Category: Photos

Legislative votes, MIND lunch part of packed day

 

The third day of annual conference had everything, from moving testimony to parliamentary wrangling, legislative victories and defeat and more. Our witness and challenge to the conference took many forms – t-shirts, armbands, speaking and singing.

The highlight of the day was Mark Miller’s address to a packed room at the MIND lunch. “My God-given gayness is not up for a vote by some misguided Methodist,” said Miller, who is not only the best known worship leader and music director in the United Methodist Church but also the son, grandson, brother and cousin of United Methodist clergy. With humor, passion and extraordinary grace, Miller talked about how the church needs LGBT people and how the power of God’s love is stronger than fear. It is God’s love, he testified, that makes it possible to continue to love and serve the United Methodist Church even amidst the bitterness and pain we experience because of the church’s continued prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people.

Miller also brought his gifts of music to the MIND lunch, as did Nehemiah Luckett, who taught the group two songs that they later performed on the mezzanine of the annual conference floor.

Challenge to the bishop: “Will you stand with us?”

Bishop Park came to the lunch as well. In introducing him, MIND Chair Dorothee Benz noted that MIND leaders have met with him numerous times and have seen him moved by the injustice suffered by LGBT people at the hands of the church. Then she issued a direct challenge to him:

At the same time, what gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender Methodists need to hear from you is a public acknowledgement of that injustice. We long to hear you say that you believe the church’s exclusion of us from ministry, from marriage and even sometimes from membership is wrong. We ache to hear you say that the church must change those rules if it is to be true to its calling.

This conference has affirmed dozens of times over several decades its opposition to our denomination’s exclusionary rules. We ache to hear you say the same. The silence from the stage of our annual conference has been deafening.

And so I ask you, on behalf of the 500 members of MIND and all those gathered here today, will you stand with us? Will you tell us now – and more importantly will you tell the annual conference from that stage this afternoon – that you support our full inclusion in the life of this church that we serve and love?

Bishop Park’s response was disappointing. He chose not to acknowledge the request nor to state his own views on church rules. He did say “Our God is not finished with our church yet….I take this journey with you.”

We can resolve to oppose discrimination, but cannot tell LGBT people

After lunch, in the plenary session debating resolutions before the body, Bishop Park ruled one of our resolutions out of order. “Ministry to the Marginalized: Welcoming LGBT People into NYAC” was amended twice in an effort to change the bishop’s ruling, but he still ruled that it was in violation of the Book of Discipline. That ruling was challenged by Benz, and in accordance with the procedures spelled out in the Discipline, a written request for a ruling of law from the bishop was filed that evening (signed by Benz and MFSA chair Kevin Nelson). This requires the bishop to explain in writing why he ruled the resolution out of order, a decision that will then be appealed to the Judicial Council.

The resolution, which had been written in consultation with counsel from RMN and MFSA to ensure that it did not violate the Discipline, calls on the conference to take out advertisements in LGBT publications that express the conference’s “heartfelt regret for the harm inflicted on LGBT people through the UMC’s homophobia and discrimination, and…share in these advertisements that NYAC has long been opposed to UMC policy on homosexuality and welcome and invite LGBT people to worship in NYAC churches.” The ads are to be paid for by voluntary contributions (because the Discipline prohibits the use of conference funds to “promote homosexuality”).

In challenging the bishop’s ruling on the floor, Benz emphasized that all the resolution seeks to do is to tell other people what our conference has already resolved and stated it believes. How can it be “out of order” to tell the very people affect by our pronouncements what they are? If we can pass resolutions saying we oppose discrimination, but we cannot tell those being discriminated against, what is the point?

Armbands witness now in its sixth year

Despite the shock of the ruling, there was also good news on the conference floor that afternoon. The three other resolutions MIND had submitted were passed, as were reconciling resolutions from Park Slope UMC and Mary Taylor Memorial UMC.

In the evening, while Benz and Nelson worked to finalize the written request for a ruling of law two dozen MIND volunteers handed out 1,000 armbands to the clergy and guests arriving for the ordination service. This witness, now in its sixth year, marks our solidarity with those who are excluded from ordination simply because they are gay.

On Saturday, MIND’s witness continues with a creative display during the conference’s “Momentum of Ministries” festival. Our theme is “welcome home” and we’ve created a space to invite people into that has everything from a fridge to comfy chairs and a kitchen table with placemats that say “you have a place at this table.” We also have 1,500 rainbow M&M cookies to hand out – how can we fail?

