All the raki being sold and consumed in Turkey isn't buying and drinking itself; likewise the kumis in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, beer in Indonesia, etc.
The 'stans were Soviet until a generation ago and are still undergoing reversion to conservative Islam. Turkey is strongly under that tension. And Indonesia.
And "implacabl[y] homophobi[c]" according to you, so yes. You're trying to claim all (or most) Muslims living in the West conform to your bigoted stereotypes as being filled with implacable hatred of homosexuals when available evidence shows this to be wrong.
And then you go on to "support" this religious libel by citing a bunch of Muslims living very much not in the West, apparently on the ancient principle of all them ragheads is the same anyway. So yeah, you're wrong, but the fact that you're factually incorrect is probably secondary to the general offensiveness of your argument.
This is off topic for this thread. Please take general discussion of Islam somewhere else or for Islam and any Dead Horse issue, start a separate thread on that topic. The next posts on this thread need to be back on topic of the United Methodist Church and its LGBTQ policies.
@stonespring I haven't been following this thread, but aren't Aotearoa and New Zealand the same place, but in different languages?
That is correct. Both are official names for the country.
What Stonespring may be referring to is that the Anglican Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand has 3 equal tikanga*, Maori, Pakeha and Pasifika (or it may be called Polynesian -it's a while since I was an Anglican).
*tikanga - I think in the Church this is usually translated as 'houses' but what tikanga is usually translated as is 'rules to be followed' or 'ways of doing things'.
I am too distant now from the Anglican Church to offer any opinion. Zappa would know more about this.
A retired Methodist Minister friend who is gay mentioned in passing to me yesterday that a gay friend of his is due to move on from his current position and there are only a couple of places that would accept his Ministry, which is far fewer than when my friend was in active Ministry.
So, how is the outcome of the decision so far? Any schism in sight? I´m very curious, as the United Methodist Church is an exception among USA mainline denominations. All other churches seem to have embraced same-sex marriages and LGBTQ ministers. Since the General Conference, I´ve heard many methodists sayng that was the "end" or the "death" of the UMC in America, since many LGBTQ folks, friends and supporters were going to leave the denomination, and because most of the millenial generation is very tolerant of homossexuality. However, other denominations that took a liberalizing stand on the issue seem to be falling apart: the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church´s structures basically still exists to manage the sales of the buildings until the old parioshioners who still go to church die. The Presbyterian Church in America is basically watching its conservative parishes switch to other denominations, and the liberal parishes dwindling. How will the UMC fare? Better, just as bad as the mainline denominations that embraced same-sex marriage, or can it possibly decrease even faster? Guess it will take a few years before we have an answear.
And about schism... Issues like that usually generates schism in denominations. I know some new lutheran and anglican denominations have emerged in America out of schism in the mainline denominations about same sex marriage. But it´s usually the conservative side that leaves and starts a new denomination, in many cases, buyng or renting new spaces for worship as they have to leave the old denomination´s buildings. But a liberal wing of a denomination leaving to form a new one is unheard of. Do the liberal wing of the UMC has the energy and the will to start a new denomination, dealing with the property issues and starting new mission fields besides their older parishes like evangelicals do?
However, other denominations that took a liberalizing stand on the issue seem to be falling apart: the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church´s structures basically still exists to manage the sales of the buildings until the old parioshioners who still go to church die.
Not the Episcopal Church in my part of the U.S.! (Nor have I noticed it in the various Lutheran churches around here.)
The Presbyterian Church in America is basically watching its conservative parishes switch to other denominations, and the liberal parishes dwindling.
You mean the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Presbyterian Church in America is the conservative group that broke away 45+ years ago over ordination of women and civil rights. As for the PC(USA), it’s my impression that the exodus of conservative congregations has pretty much run its course. Congregations inclined to leave already have, or are in the final stages of the process. I’m not sure that the statistics bear out that “liberal parishes [are] dwindling.” The majority of PC(USA) congregations tend to be moderate. (I’m also not sure how accurate the assessment of the ELCA in particular is, either.)
