More Attacks on the United Methodist Church

But, as David Byrne Would Say: "Same As It Ever Was"

When our United Methodist Church finally ended our uncivil culture war last year, and pathalogically divisive conservatives left for a new denomination, many of us hoped for a new age where we would be free to practice our faith as Jesus’ Holy Spirit has given us vision to do so.

And, thanks be to God, that is mostly true.

I am hearing anecdotal evidence of new life, new ministries, new hope in many of our local churches. At my own church, we average 15-20 visitors almost every week (not a preacher number…). Many other UM churches are being seen by their neighbors as providing a much needed blend of spiritual sustenance and social justice faith in these troubled times.
None of this surprises me. That’s our calling, and it’s always been so.

No, as I’ve often said, I don’t expect our churches to explode into “megachurches.”
But, yes, I do indeed predict this will continue.

But what I need outsiders (and insiders) to understand is what is happening now, and what we are fighting against.

For more than fifty years now, our United Methodist witness of faith has been attacked, both outside and from within. In fact, to my reading of history, there has never been a time since the 1970s when the social teachings and witness of the United Methodist Church has not been gauged as a “threat” to religious conservatives.

And so, over the years, religious conservatives have tried to destroy the United Methodist Church through various means: Manipulation of national media, then an impressive painfully divisive “coup from within.”

And now we learn: through the power of the Federal Government itself to silence and intimidate our social witness.

It’s time to name it all. And that’s why I’m writing today.

What Happened This Week

This week, no doubt at the direction of the Trump Administration, the US Congressional Committee on Homeland Security has sent letters to more than 215 “NGOs” demanding information about their work with immigrants.(¹)

Heather Hawn at UMNews has the whole story here.

United Methodists have a long and rich history of supporting the rights of immigrants and migrants.

For those unfamiliar, here is a brief summary from one of our general church agencies.

And here is a recent resolution, passed just last week, by our own “Horizon Texas Conference.”

Among other things, that resolution said that churches in our annual conference should:

“Oppose all laws and policies that attempt to criminalize, dehumanize or
punish displaced individuals and families based on their status as migrants, immigrants or refugees.
Decry attempts to detain displaced people and hold them in inhumane and unsanitary conditions.
Challenge policies that call for the separation of families, especially parents and minor children.
Oppose the existence of for-profit detention centers that are used for the purpose of detaining migrants, immigrants, and refugees including minor children.””

My own collected writings on immigration and Christian faith go back two decades, and can (mostly) be found here: “Because You Were An Alien”

My point in listing these things to to make clear: NONE OF THIS is a “new witness” for us. I know that atheist friends, people of other faiths, exvangelicals, etc…are often suprised to hear this. But it’s true.

This has been, part and parcel of our Christian faith…what Jesus and our Holy Bible call us to…for DECADES.

What IS new is: The Federal Government stepping in to create fear, indecision, and anxiety among Christians who don’t agree with their very narrow view of Christian faith.

This isn’t the only action by the federal government affecting the United Methodist Church. Already this week, the Trump Administration has paused a normal, and decades-long policy of granting visas to children in Juarez to attend our United Methodist School in El Paso.

In the cross-border region of El Paso/Juarez, residents understand their mutual calling to minister to and with all people. That’s what it means to be in a specific “mission field.” And so, yes, Lydia Patterson Institute —for more than 100 years— has ministered to and with children in Juarez, by providing educational opportunities to them.

This work has been supported by Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. It’s been supported by United Methodists in seven “south central” states. And it’s never been questioned as a legitimate ministry.

But now, this visa-pause puts that work in jeopardy.

I wrote about that here:

Why This Is Happening Now

For years, religious conservatives have shrieked that they are being oppressed by the United States government. No evidence has ever supported this.

The evidence does support, however, state and federal agencies harassing both “mainline” and “liberal” churches, and using the levers of government itself to do so. This letter is simply the latest in a long line of harassment, intimidation, and threats to any Christian view that is not fundamentalist, evangelical, and Christian Nationalist.

State governments are doing this as well. In Texas, the claim is made that churches must display large and bulky signs in order to ban guns from sanctuaries: Even though a Christian moral opposition to guns is, for them, a “sincerely held religious belief.”

Every Church has THOUSANDS of religous beliefs…and at no time are we requred to list them on a sign out front of our doors. Demanding churches place a sign to be able to practice any ONE belief? That’s a pretty clear First Amendment violation.

