by Steve | Feb 3, 2020 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
General Conference 2019. Photo by Kathleen Barry, UMNS.
By Tom Lambrecht –
The legislation that would implement the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation has been completed. It has been sent for formatting and will be forwarded to several annual conferences that are supposed to have special sessions in order to adopt the legislation and submit it to General Conference. Those sessions need to occur before the middle of March, so that the legislation can be submitted before the 45-day deadline prior to General Conference.
As the legislation is released publicly, probably within the next week, more details will be available as to how separation would work under the Protocol. Future articles will address various aspects of the Protocol plan in coming weeks. This article will look at how separation might affect churches in the United States. Note that nothing has been decided or will become final until General Conference takes action on these proposals in May. The delegates may choose to change some provisions of the Protocol Plan (although the mediation team hopes that it remains relatively intact as it is).
Annual Conference Action
The first decision regarding how churches will align, whether with a New Methodist Denomination or with the continuing United Methodist Church, will be made in some annual conferences. The Protocol requires a 57 percent vote by an annual conference in order to align with a New Methodist Denomination. If the conference does not vote (a vote is not required) or does not achieve 57 percent, it will remain in the post-separation United Methodist Church.
In order to be eligible for annual conferences and local churches to vote to align with a New Methodist Denomination, a leadership group that is promoting such a denomination must register with the Council of Bishops prior to May 15, 2021. The leaders of a New Traditionalist Methodist Denomination will be ready to register on the day General Conference adjourns (May 15, 2020), so that annual conferences and local churches can consider aligning with that traditionalist denomination very soon.
There is a reasonable chance that up to a dozen U.S. annual conferences could achieve a 57 percent vote to align with a New Traditionalist Methodist Denomination. There might be a few annual conferences that could achieve a 57 percent vote to align with a New Progressive Methodist Denomination, but that is less likely. A number of annual conferences have already tentatively scheduled special one-day sessions of annual conference to consider a vote on alignment. Since nearly all U.S. annual conferences meet within six weeks of the adjournment of General Conference, it would be wise to postpone the annual conference’s decision on this important matter until later in the summer or fall, in order to give members a chance to learn about the options and carefully consider their decision.
An annual conference must take a vote where a motion to take such a vote receives the support of at least 20 percent of the annual conference members. Alternatively, an annual conference can decide to take a vote by its own normal processes. Where an annual conference is clearly not going to achieve a 57 percent vote to align with a New Methodist Denomination, it does not make sense to push for a vote of the annual conference. That would only foster divisiveness and hard feelings to no purpose. Annual conferences in the U.S. have until June 30, 2021, to take a vote. Otherwise, they will remain in the post-separation United Methodist Church.
All annual conference property, assets, and liabilities would go with that annual conference into the new denomination. This includes all local churches within that annual conference, unless a church votes to remain in the post-separation United Methodist Church or align with a different New Methodist Denomination. The only local churches that would need to vote are those that disagree with the alignment decision (whether by vote or by default) of their annual conference.
Local Church Action
Local churches in the U.S. can begin voting on alignment by late summer of this year. They do not have to wait until their annual conference has voted. Where an annual conference will likely remain part of the post-separation United Methodist Church, a local church in that conference need not wait until the June 30, 2021, deadline has passed in order to take a vote to align with a New Methodist Denomination. Where an annual conference has a reasonable chance of achieving the 57 percent margin to align with a New Methodist Denomination, local churches ought to wait until after the annual conference has voted before they take a local vote. If the annual conference aligns the way the local church would, the local church then would not need to take a vote. And that local church’s representatives at annual conference would be needed to reach the 57 percent.
The local church decision would be made by a meeting of the church conference, which includes all professing members present and voting (no absentee ballots). The district superintendent must call such a church conference within 60 days of a request by the pastor or the church council (or equivalent leadership body). The church council would need to decide ahead of time whether the margin for a decision to align differently from the annual conference would require a simple majority or a two-thirds vote, based on that local church’s context. If the highest value in that local church is unity, it might choose a two-thirds vote. If the highest value is honoring the convictions of the majority of the congregation, it might choose a simple majority vote.
If a local church votes to align with a New Methodist Denomination, it would take its property, assets, and liabilities with it into the new denomination. The local church’s share of the annual conference’s unfunded pension liabilities would be transferred to the new denomination. The local church would not need to make any payments in order to align with a new denomination. Representatives of the local church and the annual conference would need to negotiate and sign a Separation Agreement that cares for the legal details, including the release of the trust clause. Terms of such an agreement would be strictly limited to impose no financial or other barrier to realignment.
