Park Slope United Methodist Church

The last year has been an incredibly active one for PSUMC’s Reconciling Committee. By most measures it has been a very successful year: We held a very successful public forum; mobilized in support of Beth Stroud; began a study group series to increase our biblical and theological literacy; played a key role in fostering dialogue and coordination among reconciling activists and churches throughout the New York Annual Conference; created and distributed outreach material in the LGBT community; and most notably, wrote and campaigned for a bold petition at annual conference, organizing a highly visible presence. In doing all this, we engaged our entire congregation; literally dozens of people played an active role in multiple events and projects, and many of the church’s most respected leaders came during the course of the year to be committee stalwarts and key players in our strategic thinking and planning. Yet despite all these signs of success, the reality we face after such a remarkable year is a denomination that has moved in that time only to further exclude lesbian and gay people. We are left feeling at once heartened by the strength of PSUMC’s witness for inclusion and devastated by the larger church’s deepening prejudice.

In December 2004, PSUMC members responded to the trial and defrocking of Beth Stroud with a show of solidarity; 37 people wrote messages of support to Beth, which we gathered and sent on. They were posted as an ensemble from PSUMC on Beth’s website. The Reconciling Committee also organized three viewings of The Congregation , the PBS documentary on First United Methodist Church of Germantown (FUMCOG) and Beth Stroud’s coming out. In April 2005, we organized a special prayer service on the eve of Beth’s appeals hearing; we sent letters of invitation to all UMC churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan . In October, a small delegation from PSUMC visited and worshiped at FUMCOG on the Sunday before Beth’s Judicial Council hearing.

On January 23, 2005, the Reconciling Committee hosted an event featuring Sue Laurie , from the Reconciling Ministries Network, and Rev. Taka Ishii, then of Metropolitan-Duane UMC and a longtime activist in the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA). The event, titled “Lurching towards Leviticus: Church Law vs. God’s Law,” turned out some 65 people—despite 17 inches of snow and closed subway lines during one of the city’s worst snowstorms in decades.

The jarring juxtaposition of our successful event and all the great energy that came out of it with the continued intransigence of the church—as painfully evidenced by the then recent trial and conviction of Beth Stroud—led PSUMC’s Reconciling Committee to a time of reflection and strategizing about what to do next. Out of that grew our decision to call for civil disobedience against the church’s discriminatory rules. We came to believe that nothing short of active resistance would be enough to bring about change, and moreover, that anything short of active resistance was complicity in the injustice. “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a text we read and re-read and quoted, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” We translated the call for civil disobedience into a petition to NYAC calling on the entire conference to defy church law and honor God’s call to inclusion. The petition was backed unanimously by our church council. We then set out on a two-month campaign to publicize and build support for the petition. We pulled together activists from different churches and began planning a visible, organized presence at annual conference in June.

Our visibility at annual conference was unavoidable, thanks in part to something we called the “guerilla post-it campaign.” Dozens of activists covered the conference facility with 3x3 inch post-is with reconciling messages, such as “Open the doors!” “Knock knock” “WWJD? Open the doors!” “Door jammed? Pass petition 305” etc. We handed out flyers and armbands during the ordination ceremony, and about half the clergy as well as half the laity there wore the armbands. The petition was debated and passed unamended by the legislative section, “Ministries of Advocacy,” and then debated on the plenary floor the next day. A watered down version was passed that did not include the clear “resolved” imperative to act in civil disobedience against unjust rules but that did keep strong language in the “whereas” paragraphs affirming the radical inclusivity of God’s love and the failure of the UMC’s Book of Discipline to live up to it.

In the weeks after annual conference we wrote up our experience in a report called “Faith, Hope and Post-its: Raising the Bar at Annual Conference,” which we have distributed widely.

During the spring as we were building support for our petition we decided that our increased visibility and bold call for civil disobedience required a deeper grounding in a biblical understanding of the inclusive theology we were so passionately defending. In response, we began organizing a study group series using the text What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality. There was widespread interest in the study groups, although for scheduling reasons we were only able to hold one group in the spring. This fall we’ve postponed resuming the groups until 2006, not for lack of commitment or interest, but only because there are so many other projects engaging our energy and time.