I haven’t heard much about the status of things in the UMC in the last few months, so I can’t say exactly what the situation is.
But in other news, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada considered 4 options for “going forward” presented by a committee of 14 former moderators of General Assembly. Of the 4 options, the Assembly chose “inclusion,” which starts the process for changes to church law allowing for the full inclusion of LGBT+ members.
But it´s usually the conservative side that leaves and starts a new denomination, in many cases, buyng or renting new spaces for worship as they have to leave the old denomination´s buildings. But a liberal wing of a denomination leaving to form a new one is unheard of.
This last sentence is not accurate. Granted, it is normally conservatives that withdraw and start new denominations, because conservatives are as a general rule more likely to think that doctrinal purity and fidelity requires it.
But there are cases where it is non-conservatives who have left. The Alliance of Baptists (liberal, currently around 130 churches and 65,000 members) and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (moderate, currently around 1,800 churches and 700,000 members) split from the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1990s, after the “conservative resurgence” in the SBC. There it was the moderates and liberals who thought the conservatives had abandoned historic Baptist principles. At least where I live, moderate churches have continued to leave the SBC in the years since the CBF was founded. (The liberals were all driven out of the SBC decades ago.)
Based on the interview I heard with a progressive UMC pastor, the folks who wanted to split into a new denomination are discovering all the bureaucratic, constitutional, and financial snags that make this very difficult, even with generous exit provisions. Not that a split won't happen but it will be difficult and quite possibly involve a smaller number of people.
The Presbyterian Church in America is basically watching its conservative parishes switch to other denominations, and the liberal parishes dwindling.
You mean the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Presbyterian Church in America is the conservative group that broke away 45+ years ago over ordination of women and civil rights. As for the PC(USA), it’s my impression that the exodus of conservative congregations has pretty much run its course. Congregations inclined to leave already have, or are in the final stages of the process. I’m not sure that the statistics bear out that “liberal parishes [are] dwindling.” The majority of PC(USA) congregations tend to be moderate. (I’m also not sure how accurate the assessment of the ELCA in particular is, either.)
I haven’t heard much about the status of things in the UMC in the last few months, so I can’t say exactly what the situation is.
But in other news, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada considered 4 options for “going forward” presented by a committee of 14 former moderators of General Assembly. Of the 4 options, the Assembly chose “inclusion,” which starts the process for changes to church law allowing for the full inclusion of LGBT+ members.
ELCA's presiding Bishop pretty much acknowledges her church is dying and they don't have a clue what to do in the first paragraph of this article: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2019/02/what-is-god-up-to/
By the way, oficial statistics that appeared after the article show that the latest yearly membership decrease have been of more then 90,000. The decrease have not plateaued, but seems to be getting bigger, as the remaining members are getting older.
Statistics for PCUSA and the Episcopal Church are similar. I guess everyone has anedoctal evidence of some congregations that are still strong, but that doesn't change the picture. Larger congregations of course can still survive while loosing members. They can even gain members as smaller congregations around are closing and sending their members to them. But that doesn't change the bigger picture.
ELCA's presiding Bishop pretty much acknowledges her church is dying and they don't have a clue what to do in the first paragraph of this article: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2019/02/what-is-god-up-to/
By the way, oficial statistics that appeared after the article show that the latest yearly membership decrease have been of more then 90,000. The decrease have not plateaued, but seems to be getting bigger, as the remaining members are getting older.
I was not challenging the assertion that mainline Protestant denominations (like many other denominations) have been losing members for decades, and that it is a real reason for concern. I was challenging your characterization of the situation:
However, other denominations that took a liberalizing stand on the issue seem to be falling apart: the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church´s structures basically still exists to manage the sales of the buildings until the old parioshioners who still go to church die.
This is overstatement. It is overstatement because it suggests things are even worse than they are (structures exist only to manage sale of building as people die), and it is overstatement because it suggests that the reason for membership declines is the liberalizing stands taken on certain dead horse issues. That is part of the picture, but it's simplistic (and inaccurate) to suggest that's all that's going on. There are a variety of factors at play, many of which have more to do with national demographics generally than with specific positions of denominations.
