by Steve | Sep 15, 2017 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Charles W. Keysor, Founding editor of Good News
The Risk of Renewal
By Riley B. Case-
When Charles Keysor wrote his article “Methodism’s Silent Minority” in the Christian Advocate in 1966, an article that basically launched the Good News movement, he spoke about numbers of Methodists who affirmed historic Methodism and were faithful and active in their local churches but were basically unrecognized and unappreciated in the larger councils of the church. Keysor referred to these orthodox believers as a “silent minority.” He suggested their numbers were larger than what church leaders had usually assumed.
Keysor’s analysis at the time was in contrast to liberal observers who insisted that “fundamentalism” (a pejorative label used to refer to all evangelicals) was a dying ideology with no future in the Methodist Church, or anywhere else for that matter. Keysor quoted his own professor at Garrett Seminary, Paul Hessert, who foresaw a continued eclipse of orthodox influence within the seminary-trained Methodist ministry, but who believed that such a perspective might continue among supply pastors and pockets of lay people.
Surprise! Something happened on the way to extinction. According to the 2003 book, United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake-Up Call, produced by a group called Information Project for United Methodists, and introduced with great fanfare to the press and to the Council of Bishops, Methodism is in danger of being “taken over” by this very “silent minority” Keysor spoke about.
In what appears to be a near-state of panic, The Information Project charges that “powerful,” “well-organized and funded” conservative renewal groups (the book refuses to refer to them as “evangelicals”) would take the church to a place where “diversity and tolerance and breadth of spirit are in short supply.” The “progressive” bishops, seminary professors, and board and agency staff people who dominate the Information Project characterize the renewal groups as those who “look backwards to times when knowledge was feared, questioning was suppressed, and imagination was squelched.”
The book is a call to action. It argues that the renewal groups and the point of view they represent are to be unmasked and resisted, presumably so that United Methodism can be kept pure for “diversity and tolerance.” Tolerance, in this case, is translated to mean anything that counters the traditional orthodox vision for Christian theology, marriage, and sexuality.
One reads United Methodism @ Risk with sadness. How is it that evangelicals have been so long in the UM Church and yet are so clearly misrepresented and misunderstood? How did evangelicals go from being people whose faith was criticized at one time for being “privatistic,” and “individualistic,” to persons who are really motivated by a certain social and political agenda? When did evangelicals move from being people who simply wanted to be left alone to do ministry in a United Methodist tradition, to being persons who are power hungry and want to take over the church?
The book is an attack on evangelical renewal groups — but it is more. It is an attack on the Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church and upon many of the most loyal of the church’s members. The alarm is sounded not against people in power who oversaw the monumental decline of membership within the last several decades, but upon the people who believe that the people who are in power (bishops, seminaries, and boards and agencies) are not serving them well.
Consider the typical renewal group supporter: here is a couple in their sixties who have been loyal United Methodist all their lives. They have held most of the church offices; they have taught Sunday school; they have tithed. They have lived through a succession of pastors, some good, and some, while sincere, who didn’t believe much. They have agonized over Sunday school material that they didn’t understand. They have wondered why their local church struggles while the nearby Baptist church thrives.
Our United Methodist couple is finding that a lot of their spiritual nurture is coming not from their church but from a neighborhood Bible study. They struggle on how to answer their friends who show them newspaper clippings of a United Methodist bishop who publicly scorns the church’s affirmation that Christ did truly rise from the dead.
Our couple’s own children, away from home, are not affiliating with a United Methodist church. One daughter, who claims she never heard the gospel in her home church, was converted in college through Inter-Varsity, and is active in an independent church. A son, after marriage, attended a United Methodist church in the city until he and his wife were attracted to a Nazarene church with an active children’s program.
The wife of our couple has been active in United Methodist Women, and enjoys the company of other women in the group, but finds the programs boring. The man has sat through numbers of charge conferences where a district superintendent talks grandly about “the connection” and the importance of paying apportionments. On Mission Emphasis week the “missionary” who speaks at their church is really a person who did a two-week volunteer mission trip to work on a church parsonage in another state. There was no mention of Jesus in the presentation.
Our couple has identified with Good News or the Confessing Movement or Aldersgate Renewal Ministries because they are offer a message of hope. They understand that each ministry is working for change in its own unique way. Our couple may not understand everything implied in the words “doctrinal integrity” but they are aware of the difference between preachers who preach on the necessity of being born again, and those who offer vague homilies on “hope” or “love.” They respond to a Mission Society missionary [now TMS Global] who is working on new church starts in Bolivia.