Under the Protocol Plan, the earliest an annual conference or local church could effectively move into the new denomination would be January 1, 2021. Until then, local churches are expected to continue paying their apportionments and other obligations (pension, health benefits, etc.) to their current annual conference. As a matter of integrity, such payments should continue, since there would no longer be a need to use apportionments as a tool to leverage a desired outcome (for either side). On the agreed Separation Date, the local church would no longer pay apportionments to their UM annual conference and would begin paying apportionments at the level set by their new denomination.
Local churches would have until December 31, 2024, to take a vote on aligning with a New Methodist Denomination.
Churches that Become Independent
The Protocol Plan also contains provisions allowing local churches to withdraw from The United Methodist Church and become independent, not aligning with any New Methodist Denomination. These provisions are necessary because ¶ 2553 passed by the St. Louis General Conference last February is being challenged due to voting irregularities.
The provisions for churches to become independent are similar to what was passed in ¶ 2553. Such a decision would require a two-thirds vote of the church conference (all professing members present and voting). The local church would keep its property, assets, and liabilities. The local church would have to be current on the previous 12 months’ apportionments and pay an additional 12 months’ apportionments. It would also have to pay its share of the annual conference’s unfunded pension liabilities, an amount that can run anywhere from roughly three to six times their annual apportionment. Pension provisions adopted in St. Louis provide for the possibility of a payment plan for these liabilities.
Obviously, it is better financially for churches to align with a New Methodist Denomination than to become independent. However, churches should not believe that they could align with a new denomination and then change to become independent without paying anything. The new denominations will have provisions requiring at least the recovery of the church’s share of unfunded pension liabilities before allowing a church to exit and become independent.
Local churches would have until December 31, 2024, to vote to become independent.
Questions?
This article gives the basics of what the separation process would be in the U.S. There may well be additional questions that are not answered here. I invite you to send your questions via reply email, and I will try to address them in a future article.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 27, 2020 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Chappell Temple –
He’s not exactly a theologian, but we could perhaps call him a prophet of sorts. Six years before the United Methodist Church was even formed, Neil Sedaka got it right in his signature song of 1962: “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” And that is so not only because there are numerous challenges as to how to divide the property and navigate all the relationships, but more so because if the marriage — or the church — was ever any good at all, there should indeed be deep grief when a separation becomes necessary.
Unfortunately, such is where we are as United Methodists. For it is now rather inescapably obvious that even if we might still have warm feelings for one another, we cannot all live in the same house any longer. I had hoped we would not come to this point. Forty-five years ago, I joined the Texas Annual Conference as a pastor and for thirty of those years I have had the chance to serve as a member of the Texas Annual Conference delegation to jurisdictional and then General Conferences.
But the entirety of my ministry as an ordained pastor has also been framed by the underlying tension of divergent views within the UM Church on not just human sexuality but also the authority of scripture, the nature of revelation, the role of missions, the application of social justice, and even the identity and divinity of Christ. And in the whole of it what we have discovered as a church is that for all of its merits, there are also limitations to the grand idea of pluralism.
To be sure, the famed dictum of “unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, and charity in all things,” is a wonderful goal, though John Wesley was hardly the first person to espouse it. You can find the quote at least a century before him, in fact, in the writings of a Catholic Archbishop who ended up attacking both the papacy and the English church before eventually being declared a relapsed heretic unable to be in unity with anybody. As wonderfully aspirational as the motto might sound, thus, it simply does not work when people cannot agree on what the “essentials” actually might be.
All of which is why I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that fifty-two years after its founding, the UM Church must likewise now be reformulated. And though there is no perfect plan, the recently announced “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation” would seem to be the best proposal that will come before the General Conference in May. For the Protocol will allow for those of varying theological and social understandings to follow their conscience without the continual acrimony and ideological struggle that has marked our denomination for decades.
Traditionalists, for instance, will be able to retain what have been the historic beliefs and practices of Methodism, though in a new wineskin that will also allow for a more local and lay-centered polity. Progressives, with the addition of a regional conference for the United States, will be empowered to pursue their vision of a church with a broader understanding of sexual ethics, identity formation, and ever-emerging revelation of God and God’s Word. Centrists will be free to embrace their pragmatic approach to ministry. And those in the central conferences outside of the United States will have liberty to decide which expression of Methodism best matches their own understanding, discerning whether simply retaining the current name and logo is important enough to remain organically affiliated with those espousing practices with which they may not agree.