Statistics for PCUSA and the Episcopal Church are similar. I guess everyone has anedoctal evidence of some congregations that are still strong, but that doesn't change the picture. Larger congregations of course can still survive while loosing members. They can even gain members as smaller congregations around are closing and sending their members to them. But that doesn't change the bigger picture.
The most recent statistics for the PC(USA) show that while there is still decline, the decline appears to have slowed. The number of congregations leaving the denomination dropped significantly. And new members by profession/reaffirmation of faith was up by around 80%.
ELCA's presiding Bishop pretty much acknowledges her church is dying and they don't have a clue what to do in the first paragraph of this article: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2019/02/what-is-god-up-to/
By the way, oficial statistics that appeared after the article show that the latest yearly membership decrease have been of more then 90,000. The decrease have not plateaued, but seems to be getting bigger, as the remaining members are getting older.
I was not challenging the assertion that mainline Protestant denominations (like many other denominations) have been losing members for decades, and that it is a real reason for concern. I was challenging your characterization of the situation:
However, other denominations that took a liberalizing stand on the issue seem to be falling apart: the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church´s structures basically still exists to manage the sales of the buildings until the old parioshioners who still go to church die.
This is overstatement. It is overstatement because it suggests things are even worse than they are (structures exist only to manage sale of building as people die), and it is overstatement because it suggests that the reason for membership declines is the liberalizing stands taken on certain dead horse issues. That is part of the picture, but it's simplistic (and inaccurate) to suggest that's all that's going on. There are a variety of factors at play, many of which have more to do with national demographics generally than with specific positions of denominations.
It´s not more of an overstatament then sayng "our decline is slowing down, this is a good sign". And the statement of the ELCA presiding bishop is revealing, because it says she clearly doesn´t know what has to be done since everything that was tried has not worked. Of course, religious leaders tend to be much more optimistic in their official statements then they are in real life. Older ministers who are closer to retirement might not have so much reason to worry (except for the church itself), but they obviously know things are not going well. Younger ministers and seminary students are obviously worried they might not even have a full time paid job by the time they are in their 40´s.
I was not sugesting a causation between liberalizing stands of these denominations on human sexuality and their membership decline, but only a correlation, which clearly exists. That´s why I said I am curious about the outcome in the UMC, cause it is an exception among USA mainline denominations. Will their ongoing decline be even worst then what their sister denominations are experiencing? Or will it slow down? Or maybe this matter doesn´t make any difference at all? Nobody knows.
Statistics for PCUSA and the Episcopal Church are similar. I guess everyone has anedoctal evidence of some congregations that are still strong, but that doesn't change the picture. Larger congregations of course can still survive while loosing members. They can even gain members as smaller congregations around are closing and sending their members to them. But that doesn't change the bigger picture.
The most recent statistics for the PC(USA) show that while there is still decline, the decline appears to have slowed. The number of congregations leaving the denomination dropped significantly. And new members by profession/reaffirmation of faith was up by around 80%.
Of course, the number of congregations leaving has to drop some time, because it was clearly motivated by the liberalizing stands on human sexuality (while we cannot know for sure the reason why individual members are leaving, there´s obviously a causation between the new stands on human sexuality and the departure of whole congregations). But the organic decline, which consists of individual departures of members, is still going strong. 62,000 members less for a denomination that counts 1.5 million is not a sign of hope by any stretch of the imagination.
My suspicion is that the correlation between liberal views on sexuality and membership decline is not one of causation, but rather these 2 factors are being caused by something else. People with lower religious commitment are much more likely to leave a denomination then very commited people. All research shows that denominations in decline also have low levels of religious commitment among their members. People in these denominations are less likely to take part in weekly services, pray or read the bible on a daily basis then people in growing denominations (regardless of their "orthodoxy": mormons and 7th day adventists are growing churches, for example, with very commited members). And people with higher levels of religious commitment also tend to be a lot more conservative then the average population. Therefore, denominations with less religiously commited members tend to move on quicker with social trends and lose members faster then the denominations with highly commited people. But of course, that´s only a ***suspicion*** of mine.