Out of that initial study group in the spring grew an idea that has developed into its own project. Members of the study group compiled a few Bible verses that reflect the radically inclusive love of God. These are listed on a simple palm card, with a two-sentence introduction about how the Bible is a book about love, compassion, ethics and justice, not sexuality; and how we hope that these verses bring people comfort and faith in the all-encompassing love of God. The palm card was conceived as an antidote to the hateful and exclusionary language that far too many Christians accept and repeat. The palm cards were first distributed at the annual Gay Pride march in Manhattan in June 2005—they were a huge hit! We ran out of the hundreds of cards we had in only a few blocks. It was an incredibly satisfying experience to be able to bring a message of love to so many who have been scorned by the church.

In the wake the initial palm card success, we have made them the starting point of a deliberate effort to reach out to gay and lesbian communities and to the Park Slope community where PSUMC is. Although the idea hasn’t been implemented yet, the first planned step is to leave a stack of the palm cards in community places—from coffee bars to bookstores, community centers, the local food co-op, etc.

Over the summer, we tried to slow down a little and rest. We used that time to reflect, deliberate and plan strategically for the year ahead.

We sent a delegation of three people to the Reconciling Ministries Network’s (RMN) Convocation weekend in Lake Junaluska over Labor Day weekend. We raised the money to cover all the expenses, from airfare to accommodations, registration and meals, in a series of fundraisers in July and August: First, a special collection during worship, and then a series of three stoops sales, for which PSUMC members generously donated a ton a stuff. Our three representatives arrived in North Carolina with a real mandate from PSUMC and a palpable sense of being supported by the entire congregation. The Convocation conference gave us national visibility (we brought copies of “Faith, Hope and Post-its” and the palm cards, and were invited to do a presentation about our activism), a much better feel for the experience of LGBT Methodists outside the relatively friendly environment of New York City , and many networking opportunities.

Those NYAC members present at Convocation met as a group and renewed the efforts begun in the spring to share ideas and coordinate more closely across congregations. That group sent a letter to Bishop Jeremiah Park, and with his response a month later, we feel like there is an opening for dialogue with our bishop on issues of concern to LGBT Methodists. A conference-wide meeting was also held in November, and a larger one is planned for January 8.

In the meantime, PSUMC’s Reconciling Committee has also been continuing its emphasis on non-violent resistance to the anti-gay rules of the church. As a matter of policy, PSUMC does not conduct weddings or holy unions because we refuse to endorse the exclusionary basis on which this sacrament is recognized by the UMC. “As an inclusive Christian community, we refuse to discriminate against one another,” our policy states, adding, “we will work to remove discriminatory policies in the UMC Book of Discipline, which offend against Christ’s teaching that we love one another as God loves us.” This stance—like the civil disobedience we advocated in our annual conference petition—is an active form of resistance through its refusal to be complicit in unjust institutions. If this form of resistance were better publicized and spread to other churches we believe it could be a compelling witness to others, and possibly, a serious challenge to the UMC’s biased rules. Thus we have spent time this fall to promote and discuss the policy within PSUMC and to consider ways in which we could broaden this witness. On November 6, we held a well-attended all-church forum to brainstorm ideas, and we will soon be following up with a concrete proposal for steps we can take. These are likely to include small things to increase visibility of the policy both within PSUMC and the community; a probable big public event in February (hopefully without 17 inches of snow); and efforts to let other churches know what our policy is.

Most recently, PSUMC members have responded in sorrow and outrage against the series of Judicial Council rulings that further exclude LGBT people from the church, most especially Decision 1032. Many members of the church sent letters to Bishop Park , the Council of Bishops and/or the Judicial Council, and we have met as a committee to discuss our further response.

There is a great deal of work to be done, and many committed people at PSUMC actively partaking of that work. We have no dearth of ideas or dedication; but what we do lack is the confidence that the United Methodist Church is moving in a direction away from exclusion and towards fulfilling its call to reflect the wonderful, all-encompassing, inclusive love of God.

Respectfully submitted,
Dorothee Benz
PSUMC Reconciling Committee Chair
12/1/05