Again, the Protocol is not perfect. Some on the progressive side may question why conservatives should receive twenty-five million dollars, forgetting that Methodists of many opinions contributed those funds in the first place over a rather long period of time. And others on the conservative side may think that the amount is not in any way commensurate with what traditional church members have poured into our collective life for decades.
Likewise, many traditionalists may wonder why they should be the ones to give up the denominational name and apparatus when they have, in fact, prevailed in every General Conference vote since 1972 and it is those within the progressive caucus who have not only defied our common Discipline but brought us to this brink of separation in the first place. Some have even said that it feels like we are being paid off just to go away.
But in the end, the more significant result of adopting this Protocol will be that churches, or even annual conferences, of any persuasion will be able to follow their conscience out of the UM Church should they feel the need to do so without the penalty of loss of any of their local properties and resources. And that is a provision whose value cannot be overstated. For relaxing the Trust Clause is like loosening someone’s grip around your neck and being free once more to not only breathe but to go where you may feel God is leading you.
In that regard, it will be critical for clergy, congregations, and conferences to clearly understand just exactly what the outlines of the emerging realities may be. In order to continue to support the understandings which the world-wide United Methodist Church has prayerfully and consistently embraced over its entire history it will probably be necessary to leave not Methodism but The United Methodist Church. For without doing so, all of us will remain stuck in an endless “Groundhog Day” of debate, dissension, disobedience, and disarray. The General Conference, bolstered by the growth of the denomination in Africa and elsewhere, may have the votes to retain the current stances on sexuality, for instance, but it will not have the power to enforce its decisions and so the resistance will only get worse.
On the other hand, should conferences and congregations be allowed to form a new expression of global Methodism, all kinds of exciting possibilities and ministry opportunities await us. Ideally, if annual conferences as a whole choose to make the shift, then the vast majority of our congregations will never even have to vote on the questions. But even if conferences do not change, local churches still can do so, choosing to align with a larger group that more closely mirrors their own convictions and aspirations.
All kinds of details still need to be worked out, of course. Pastors and congregations need to be afforded a transition period so that if clergy and churches choose separate paths there will still be a chance to make that shift more graciously without an immediate appointment change. And bishops too will have to determine their own destinies, with each of them honestly following their convictions no matter where they may lead.
There is still time, however, for those writing the specific language of the proposal to address such concerns, and at the General Conference there will still be the possibility of amendment. But if the gist of what has been proposed can be enacted, Methodists can do something rather remarkable which other Protestant bodies have been unable to accomplish: separating without all the acrimony and legal and financial fighting that has marked such divisions elsewhere.
My hope is that those of us who may leave the UM Church may go out as new missionaries to the world, ready to follow the original guiding vision of our movement, “to spread scriptural holiness” across the globe. And I genuinely wish that as these two new expressions of Methodism emerge, we will once again be able to look upon each other as brothers and sisters, or at least “cousins” in Christ, and not simply adversaries across a General Conference committee or assembly room.
Yes, if the Protocol is adopted, conservatives will walk away from much of what we have helped to build over the decades. But the words of Jim Elliot, the famed missionary of the last century, come to mind: “he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
The truth is that we cannot keep going the way we have been. And we dare not lose the gospel with which we have all been entrusted. The Protocol is at present our best pathway to peace.
The Rev. Dr. Chappell Temple is the lead pastor at Christ United Methodist Church in Sugar Land, Texas. He has also served as an adjunct faculty member for Perkins School of Theology. This editorial was originally written for the Wesleyan Covenant Association and is used here by permission.
by Steve | Jan 20, 2020 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Tom Lambrecht –
Faced with the possibility of an impending split in the denomination, United Methodists are rightly worried about the financial impact of the newly proposed Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation. Giving to the denomination’s general apportionments fell immediately after the special St. Louis General Conference last February. A number of annual conferences are struggling to meet their budgets. The General Council on Finance and Administration has proposed an 18 percent cut to the quadrennial budget for 2021-24.
Pensions
Many clergy, particularly retired clergy, are worried about their pension. Just as some employees and former employees of major corporations that have hit financial problems have lost part or all of their pensions, what would happen to UM clergy pensions if the denomination separates?