I’d also remind readers that our own Attorney General (now US Senate candidate) sued a Catholic relief agency in El Paso recently.

His basic claim?

“They’re not really Catholic….they don’t celebrate the Eucharist enough…”

Yes, that’s literally the gist of part of one part of his legal brief.

State and local governments do not have the right to tell a faith community how to practice their religion. That’s literally the point of the first amendment, right there.

What this all points to is the following that the public really needs to understand:

Mainline and Progressive Christians —Catholics and Protestants— are indeed a threat to the fundamentalist, evangelical and Christian Nationalist project…because they are pesky reminders of how diverse Christian faith really is…actually, of how diverse religious faith in America really is.

The specific history that leaps to my mind when I read about this recent attempt is the attack on the National Council of Churches in the 1980s.

Religious conservatives, affiliated with the impressively organized, and cunningly named, “Institute for Religion and Democracy” launched a campaign to undermine the good work of the National Council of Churches. Within the same week in February 1983, stories “broke” in both Readers Digest and 60 Minutes, shrieking that the NCC was a communist front, funneling funds to Central American conflicts.(²)

None of it was true, of course.

Years later, when he retired, the longtime producer of 60 Minutes was asked “Did you ever regret any stories you ran in your long career?”

His answer? Yes, the story about the “National Council of Churches.”

Weeks later in 1983, the Washington Post took a breath, realized just how badly the mainstream press had been duped, and said this about the IRD’s efforts:

“Its grumblings about the council's replacement of "revolution for religion" are absurd, unless feeding, housing and educating the world's poor are revolutionary deeds.”

Indeed. Grumbling about feeding, housing, educating, loving…the poor, the vulnerable, the refugee…were indeed absurd. But, they were also absurdly effective.

Their decades-long efforts to split the United Methodist Church from within culminated in 2019, with “Moderate” United Methodists finally waking up to the truth that nothing would stop these conservatives from their mission to destroy us from within.

And now, after a breather of just six months or so, the attack shifts. Now, it’s a new/old group of Christian Nationalists —absurdly conservative evangelicals— within own federal government, who are repeating the same tropes and fear-mongering that McCarthy-era “anti-communists” did back in the 1950s, and that the IRD and later “Good News” repeated within the UMC over the past five decades.

As St. David of Byrne would say, “Same as it ever was…”

My Message to Those Outside the United Methodist Church/Mainline Protestantism

I am sure the United Methodist Church, and hundreds of other NGOs, will push back against these absurd witch hunts. But, stay tuned…

That said, when you criticize us for being feckless, boring, or unwilling to make social stands…please understand:
There has never been a time, not one moment in recent decades, when we were not under attack either by well-organized groups like the IRD on the outside, or by their internal counterparts like “Good News” on the inside.

Meanwhile, we’ve also always secular and atheists(³) on the left also attacking Christianity…with different theological rationales…but with the same goals.
And now, it’s happening again.

The same “freezing” you also see among your political friends, across our culture right now?
The barrage of accusations that leads one to turn inward, form a “defensive crouch” and to self-censor?

We’ve been fighting this for DECADES.

And we’ll keep doing it. Some of us were called “paranoid” back in the day for claiming these attacks were true. It sounded conspiratorial.

But, like most of us non-MAGA Americans now, I trust you can see: We were not wrong then in our concerns. And we are not wrong now, in these fresh attempts and fear and intimidation.
It’s a “new McCarthyism.” And it affects every American, to one extent or another. I’m simply laying forth the specifics of how it affects my own little “mainline protestant” world, right now.

We United Methodists sill continue to stand for justice on the issues of our day, even as we continue to fight off the attacks that come our way too that seem to come at us in every era.

Whether you’re a person of faith, atheist, or agnostic, we’ll keep showing up as we can, and continue God’s calling to love the least, the lost, and the left out.

1. I must be clear: This harassment is affecting MANY agencies working with immigrants. I only speak about the United Methodist Church because that is my faith tradition.

2. The National Council of Churches was also called “Communist” back in the 1950s, by McCarthy-era anti-communists…

3. In transparency, I often agree with those critiques…of slow moving hierarchies, of “cover ups” of sexual abuse…of churches often spending too opulently on themselves…of their exclusion of the LGBTQ community. My point is: It is literally the case that these often well founded critiques get mixed and blended-in with these intentional attack from the RIGHT as well.