This couple, however, along with 90 percent of all other United Methodists, would fall in the category of what Bishop Joseph Sprague has labeled “Christo-centric exclusivism that ipso facto prepares the soil of stiff-necked, exclusivistic arrogance.” The people who support the evangelical renewals groups are not “extremists,” nor could they be considered “right-wing,” if one were to understand these words in the context of the whole of Protestantism in America (and around the world, for that matter).
A profile of the supporters of the several evangelical renewal groups shows them to be among the most loyal and faithful United Methodists in their local churches. They pay their apportionments and pray for their bishops. Many claim if it were not for one or several of the renewal groups they would no longer be United Methodist. Neither they, nor the groups they support, wish to “take over” the denomination for a very simple reason. They understand the essence of the denomination to be the local church, not the seminaries, nor the boards and agencies, nor the episcopacy. They also understand that the purpose of the church is to save souls and nurture disciples, not to make public declarations about government public policy.
This is not to say, however, that renewal group supporters, and perhaps the vast majority of United Methodists, are content that their own convictions are often undermined by the seminaries, their own understandings of the Bible’s view on celibacy and faithfulness are continually being challenged, and that their “leaders” claim to represent them while denouncing a fellow United Methodist who is President of the United States.
United Methodism is indeed at risk. It is in the midst of a 100-year decline. According to Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, in their book, Acts 
of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (University of California Press, 2000) the number of Methodist adherents in America has decreased from 84 of every 1,000 Americans in 1890 to 36 in 1990. The years of the decline correspond exactly to the years that liberalism and institutionalism have dominated Methodism.
From 1970 to 2003, membership of the United Methodist Women has declined by 54 percent. One would think, whether liberal or evangelical, that such statistics would call for some sort of reform, or at least some self-examination. Something clearly in not going well. Yet when the renewal groups call for reform of the Women’s Division it is absurdly interpreted as an attack on women. Women’s ministries are alive and well in numbers of churches, but are criticized as being “unofficial” because they do not have the blessing of the Women’s Division (United Methodist Women).
In their sociological analysis Stark and Finke distinguish between “low tension” and “high tension” churches. Low tension churches, where few demands are made (read “tolerance,” “diversity,” and “breadth of spirit”) are becoming increasingly irrelevant and are dying in America. High tension churches, with an emphasis on moral and doctrinal values, are growing. Stark and Finke argue that it seems impossible that once a group becomes low tension and starts down the road to decline, it can ever be reclaimed. There may be an exception, however, in United Methodism. If there is it will be because of groups like Good News and the Confessing Movement. They have done studies in several conferences to substantiate statistically what many of us already know instinctively, namely, that liberal churches are dying and evangelical churches are growing.
Stark and Finke are doing sociological work in a secular setting. If the Information Project really wants “dialogue” perhaps a discussion of the Stark and Finke book would be a good place to begin.
Riley B. Case is the author of Evangelical & Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon). He is a retired United Methodist clergy person from the Indiana Annual Conference, the associate director of the Confessing Movement, and a lifetime member of the Good News Board of Directors. This adapted essay originally appeared in the September/ October 2003 issue of Good News.
by Steve | Sep 11, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
The Woodlands United Methodist Church is one of the official distribution centers for the relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Harvey. Photo by Steve Beard.
By Walter B. Fenton
Local United Methodist churches across the country have rushed to support people trying to get back on their feet after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. And they are already preparing to assist those in the path of Hurricane Irma.
Along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico, teams of United Methodists have assisted thousands of people in the depressing, but necessary task of quickly removing drywall, carpeting, furniture, and appliances from homes flooded by Harvey’s torrential rainfall. Across the region 40 inches of rain fell in just three to four days, and in some areas total rainfall topped 50 inches. Communities that never expected to flood found themselves surrounded by a foot or more of water.
“Our church and community wanted do whatever we could to support people impacted by the flooding,” said the Rev. Jeff Harper, lead pastor at Evangelical UM Church in Greenville, Ohio. “One of our church members owns an 18-wheeler truck and he volunteered to drive it to Texas if we would fill it with supplies. We’re in the process of filling it right now.”