The good news is that all the proposed plans of separation have made provision for continuing clergy pensions at the current level. Wespath has developed plans and legislative language that would allow clergy in any new Methodist denomination to continue participating in the clergy pension program. Earned benefits would continue at the same level as previously expected. Unfunded pension liabilities would be allocated between the post-separation United Methodist Church and the new Methodist denomination(s), with no payments for these liabilities required.
The only exception to the continuation of pensions at the current level would be for congregations and clergy who go independent and do not align with a new Methodist denomination. In that case, clergy pension amounts would be converted to a cash balance, and they would lose the ability to see further growth in some parts of their pension program. And congregations that go independent would have to make a pension withdrawal payment that has been averaging between three and six times their annual apportionment. The incentive really is to align with a new Methodist denomination, rather than going independent.
(Retired clergy health benefits are set separately by each annual conference. Annual conferences of the post-separation United Methodist Church and the new Methodist denomination(s) will need to determine what health benefits they will give to retirees.)
Financial Support for New Methodist Denominations
One of the aspects of the newly proposed Protocol agreement for separation that appears unfair is the allocation of $25 million to a new traditionalist Methodist denomination that forms and $2 million to any other new Methodist denominations that might form. Progressives complain that a denomination they believe unjustly discriminates against LGBTQ people should not receive any money upon separation. Traditionalists believe that the amount of money is just a drop in the bucket compared to the total assets of the general church.
It is important to note that the Protocol agreement is the only proposal that came to any agreement about the amount of funding for the new Methodist denomination(s). The Indianapolis Plan team was unable to agree on this point and individuals submitted different proposals for how much money should be allocated. The UMC Next Generation Plan has no specific amount to be given to new denominations, but stipulates that General Conference budget a suitable amount to help with transition expenses. There is little confidence that General Conference can easily reach agreement on an amount of money without it turning into a major point of conflict. The fact that it is already agreed to in the Protocol makes it much easier to come to an agreement at General Conference. (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.)
Where did the $25 million come from? Here is how that calculation was arrived at. (Figures are taken from the General Council on Finance and Administration website – gcfa.org.)
Total assets held by the general church and its agencies amounts to over $1.536 billion dollars. But about half of that amount, over $753 million, is owed to others as liabilities. That leaves net assets of about $783 million. Of that amount, about $204 million is in buildings, property, and other fixed assets. Donor restricted assets total about $460 million. That leaves about $120 million in unrestricted assets that would be available for any kind of division of assets. (It proved unrealistic to expect to share in the proceeds of any buildings or property that might never be sold, and the mediation group did not want to cause the sale of buildings or properties. The legal complications that would be involved in trying to divide restricted assets proved to be too much to overcome, taking those assets off the table.)
The negotiation resulted in one-third of the $120 million being allocated for the new Methodist denomination(s), about $40 million. $2 million was set aside for potential other denominations that might form, while $38 million was set aside for a traditionalist denomination. Traditionalists agreed to forego one-third of their share ($13 million) to give it to fund ethnic ministry plans and Africa University. (The post-separation United Methodist Church agreed to set aside double that amount for the same purpose, $26 million, leading to a total of $39 million for ethnic ministry and Africa University. This represents continuing the current level of funding over the next eight years.) The goal with the ethnic minority funding is to ensure that some of the most vulnerable populations in our church are not harmed by the separation.
The $25 million that is left will be paid to the new traditionalist Methodist denomination over the four years 2021-24 in equal installments. It can come from apportionments paid to the post-separation United Methodist Church during that time, drawn from UM reserves, or come from other sources.
Apportionments
The General Council on Finance and Administration is looking at the possible impact on apportionments of a separation. It is undeniable that a significant loss of members and churches from the post-separation United Methodist Church would cause a decline in funding available to the general church agencies and programs. Since it is hard to forecast how many churches might separate, it is difficult for GCFA to budget for apportionments for the next quadrennium. The post-separation United Methodist Church will need to make adjustments to programs and denominational structure in order to account for reduced financial resources available.
By contrast, the new Methodist denomination(s) forming from this separation will be able to start with low overhead. For example, in its draft Book of Doctrines and Discipline, The Wesleyan Covenant Association envisions fewer and smaller agencies, capitalizing on partnerships with existing ministries. This would allow the denomination to care for essential functions, while preserving the ability to respond nimbly to changing needs of congregations and cultural circumstances. In addition, such denominational agencies will see their primary focus as resourcing local churches for mission and ministry. They should add value for the local church, not be a drain on its financial resources. The result should be dramatically lower apportionments in a new traditionalist Methodist denomination, with more money available for mission and ministry at the local level and beyond.
