A Witness to Conscience
On April 30, 2008 in Fort Worth Texas the General Conference of the United Methodist
Church voted not only to maintain condemnatory language concerning homosexuality in
the section of the Social Principles dealing with Human Sexuality (paragraph 161.G), but to significantly weaken the current statement of the church by deleting affirmative language and inserting further judgmental statements. Sadly, due to the limits of parliamentary procedure, delegates never had an opportunity to debate the merits of the majority report coming out of the Church and Society II Legislative Committee. This report, in the eyes of many, represented an honest, gracious and fair statement of the present reality within the United Methodist Church and held great promise for the healing of our church. (Both statements are attached.)
The Social Principles are not church law. They are intended, in the words of their
preface, to be “a call to faithfulness” and “instructive and persuasive in the best of the prophetic spirit.” We believe that the disparaging language of the adopted version of 161.G is neither faithful nor persuasive, and it is certainly not prophetic. It is instructive only to the degree that it indicates how far the United Methodist Church has to go before its motto of “Open hearts, open minds, open doors” becomes reality.
Recognizing that, from time to time, the legislative efforts of the church fail to keep pace with the leading of the Holy Spirit, and being further convinced that faithful United Methodists can never acquiesce to discrimination, no matter how many votes may be mustered in its service, we call upon the New England Annual Conference to do the following:
• Declare that we will not recognize the destructive and discriminatory language
contained in Paragraph 161.G as faithful, persuasive or prophetic.
• Charge the Conference Board of Church and Society with drafting an alternative
paragraph 161.G to be presented to the 2009 session of the Annual Conference for
its perfection and approval
• Disseminate that alternative paragraph to all of the churches in the New England
Annual Conference with the suggestion that it be appended as a spiritual
corrective to the 2008 Book of Discipline.
• Invite other annual conferences to join with us in this witness to conscience.
Respectfully submitted by the New England Chapter of the Methodist Federation for
Social Action, The New England Annual Conference Reconciling Ministries Committee
and the New England Annual Conference Board of Church and Society.
All of my poems are copyrighted by Raymond A. Foss, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. All rights reserved. Contact me at Ray Foss for usage. See all 19,840+ of my poems at http://www.raymondafoss.blogspot.com Poetry Where You Live.
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