Harper explained they did not know exactly where to send the truck, but his team eventually got in touch with the Rev. Dr. John Hull, pastor of missions at The Woodlands UM Church, just north of Houston. Hull is playing a leading role in coordinating local and national efforts to assist flood victims.
“We don’t always understand exactly why tragedies like this strike people,” Hull said, “but we want people to know God will walk with them as they go through these experiences. As a church we’re in this for the long haul, and it is always moving to see the gifts God has given us rise to the surface as we seek ways to help others.”
Local government officials asked The Woodlands congregation to serve as a major distribution center for relief supplies
Marshall Perry, facilities engineer at The Woodlands United Methodist Church, unloads diapers and water to be distributed in the greater Houston area. Photo by Steve Beard.
in the area. During the storm, and in the days immediately following, the church’s gymnasium filled with cases of bottled water, food, cleaning supplies, diapers, clothes, and other items.
The Rev. Dr. Edmund Robb III, senior pastor of The Woodlands UM Church, reported that church members stocked its large gymnasium with relief supplies four times only to see it emptied it out four times in a matter of days. Church members have worked almost around the clock to assist people forced from their homes by the flood waters.
“Fortunately,” Robb said, “people continued to restock the gymnasium as quickly as it was emptied. The church will continue to serve as a distribution center for as long as local government officials ask us to do so. The response of the congregation has been tremendous.”
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) has organized an effective cleaning bucket campaign to channel local congregational involvement. (It has also been sending financial relief to respond to the severe flooding and mudslides in Sierra Leone – Advance #982450.)
The United Methodist News Service has published several articles in the past week detailing various ways United Methodists and their local congregations have responded to the storm that hit Texas and Louisiana.
When two members at Chapelwood UM Church in Houston realized the city’s 911 service was overwhelmed with calls, they created an app that helped police, fire departments, and volunteers quickly locate people who needed to be rescued.
Local churches quickly turned into shelters to house people driven from their homes.
And pastors prepared sermons to comfort people who face a long journey to recovery and to challenge others to help wherever they can.
United Methodists are now preparing to assist people in Florida as it braces for Hurricane Irma, one of the strongest storms on record to develop in the Atlantic.
Walter Fenton is a United Methodist clergyperson and an analyst at Good News.
by Steve | Sep 1, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Walter B. Fenton
Surely the psalmist was using flood in a metaphorical sense when he cried out,
“Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me” (69:1-2).
But for people from Corpus Christi to Houston and on over to Louisiana, the psalmist’s plea has seemed all too real these past several days.
Boy Scouts and veterans join members of The Woodlands United Methodist Church in packing supplies for evacuees of Hurricane Harvey. Photo by Steve Beard.
Our hearts break for families who have lost loved ones to the ravages of Hurricane Harvey’s strong winds and rain inducing floods. From the woman killed by a tree that crashed through her house to the valiant police officer who died trying to report for duty and to the family of six who perished in flood waters as they attempted to flee the disaster, we are left to ponder how fleeting and perilous our lives are amidst the powerful forces of nature. We feel small and helpless. We prepare as best we can, but know our best can easily be overwhelmed.
Thousands of people along the Gulf coast have had to abandon their homes with little more than a duffle bag and the clothes on their backs. They have taken shelter elsewhere, with family and friends, or among strangers in a church or a school gymnasium. They are left wondering when they can return home to assess the damage to their property and all their belongings. They need our thought and prayers, and our resources.
In the midst of the storm we turn to the comfort and reassurance of loved ones and even strangers who are going through the crisis with us. And of course, we rely on our faith that God will be with us even if the flood should overwhelm us.
Hurricane Harvey and its flooding rains struck close to home for the Good News staff. Some of us were able to ride out the storm in our homes, but others were forced to evacuate because of flooding. Some of us have sustained damage to our homes, but so far it is relatively minor compared to the grave challenges others are facing.
The entire Good News staff thanks all of you who sent emails, posted your thoughts and prayers on social media, or called us to note your concern and offer your help. Your words of support were a great encouragement. Thank you very much for your continued thoughts and prayers.
Veterans and Boy Scouts join members of The Woodlands United Methodist Church loading supplies for evacuees. Photo by Steve Beard.
Our attention now turns to assessing the damage, and to helping neighbors and strangers recover from the storm’s devastation. We have been reminded once again of the Apostle Paul’s great words: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Paul was no peddler of a glib theology. He understood that suffering, no matter its source (a vicious crowd or a terrible storm at sea), is a part of this life. But tenaciously, we cling to our rock and redeemer even when the flood threatens to overwhelm us.