Is It Fair?
Talking about money is difficult. Money is often a symbol of our values, hopes, dreams, beliefs, and power. All of these non-monetary issues are drawn into discussions about money, particularly at fraught times in the life of a family or a church. Many traditionalist observers have voiced concerns that the amount of funding given to the new denomination upon separation is not commensurate with the resources that contemporary traditionalists and prior generations have contributed to the church over the decades. As legitimate as these concerns may be, the negotiated settlement was conceived in good faith based on the calculations and limitations shared above.
More importantly, this separation will test the faith of all of us – those who remain and those who separate. Do we really believe that “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills?” Do we trust God to supply our needs, both at the congregational and the denominational level? We will have a great opportunity over the next few years to step out in faith and trust the One who made us, who redeemed us, and who provides and cares for us.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | Jan-Feb 2020, Magazine Articles
By Rob Renfroe –
It’s time. General Conference 2020 will convene in just over four months. It’s time for a definitive solution to our differences over the authority of Scripture, marriage, and sexual ethics.
It’s time for General Conference to admit we can no longer be one church. Fortunately, most of us are now willing to admit this sad truth. There are still a few – primarily bishops, bureaucrats, and institutionalists – who are unwilling to acknowledge what the rest of us know to be true. Like Rip Van Winkle, waking up from a twenty-year slumber during which he missed the American Revolution, they seem to have slept through nearly fifty years of debate and the destructive vitriol of St. Louis. So, they offer an outdated regional conference solution that leaders of all theological perspectives have said is a non-starter.
But most of us are willing to admit we are not one and no plan can keep us together. UM-Forward, a leading progressive caucus within the UM Church, has proposed legislation that would dissolve the denomination and create four new churches. The UMC Next Plan, the work of primarily centrist leaders, proposes liberalizing the denomination’s sexual ethics and allowing traditionalists to leave. What’s known as “The Indianapolis Plan,” put together by a coalition of progressives, centrists, and traditionalists, calls for a respectful and amicable separation and the fair distribution of the denomination’s assets.
It’s time to admit we are not one church. Instead of attempting to hold us together by coercion, trust clauses, or out-of-touch plans that deny the reality of our differences, it’s time to admit we cannot be true to ourselves and walk with each other. Most of us are now willing to acknowledge this reality.
It’s time to redefine “winning.” In the past a “win” for traditionalists was keeping the Book of Discipline true to Scripture and finding a way to make the bishops enforce it. A win for progressives was changing the church’s sexual ethics so that pastors could marry gay couples and practicing gay persons could be ordained and appointed to serve local churches. “Centrists,” I believe, thought of winning as making enough room for all views and practices – and to do so in such a way that their churches would not be disrupted by these issues or have to vote on which sexual ethic to adopt.
It’s time to admit the ways we have defined winning in the past has kept us embroiled in an ugly and destructive battle. Each group has believed their views are true to the will of God. So, they have reasoned, it is only right that they fight to control the future of the church and create a denomination that embraces their beliefs.
After fifty years of fighting to win the church, where are we? At a place where the church has lost. The UM Church in the U.S. has declined precipitously in membership, attendance, and finances throughout this debate, and even more rapidly since the special General Conference last February. St. Louis presented us in the worst light possible to lost people needing the love of God and the blessings of Wesleyan Christianity. Great work is being done by local congregations, but the UM Church is not winning.
As long ago as 2004, Dr. William Hinson called upon United Methodists to admit the truth that we would never be united and proposed that the best solution was amicable separation. Castigated, condemned, and misrepresented, Hinson believed United Methodists would win not by fighting the same battle over and over again (which is exactly what we have done) but by setting each other free to pursue ministry in the ways we believe God would have us do.
It’s time to admit that a win for United Methodists is not one side out-voting or excommunicating the other. This is what the UMC Next Plan would do. It creates winners and losers. Centrists win and stay. Progressives win and can stay. Together they keep the spoils – the name and the assets of the church. Traditionalists lose and must leave – on terms dictated by the “winners.”