The main order of business on the second day of annual conference, Thursday, June 10, was discussion and debate of resolutions in legislative sections, and LGBT issues took center stage for most of the four hours that Section 3 met. The four resolutions that MIND had initiated and drafted were all passed and will come to the plenary floor Friday. Several other resolutions concerning LGBT people, which MIND supported, also passed, as did an important petition co-sponsored by MIND calling the church to action in opposition to the recently passed anti-immigrant law in Arizona. Legislative section members also voted to support the New York City living wage campaign.

There was, as in past years, a minority of opposition to our cause of justice for LGBT people. In one instance, someone took strong offense at the passage in the resolution on hate crimes that names the UMC’s official prejudice and discrimination as factors that contribute to a hostile and dangerous environment for LGBT people. An amendment to strike that language was narrowly defeated and provoked a passionate response from MIND supporters, who emphasized that the church’s words and actions do have an effect in the larger society.

A highlight of the day was the MFSA dinner, which this year honored Rev. Joe Agne and Deaconess Dana Jones for their tireless advocacy for the Social Gospel. In her remarks Jones reflected on her career as a journalist and her call to tell the stories of the voiceless. She shared this realization with the assembled listeners: “God is not objective. God takes sides. And God ask us to take sides.”

For his part, Agne called for a response of ecclesial disobedience to the “abusive and unjust” anti-gay rules of the UMC. He reflected on Martin Luther King’s prophetic insistence that we have an obligation to disobey unjust laws, and on the critical condition of the church resulting from the loss of the gifts of so many LGBT people and allies. He ended by leading us in singing Holly Near’s gay rights anthem “We Are a Gentle, Angry People.”  

Friday’s agenda is a full one for both the conference and MIND. Plenary debate of resolutions will start today, and it is clear from the schedule that conference planners have not allotted sufficient time for meaningful discussion. It’s not clear how that will be addressed. Meanwhile, MIND’s lunch with keynote speaker Mark Milller will be the highlight of our day.

Friday is also MIND t-shirt day, when we ask everyone to wear our distinctive purple shirts as a visible witness for an inclusive church. At the ordination service, we will once again hand out blue armbands to lift up those called by God to ordained ministry but rejected by the church.

The 211th session of the New York Annual Conference began Wednesday, June 9, 2010, under the theme of “building up a healthy body of Christ,” with MIND’s witness there to remind all that “the body of Christ needs the gifts of all its members to be healthy,” as one of our banners says.

Even as we were still hanging the banners and putting out flyers, people were stopping at the MIND table to find out who we are, to join MIND, to buy a t-shirt, to connect. MIND volunteers were so busy talking to people they never got away for dinner.

At the official opening of the annual conference in the evening, Bishop Park gave an Episcopal address that focused on the need for the church to “bear fruit” by “producing more disciples.” He began by taking note of the church’s decline in membership. “We keep losing people as they move away or pass away,” he said, and their ranks are not replenished by new members. He neglected to acknowledge that the church also pushes away LGBT members and potential members and that many have chosen to walk away from the UMC because they cannot abide its prejudice against gay and lesbian people.

While the bishop said that “radical change” was needed in order or the church to have a “viable future,” his address did not lay out any proposals for change. The Gospel lesson for the evening was John 15:1-17, in which Jesus commands his followers to “love each other as I have loved you.” Bishop Park missed an opportunity to not only acknowledge how the body of Christ has been maimed by the church’s exclusion of LGBT people, but also to spell out the radically inclusive nature of Jesus’s love that should guide us to take extra efforts to welcome and embrace the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed.

On Thursday, legislative sections will discuss and debate resolutions, including the four resolutions MIND has submitted this year.

There are four days every year when we have a unique opportunity to be in ministry with the entire New York Annual Conference at its annual conference session, which this year will be June 9-12 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island. MIND’s annual conference witness puts the inconvenient fact of the church’s discrimination before the entire conference and seeks to move people to action in response.

Join us in our witness by attending the MIND lunch, with guest speaker Mark Miller; wearing your MIND t-shirt on Friday as a visible witness to your belief in the welcoming, inclusive church; wearing an armband at the ordination service in protest of the church’s exclusion of  lesbian and gay people from ministry; helping staff the MIND table; and other activities and events. Go here for more, including copies of the resolutions MIND has submitted to annual conference.