Note that in most mainline denominations, members are more likely to lean republican more then the average population. Even the United Church Of Chirst (which is liberal to the extreme) still has more then 30% of members leaning republican. You can bet that these people are not happy with the direction their denominations are taking!
Not all Republicans are bigots, even though it seems like it at times.
Bigots or not, I suppose they are not happy going to a church were the minister most likely preaches political views opposed to theirs as if that was "the gospel".
Not all Republicans are bigots, even though it seems like it at times.
Bigots or not, I suppose they are not happy going to a church were the minister most likely preaches political views opposed to theirs as if that was "the gospel".
One presumes that if they were experiencing that, and were unhappy about it, they would have gone to a different church. There's hardly a lack of churches preaching hatred of gay people and love for Trump for them to choose from.
The Presbyterian Church in America is basically watching its conservative parishes switch to other denominations, and the liberal parishes dwindling.
You mean the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Presbyterian Church in America is the conservative group that broke away 45+ years ago over ordination of women and civil rights.
I wonder if this can be seen as a rough guide for current debates over "liberalism"? Here's a quick capsule history of PCA's break with PC(USA)'s liberalism on the issue of racial integration.
In 1964, the denomination took steps to integrate its churches and lobby for civil rights. When the denomination called for open churches that did not bar blacks, many churches [ ed - "objected", I guess? Use your verbs, RNS! ]. This was seen as a sign that the denomination was departing from true Christianity. For segregationist Presbyterians in Mississippi and elsewhere, any moderate stance on integration was a sign that liberalism was taking over the church.
In response, segregationist Presbyterians began leaving the denomination. Some left officially. Others started movements within the denomination. They openly defied the denomination by refusing to allow blacks to worship in their churches or by firing pastors who wanted to do so. They even formed their own seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary.
In 1973, the PCA was officially formed when churches left the southern Presbyterians (a decade later the southern and northern Presbyterians joined to form the Presbyterian Church in the USA).
The PCA was primarily made up of churches who had opposed integration and civil rights. Its leaders openly stated that they were continuing the legacy of confederate churches. As in 1861, the PCA was going to keep the faith pure and free from liberalism.
So what does this teach us about possible denominational trajectories? Well, the initially pro-segregation PCA is growing while the integrationist PC(USA) has been shrinking for decades (though it still has about four times the number of members as PCA). So if membership growth is your sole metric the best strategy seems to be opposing liberalism at first, gradually getting quieter and quieter in opposing liberalism, and then several decades after it would have made any difference release a statement saying "Oopsie, it turns out what we said was 'liberalism' (and therefore bad) was actually a 'gospel imperative'. Our bad." That seems to be the best path to padding out the membership rolls, provided that's your main goal.
The reason the UMC is moving differently from other US mainline denomination is not really a mystery. The UMC is in fact not just another US mainline denomination- it is a global organization and its most significant growth in recent years has been in Africa. Among the African and Filipino United Methodists, the "traditionalist" stance is predominant (though not universal) and their growing clout at the conferences finally reached the tipping point this year. To be sure, right-wing US evangelicals also contributed to the outcome but if the UMC had been a purely US denomination the vote would have likely gone the other way.
Not to mention, religiously commited people tend to make their political choices based on their religious beliefs, while people with lower religious commitment and higly commited to a political view tend to shape their religious views acording to their political preferences
Not all Republicans are bigots, even though it seems like it at times.
Bigots or not, I suppose they are not happy going to a church were the minister most likely preaches political views opposed to theirs as if that was "the gospel".
One presumes that if they were experiencing that, and were unhappy about it, they would have gone to a different church. There's hardly a lack of churches preaching hatred of gay people and love for Trump for them to choose from.
There are several reasons why people might stay in a church even when they are unhappy. And this is particularly expected of elderly people who lived most of their lives inside a church tradition. They´re not easily going to look for another one just because they are unhappy with how things are at the moment.