But the UM Church wins only if there is a negotiated, respectful separation which allows annual conferences and local churches to choose what direction their ministry will follow. This is what the Indianapolis Plan proposes – an amicable solution agreed upon before General Conference that is fair to all. No repeat of St. Louis, no winners or losers, no side getting its way at the expense of others or forcing its will upon those with whom they disagree. Power politics is not a win for the UM Church, and it’s not the way of Jesus.
It’s time to admit reality. Actually, a couple of realities. One is that the vast majority of United Methodists are traditionalists. In a UMCOM survey of U.S. United Methodists nearly half of those responding identified themselves as traditionalists – many more than those who defined themselves as centrist or progressive. Today more than half of all United Methodists live outside of the United States. And no one disputes that the vast majority, probably 90 percent, of non-U.S. United Methodists are traditional.
But there is another reality we need to admit. Evangelicals have little chance of forcing U.S. bishops to enforce the church’s prohibitions on marrying and ordaining gay persons. In many geographical areas of the country so many evangelicals have left the denomination, that pastors and congregations – and the bishops they elect – are predominantly progressive. Bishops are held accountable for their actions primarily by other bishops in their particular jurisdiction. This means that liberal bishops are answerable to other liberal bishops who applaud their disobedience and often share in it. A glaring example is a Western Jurisdiction bishop who is married to another woman and boasted of performing more than 50 same-sex weddings. In spite of a Judicial Council ruling stating that it was unlawful to consecrate her, she remains in office.
It is frustrating for traditionalists to be in the majority and for our views and the laws of the church to be so easily disregarded. But that’s reality and so is the fact that despite our greatly outnumbering progressives and “centrists,” we will never have the votes to elect orthodox bishops in the more liberal jurisdictions. Consequently, the disobedience of pastors, annual conferences, and bishops in these areas will continue with no real consequences.
It’s time to admit that it’s time, past time, to move on. Fighting the same battle the same way will produce the same results – anger, dysfunction and a church that is focused on itself rather than its mission. It’s time to stop denying reality and devising plans that act as if we are not irrevocably divided. It’s time to admit that we are not one church. It’s time to stop trying to win by outvoting the other side.
It’s time to trust God. We should do all we can to negotiate a plan that gives each segment of the church a fair portion of the general church assets, particularly ensuring the continued crucial support for annual conferences and ministries in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines. But whatever happens, we will be stronger, more focused on our mission, and more effective in making disciples of Jesus Christ when this battle is over. We do not believe our future will be determined by getting all that is rightfully ours. We trust that God’s grace will be sufficient for those who seek him, honor his work, and commit themselves to doing his will. It’s time to trust God and step into a faithful future.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By Steve Beard –
Her spiritual journey began by asking about a tattoo of Jesus on the wrist of a client. Aimee Burke cuts and styles hair in a hipster neighborhood in Toronto. “She partied a lot and was partial to coke,” reported The Globe and Mail, one of the largest newspapers in Canada. “Her hookups comprised partners both male and female. She was unhappy.”
The question about the image of Christ was the spark that got Burke to visit church. “I’m pretty sure I went to the service hungover from the night before,” she recalled. But she found herself weeping during the service. “I just felt less empty,” she recalled.
Burke’s is an unconventional conversion story, especially splashed on the pages of a newspaper in a country where the numbers of those who reject faith are on the rise. According to the news magazine Maclean’s, the percentage of Canadians rejecting religion (26 percent) is nearly the number of those embracing it (30 percent), with 45 percent saying they were “somewhere in between.”
“As the Christians would say, I’ve surrendered over my life,” Burke said. “I do everything. I pray in the morning, I pray at night, I read my Bible every day. … Now I’m waiting for marriage. I’ve been sober for almost two years.”
While church attendance numbers are not on the upswing for young men and women in her age demographic, Burke still detects a spiritual hunger. “I think people are looking for something to believe in,” she said, “even if it’s just themselves.”
This observation dovetails with the message of David Zahl’s book Seculosity. While it may appear that our modern culture has abandoned ancient religion, perhaps it is more accurate to surmise that we have merely replaced one set of orthodoxies, rituals, and dogmas for another in the seemingly religious pursuit of career, parenting, technology, food, politics, and romance.
“Bombarded with poll results about declining levels of church attendance and belief in God, we assume that more and more people are abandoning faith and making their own meaning,” writes Zahl. What these polls actually tell us, he believes, is that “confidence in the religious narratives we’ve inherited has collapsed. What they fail to report is that the marketplace in replacement religion is booming. We may be sleeping in on Sunday mornings in greater numbers, but we’ve never been more pious. Religious observance hasn’t faded apace ‘secularization’ so much as migrated….”