Walter Fenton is a United Methodist clergyperson and an analyst at Good News.
by Steve | Aug 28, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
Before publishing the following commentary regarding complaints filed against Bishop Karen Olevito, Good News reached out to Bishop Grant Hagiya, president of the Western Jurisdiction’s College of Bishops. We asked him if “there [was] any information regarding this matter that [he] could share with us so we can include it in the article? What is the explanation for the unusually long delay regarding resolution or reports on the status of these complaints?”
Hagiya responded as follows: “Due to Judicial Council Ruling 1341, and under advisement of our legal counsel, we dismissed the original complaint without prejudice, and opened up a new complaint submitted in light of 1341 to deal with any issues pertinent to the new ruling.
“A new complaint supervising committee has been formed and will begin working on this new complaint.”
In light of his response Good News decided not to make any changes to the following commentary by our analyst Walter Fenton.
***
Bishop Grant Hagiya, UMNS
By Walter B. Fenton
According to a United Methodist News Service article published one year ago, Bishop Grant Hagiya, president of the Western Jurisdiction’s College of Bishops, said newly elected Bishop Karen Oliveto, an open lesbian married to a UM Church deaconess, “faces multiple complaints under church law.” One year later, and the church has not heard anything regarding the status of the complaints.
While the details of the complaints are confidential, they surely have to do with the fact that Oliveto’s marriage and her admission that she has presided at approximately 50 same-sex weddings constitute serious and serial violations of the UM Church’s Book of Discipline.
According to church law, the status of complaints against a bishop must be reported after 120 days. However, if the parties involved in the matter have not reached a resolution they can request an additional 120 days, and, if necessary, another 120 after that. Apparently, these requests were made, granted, and have now expired. And yet, the Western Jurisdiction’s Episcopacy Committee has failed to issue any report.
Consequently, Oliveto’s leadership in the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area remains under a cloud of suspicion. The episcopal area is comprised of the Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone annual conferences. Both recently reported financial challenges with the latter characterizing its situation as a “financial crisis.” It recently reported monthly revenue losses are ten times higher than they were in 2016. The conference is in jeopardy of exhausting all of its reserves by the end of the year. To be sure, other factors are contributing to these challenges, but Oliveto’s assignment has clearly exacerbated the situation.
Western Jurisdiction Bishops participate in Bishop Karen Oliveto’s consecration service. (Photo by the Rev. David Valera, PNW Conference)
However, it now appears the Western Jurisdiction’s bishops are attempting to indefinitely postpone any day of reckoning for their colleague. They think the church’s sexual ethics, teachings on marriage, and its ordination standards are wrong. While they are certainly entitled to their opinions, their actions – or lack thereof – are raising serious questions about the possibility for church unity and the trust required for it.
What comes of a church when some of its bishops cavalierly decide which laws they will and will not enforce? What comes of church unity when some of its leaders are patronizingly dismissive of values held by the vast majority of United Methodists across a global denomination, and yet continue to draw their pay checks from it? And what comes of trust when bishops give the appearance they are protecting one of their own when it comes to legitimate complaints?
The Rev. Karen Oliveto accepts her election by the Western Jurisdiction as a United Methodist bishop. At the time of her election, Oliveto was the senior pastor at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, Calif. Her wife, Robin Ridenour, stands behind her. Photo by Patrick Scriven, Pacific-Northwest Conference.
Oliveto’s election came after General Conference had agreed to table all petitions to change the church’s sexual ethics, and after it had authorized the Council of Bishops to appoint a commission to study the matter and present a definitive plan for resolving the long running debate at a called General Conference. Delegates, church leaders, and bishops left the conference with an understanding the church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality remained fully in force while also allowing time for the commission to do its work.
Heedless of all of this, the Western Jurisdictional Conference elected, consecrated, and assigned Oliveto anyway. In response, several bishops issued statements lamenting her election as a breach of the church’s covenant and its unity. The Council of Bishops’ Executive Committee, citing “the great importance of the matter,” encouraged the Judicial Council to take up the matter as soon as possible. And of course many United Methodists regarded her election as an event likely to tip the church towards separation or dissolution.