Anyway, statistics show that people ARE leaving these denominations by the flocks. But with this being a harder move for elderly people, who cherish the building and community they lived so many years with, it´s no wonder why statistics also show that most of the remaining members of these churches are elderly people!
The reason the UMC is moving differently from other US mainline denomination is not really a mystery. The UMC is in fact not just another US mainline denomination- it is a global organization and its most significant growth in recent years has been in Africa. Among the African and Filipino United Methodists, the "traditionalist" stance is predominant (though not universal) and their growing clout at the conferences finally reached the tipping point this year. To be sure, right-wing US evangelicals also contributed to the outcome but if the UMC had been a purely US denomination the vote would have likely gone the other way.
Yes, that is what makes it so peculiar, and the reason why I´m curious to watch what happens next.
I think a similar example is the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the clergy in North America and Europe is very liberal, but since they are a global church, they have to stick with the majority, and not even ordain women priests!
On a side note, pew research has very interesting data on USA denominations. It also shows that mainline denominations are the least ethnically diverse churches. While evangelicals, who acording to all sources are supposed to be racist, have flocks of black and latinos in their pews. Could it be that they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are racist because they are white? And if you singled out white people in every other religious tradition they can be as racists as "white evangelicals"?
It also shows that mainline denominations are the least ethnically diverse churches.
Does it? I can find data on diversity by denomination at Pew, but nothing on how that applies at the level of individual churches or congregations. A denomination can be both racially diverse at a denominational level and racially segregated at the level of individual congregations.
. . . are supposed to be racist, have flocks of black and latinos in their pews. Could it be that they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are racist because they are white?
Alternatively it could be asked if they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are evangelical because they are racist? A fairly strong case can be made that the white evangelicalism hermeneutic was invented to justify slavery and repurposed to justify segregation. Part of the problem is that these denominations claim to have a Biblical hermeneutic of simple literalism and this hermeneutic has led them to support slavery and segregation. They claim to have abandoned support for those things, but I've never seen any indication that they've examined or come to grips with the way that this hermeneutic, to which they claim to still adhere, led them to these conclusions they now believe to be wrong or the process by which they changed their minds.
(Okay, that's a lot of Fred Clark links, but he's a white evangelical native who's done a lot of thinking and writing on the topic.)
ELCA's presiding Bishop pretty much acknowledges her church is dying and they don't have a clue what to do in the first paragraph of this article: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2019/02/what-is-god-up-to/
By the way, oficial statistics that appeared after the article show that the latest yearly membership decrease have been of more then 90,000. The decrease have not plateaued, but seems to be getting bigger, as the remaining members are getting older.
I was not challenging the assertion that mainline Protestant denominations (like many other denominations) have been losing members for decades, and that it is a real reason for concern. I was challenging your characterization of the situation….
This is overstatement. It is overstatement because it suggests things are even worse than they are (structures exist only to manage sale of building as people die), and it is overstatement because it suggests that the reason for membership declines is the liberalizing stands taken on certain dead horse issues. That is part of the picture, but it's simplistic (and inaccurate) to suggest that's all that's going on. There are a variety of factors at play, many of which have more to do with national demographics generally than with specific positions of denominations.
It´s not more of an overstatament then sayng "our decline is slowing down, this is a good sign".
I tend to see them as different—it seems much more of an overstatement to me to say that all the denominational structures are doing is to manage and sell the property than to say that decreased decline is a good sign. (Did someone here say that?) The former strikes me as the polemic one reads on certain conservative websites that seem assured of the downfall of “liberal Christianity.” The latter seems more like optimism or whistling in the dark. YMMV, of course.
Of course, the number of congregations leaving has to drop some time, because it was clearly motivated by the liberalizing stands on human sexuality ….
Yes, I acknowledged as much earlier when I said that most PC(USA) congregations inclined to leave had already done so. You said statistics for the PC(USA) and TEC are similar to those for the ELCA. I was just trying to put a little more meat on the bone. I don’t know specifics of ELCA or TEC statistics, beyond the few specifics in the article up which you linked.