Zahl observes that “we fail to recognize that what we’re actually worshipping when we obsess over food or money or politics is not the thing itself but how that thing makes us feel – if only for a moment. Our religion is that which we rely on not just for meaning or hope but enoughness.” Successful enough? Happy enough? Thin enough? Desired enough? Perhaps, good enough?
One of the cruel elements of the modern-day transfer of religiousity is the inescapable absence of grace. After all, careerism, technology, and politics don’t appear to know how to speak the language of mercy, peace, and love.
“What makes Christianity a religion of grace, ultimately, is its essential revelation of a God who meets us in both our individual and collective sin with a love that knows no bounds, the kind of love that lays down its life for its enemies,” writes Zahl. “Christianity at its sustaining core is not a religion of good people getting better, but of real people coping with their failure to be good.”
Aimee Burke told the newspaper that all the jokes about saying Hail Marys when she swears at work are worth it. “This is going to sound really Christian-y,” she said, “but it felt like the chains came off of me.”
Interestingly enough, that is the very imagery used in “And Can It Be?,” the beloved hymn written by Charles Wesley in 1738. “Amazing love! How Can it be/ That thou, my God, should die for me!”
For the world outside the four walls of our churches, the good news about faith in Jesus Christ is most notably not about the trappings and shortcomings and failures of church leaders, congregations, and ecclesiastical politics. Instead, it is exclusively about the “amazing love” Wesley poetically addressed.
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay / Fast bound in sin and nature’s night; / Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray, / I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; / My chains fell off, my heart was free; / I rose, went forth and followed Thee.”
Even wrapped in 18th century language, Wesley’s refrain reflects the heartfelt testimony of Christian believers around the globe. The image of being unshackled universally resonates.
In an illuminating essay entitled, “I Spent Years Searching for Magic – I Found God Instead,” Dr. Tara Isabella Burton describes a time in her life of wavering between being a Wiccan and believing in nothingness, years not long ago “where the world seemed too bereft of significance to bother.” Dreamily, she longed for life to be more like a novel, a poem – something miraculous and with flamboyant pizazz. “I wanted magic. The kind of magic that transforms. Frogs into princes. Women into trees. Loneliness into poetry.”
As a student and travel-writer, Burton scrambled frantically from one exotic wanderlust destination to another, experimenting with fleeting romances, red wine, and tarot cards. “I wanted to outrun the Nothing,” she wrote for Catapult. “There was nothing I would not have sacrificed…. I hit bottom, in a thousand different ways, and got what I wanted, in a thousand more….”
One day, she stopped running. “I found myself sitting eyes downcast in a midtown church with stained glass windows and Gothic arches and incense and magnificent voices proclaiming the glory of whatever poetry was pointing toward.”
Burton embraced a faith that “proclaimed a sanctified world, and a redeemed one – an enchanted world, if you want to call it that – but one where meanings were concrete. It offered me not just a sense of emotional intensity, but a direction in which to channel it. It contained magic not for the sake of magic, but rather miracle for the sake of goodness. God died and came back from the dead not because magic was real, but because love was stronger than an unmagical world.”
Burton understands the difficulty of stepping out in faith to those who live in uncertainty: “God was made man, and died, and came back from the dead – which is an utterly absurd thing to say if you are not Christian, and even if you are,” she wrote. Nevertheless, there is a compelling magnetism and spiritual allure to the ancient proclamation that Christ died, Christ rose, and that Christ will come again.
“It is a story not just about the possibility of a world with meaning in it, but a story about a world where the meaning is, quite specifically, and utterly fully, love. It is a world that is predicated upon the love of a creator who has built a good world, and who – when sin afflicts it – comes into that world, in all his vulnerability, in all his mortality to save it. Love birthed the world; love redeems it; love sanctifies it. Our very humanity, our very existence, is contingent upon it.”
In a different era, it was Charles Wesley’s duty and gift as the poet to describe the Christ-centered liberation of the soul. “No condemnation now I dread; / Jesus, and all in Him is mine! / Alive in Him, my living Head, / And clothed in righteousness divine, / Bold I approach th’eternal throne, / And claim the crown, through Christ my own.”
Strangely, it all kind of connects if you saw the face of Jesus on a wrist in a hair salon. Second chances at life work like that.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