In short, Oliveto’s election has pushed the church to the brink of division, and its ramifications are taking a toll on worship attendance and giving all across the connection. But despite all of the turmoil it has unleashed, the Western Jurisdiction, which was in such a rush to elect Oliveto, is now stonewalling the complaints filed against her.
United Methodists rightly expect a just and timely resolution of this case. At this juncture, the Western Jurisdiction bishops’ failure to be forthcoming would be indicative of their arrogance and disdain for the wider church.
Walter Fenton is a United Methodist clergy person and an analyst for Good News.
by Steve | Aug 21, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
Dr. Scott Kisker
By Walter Fenton-
Dr. Scott Kisker’s recent essay on John Wesley, Methodism, and schism begins as so many often do. He quotes from Wesley’s famous sermon On Schism: “It is evil itself.” But just when we think Kisker is setting us up for another lecture on schism’s evils, his piece takes a different and refreshing turn.
Kisker, professor of the history of Christianity at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, offers a nuanced consideration of Wesley’s understanding of the church more broadly speaking, the movements and ideas that shaped his ecclesiology, and what ramifications they might have for United Methodists today.
However, before he launches into that portion of his essay, he reminds us what is often overlooked or minimized:
“With [Wesley’s] direct and strong statement against division, it is perhaps surprising that the Wesleyan Methodist tradition has produced as many bodies of Christians as it has, some living still: United Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Wesleyan Methodist, Free Methodist, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and Nazarene, to name a few, and these only within the confines of the United States. With a global perspective, given the independence of the descendants of British Methodism and the influence of Holiness and Pentecostalism, the divisions are legion. More surprising, given Wesley’s words, than the “schisms” that flowed from our movement is the fact that our movement itself depends on schism, separation, division, for its very existence” (emphasis added).
For Kisker, it simply will not do to cite Wesley’s sermon On Schism and think that settles the matter. He asks a number of penetrating questions with the assumption that the answers will more carefully contextualize the sermon, and so better understand Wesley’s ecclesiology and thoughts on schism. In light of church divisions throughout church history, he asks:
“Where is the church in all this? What is ‘the church’ according to Wesleyan categories? Did these numerous divisions divide the ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church’ or (since Wesley found the Nicene Creed too politically compromised) the ‘holy catholic church’? Were all earlier separations heretical? And which? Was Wesley a schismatic?”
According to Kisker, church unity for Wesley “does not primarily exist institutionally or even ritually in a shared sacrament of the Eucharist,” but rather the “‘oneness’ of the church is a unity through shared experience of the new birth and changed character.”
Wesley, Kisker points out, was certainly shaped by the Church of England and its Articles of Religion, and of course by the long history of the church catholic. However, as the quote above reveals, he was also shaped by Pietism, a movement more proximate to his time and place. And as Kisker notes, for Pietism “true unity in Christ was demonstrated in shared fellowship and missional cooperation across ecclesial divisions. Their ecclesiology acknowledged common cause and care across divisions of doctrine, and practice, yet did not seek to eradicate the divisions.”
As the founder and leader of the people called Methodists, Wesley borrowed heavily from Pietism, which enabled him to create a movement that found root in a variety of settings and able to make common cause with various bodies of believers. In Wesley’s sermon Of the Church, a reflection on Ephesians 4:1-6, Kisker says, he “turn[ed] aside any understanding of the unity of the universal church as primarily institutionally visible, or necessitating connection to one organization.”
To visualize Wesley’s ecclesiology, Kisker invites us to think in terms of a daisy, “with each petal being a congregation, connection, or denomination in which Christians gather. Each petal shares peculiar opinions, modes of worship, and practices of leadership and discipline that distinguish it from other ‘petals.’ The center circle, intersecting all petals, is the true church.” And for Wesley, differences among the petals or even divisions within them, cannot disrupt or fracture the unity of the true church at the center.
Kisker has five thoughtful takeaways from Wesley’ thoughts on schism in the broader context of his ecclesiology. We cannot do justice to all of them here, but suffice it to say that he asks us to do at least four things: (1) gain a deeper appreciation for the various global branches of the Methodist movement, and recognize that schism, separation, and division are a part of the movement’s lifeblood; (2) read Wesley’s remarks on schism in the context of his ecclesiology and the various movements that shaped it; (3) adopt a more humble stance about our place and impact on the church regardless of whether we remain united or separate; and, (4) recognize that “if we cannot hold each other accountable to any coherent expression of Christian ethics, if we cannot agree on explications of the General Rules, we are no longer one church, in the Wesleyan sense.”
