the \u201cBible believers\u201d who will continue to violate every single biblical norm by triumphantly proclaiming their victory in the takeover<\/a>.<\/p>\n I grieve that the answer to \u201cDoes the UMC have a future\u201d is \u201cNO.\u201d I grieve so deeply that I\u2019ve been unable to write. I\u2019ve spent endless hours in my garden, knowing yet again that there are two things almost guaranteed to break the heart: gardens and churches. And mine is broken.<\/p>\n But the \u201cBible-believers\u201d won. May God, the one they don\u2019t believe in and have excluded from their fellowship, have mercy upon their souls.<\/p>\n Photo credits: By Yann Caradec<\/a> from Paris, France \u2013 Meeting de Paris, Stade Charlety \u2013 30 juin 2018<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>, Link<\/a><\/p>\n
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\nThe carnage to come<\/h2>\n
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