Measuring Accountability

Can accountability be measured? The dictionary defines accountability: the condition of being accountable, liable, or responsible. This indicates accountability can be tested. If that is so, there must be a defined standard against which the actions of the accountable party are measured. 

Joyce Sohl, Deputy General Secretary of the Women’s Division, addressed the issue of Women’s Division accountability in her April 2002 report to the Women’s Division Board of Directors and in her February 2003 Response magazine column. Ms. Sohl concluded that accountability is a subjective, not an objective science. She opined, “Accountability has little meaning if those receiving the information do not believe or agree with the basic assumptions under which a given action was taken.” 

With defined criteria, however, it would seem that accountability is an objective science; and, that the measurement of actions over against set standards would not be affected by agreement or disagreement with those actions.

Ms. Sohl addressed the following areas:

Accountability to UMW/WD History: Renew and most all UM Women appreciate the 100+ year history of United Methodist Women. The active role of UMW in ministering to the needs of women, children, and youth around the world is well known.  Accountability as it relates to history necessitates questioning the worldview and theological perspective of the Women’s Division. This view shapes more recent UMW history through a perspective that leans heavily upon selective Social Principles and Resolutions that can be bent to fit the ideological agenda of the Women’s Division. We remain concerned that the Division’s perspective does not reflect that of most women at the local level.

Accountability to Constituency: While Ms. Sohl claims Women’s Division accountability to its membership, hundreds who have written regarding the leadership direction of the organization have received standard responses that indicate no change of policy. 

While both of Ms. Sohl’s reports boast of the mission education and spiritual growth resources offered by the Division, and of the leadership provided by staff and directors at UMW events, the content of these resources and the presentations by the leadership have confirmed rather than allayed concern. Certain grant allocations also raise alarm.

Accountability to the gospel of Jesus Christ: Ms. Sohl’s comments in this area are troubling.

Claiming accountability to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the “center of the accountability” of the Women’s Division, Ms. Sohl identifies this as the “most difficult” area. She says, “The opinions that each of us has about the gospel are ours, but they may not be the same as those of other members within our unit or within the membership of the organization. All of us may feel that our understandings are the correct interpretations of the biblical message, but none of us can be sure of that fact.”

One wonders how the Christian Church has managed to continue in existence for over 2000 years if our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ is so diverse and uncertain. In actuality, the basic tenets of Christian faith are clearly defined, and embraced across denominational lines. These core beliefs deduced from Scripture comprise the heart of the gospel—a gospel that has transformed millions of lives, and for which millions have died.

Continuing, Ms. Sohl states, “Accountability to the gospel puts us often in the center of controversy.  Such controversy comes about because of a variety of biblical interpretations, differences in our calls to discipleship, and various understandings of what it means to be a follower of Christ.” From this point Ms. Sohl quotes from John Wesley’s Sermon 39 regarding liberty of thought and opinion.  Lifted from its context, this quote fails to communicate the full intent of this sermon.

Sermon 39, “Catholic Spirit,” makes clear the difference between “opinions” and “essentials” with Wesley’s words, “…a catholic spirit is not speculative latitudinarianism. It is not indifference to all opinions: this is the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven. This unsettledness of thought, this being ‘driven to and fro, and tossed about with every wind of doctrine,’ is a great curse, not a blessing, an irreconcilable enemy, not a friend of true catholicism. A man of a truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgement concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine.”

Accountability Understood and Applied: Much that Ms. Sohl refers to in her concluding remarks, such as Wesley’s questions for believers, raise thoughts that can be responded to with varying “opinion.”  However, when it comes to accountability, we all come under the “essentials” defined in Scripture.

Claiming ambiguity about the gospel of Jesus Christ, or confusion regarding what accountability is or is not, does not absolve the Women’s Division from accountability.

Renew is the women’s program arm of Good News.  Visit our website at www.renewnetwork.org or call (706) 778-4812.

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