We heartily commend Kisker’s essay for reading and studying in local church settings. To read the article, click
HERE.
Walter Fenton is a United Methodist clergy person and an analyst for Good News.
by Steve | Aug 14, 2017 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
James K.A. Smith
By Walter Fenton-
James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has recently sparked a healthy conversation about how the word “orthodox” (literally, “right belief”) is used these days, particularly when it is interjected into the volatile conversation regarding the church’s sexual ethics.
Among several thoughtful responses, Derek Rishmawy, a doctoral student in systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, offered his own gracious and learned response.
Smith pointedly expressed a concern shared by people across the theological spectrum:
“If the adjective ‘orthodox’ is untethered from [Christianity’s historic creedal confessions (e.g., the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and the great councils of the early church) that are rooted in Scripture], it quickly becomes a cheap epithet we idiosyncratically attach to views and positions in order to write off those we disagree with as ‘heretics’ and unbelievers.”
Ultimately, for Smith, it is a mistake to assume that just because a Christian affirms or allows for same-sex marriage or the practice of homosexuality, he or she is an unorthodox Christian believer.
Derek Rishmawy
Smith acknowledges that such affirmations cut against the grain of historical Christianity’s understanding of marriage and its sexual ethics, but argues labeling the affirmations “unorthodox” is to confuse the church’s core theological teachings with its ethics. And, as he rightly points out, the great creeds and councils of the church do not venture into a whole host of ethical issues.
His argument is not an attempt to legitimize same-sex marriage or a call to liberalize the church’s sexual ethics, but to caution that a careless use of the term “orthodox” runs the risk of applying it to issues that were never defined as orthodox or unorthodox in the first place.
Again, Smith’s essay is well worth a close read and due consideration. At a minimum, he challenges us to think about the historic understanding of the term and when it is or is not appropriate to use it.
Rishmawy is grateful for Smith’s essays and he acknowledges:
“The matter of sexuality and gender is one of the most controversial questions facing the church today. The conversations are inevitable and necessary, and we must not shirk them. Nor can we take them lightly. As Smith says, how we have these conversations matters. We need to conduct them with the love, grace, charity, and the courage of those whose lives are marked by the confession of God’s forgiveness.”
However, Rishmawy wonders if Smith has drawn too sharp a division between the church’s orthodox beliefs and its ethical standards. He says the church is presently contending with “current movements to normalize and sanction behaviors… that have been scandalous to it for 2,000 years.” So he writes:
“It doesn’t seem that the focus on sexual immorality is out of place, considering the focus it was given in the life of the early church. Consider the first church council, in Jerusalem (Acts 15). One of the first rules the apostles laid down for the Gentiles, in order that they be seen as Christians in good standing, was to abstain from ‘sexual immorality,’ a term which, in first-century Judaism, was largely informed by Leviticus 18, including its proscription of same-sex intercourse. This indicates just how central sexual ethics was to the practice and understanding of the gospel in the first century.
“Similarly, this focus continues in the writings of the Fathers. In fact, the Councils themselves had various canons attached to them which included much moral and ethical instruction beyond the specific definitions and creeds usually associated with them.”
For Rishmawy, an overly drawn distinction between the church’s ethics and its core theological confessions runs the risk of reducing some of its ethical standards to a simple matter of choice, with the assumption that they are not core to who we are as Christ followers. “Let me put it is this way,” he writes:
“Given this limited view of the term orthodoxy, it would be a coherent statement to say, ‘Joe is an orthodox Christian who believes adultery can be Christian behavior.’ Or, ‘Joe is an orthodox Christian who believes bearing false witness can be Christian behavior.’ Or, ‘Joe is an orthodox Christian who believes coveting can be Christian behavior.’ None of those statements is incoherent if ‘orthodox’ just means ‘formally aligns on key Nicene and Chalcedonian propositions.’ Yet it’s obvious in each case, somewhere Joe is severely out of line with the gospel (emphasis added).”
Both essays remind us how important it is for the church, from the sermon to the Sunday school class to the mission project, to constantly explore the nexus between our doctrine and the daily practice of our faith.
To read Smith’s essay and Rishmawy’s response, click HERE and HERE.
Walter Fenton is a United Methodist clergy person and an analyst for Good News.