On a side note, pew research has very interesting data on USA denominations. It also shows that mainline denominations are the least ethnically diverse churches. While evangelicals, who acording to all sources are supposed to be racist, have flocks of black and latinos in their pews. Could it be that they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are racist because they are white? And if you singled out white people in every other religious tradition they can be as racists as "white evangelicals"?
Do you recall exactly how that was phrased? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they found that evangelicals as a group are much more diverse than mainliners. Evangelicals are a very large and diverse group. I don’t know, though, the degree to which the diversity is visible in individual evangelical congregations, or even denominations/associations.
ETA: Sorry, didn’t see Crœsos’s post before I posted.
Re: white evangelicals and racism, I was watching a conference of African-American bishops in the UMC. It was interesting because the people in the room were generally supportive of LGBT inclusion but were not necessarily on board with the white liberal United Methodists. One woman who attended the conference spoke of being cornered and verbally attacked in the hotel bathroom by some white liberal Methodists who assumed she was a delegate from Africa. A pastor spoke about how the white liberal UM's seemed eager to jettison the entire body of United Methodists in Africa over this issue, which, to say the least, rubbed him the wrong way. And one of the bishops made the point that white liberal racism is real and in some ways worse because it comes with an attitude of being enlightened and therefore more impervious to self-reflection.
I think some white, liberal mainliners think that by proclaiming a message of inclusion and diversity, putting Hawaiian or Swahili songs in the hymnbook, or getting more people of color into clergy or administrative position, the church makeup will start to conform to their aspiration. But a church full of anti-racist white people is still a church full of white people and walking into these congregations as a rare specimen of "diversity" can be quite a foreboding experience.
Tangent alert
Looking at the links in @Crœsos's last post, two queries about things that appear curious to this foreigner
The first is about the separate categories for "Anglican Church" and "Episcopal Church"? Do sociologists really distinguish between schismatic and non-schismatic versions of what has until recently been the same denomination? And is there really a sociological difference? Or am I missing something else altogether?
The second is really extraordinary from this side of the Atlantic, which is the statement that 38% of US Muslims categorise as 'white'. That's well over a ⅓ and more than either of the Black or Asian groups at 28% each. Where do they all come from?
There are ethnic groups in the UK from the eastern Mediterranean that are Muslim and white but they are relatively small communities here. Most Muslims here are descended from people from south Asia or sub-Saharan Africa.
Alternatively it could be asked if they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are evangelical because they are racist? A fairly strong case can be made that the white evangelicalism hermeneutic was invented to justify slavery and repurposed to justify segregation. Part of the problem is that these denominations claim to have a Biblical hermeneutic of simple literalism and this hermeneutic has led them to support slavery and segregation. They claim to have abandoned support for those things, but I've never seen any indication that they've examined or come to grips with the way that this hermeneutic, to which they claim to still adhere, led them to these conclusions they now believe to be wrong or the process by which they changed their minds.
(Okay, that's a lot of Fred Clark links, but he's a white evangelical native who's done a lot of thinking and writing on the topic.)
There´s a lot of problems in your thoughts her. First, you single out evangelicals as supporters of slavery in the past. Truth, but why don´t you bother mentioning that other religious groups were on board aswell? Think, for example, the Roman Catholic Church in latin America, or even the Episcopal Church in USA, which had many priests and bishops owning slaves? Why are evangelicals the only ones you require to change their entire theological system to prove that they really regret on what they´ve done, while other religious groups can get along with simply moving on on that particular subject?
Second, there´s nothing specific about evangelicalism relating to slavery. Many evangelicals in history were abolitionist. A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations atract more people of colour then mainline denominations. Why would people of colour choose to join or remain in a theological system that, acording to you, was created to segregate them? Surely, there are many theological problems in evangelicalism, but I don´t see anything specifically making them more likely to be racists then christians of other theological preferences. Being white is not a theological point of view. So you cannot examine evangelicals belief system by singling out only "white evangelicals". Do mixed race congregations have different theologies for each member, or do denominations that have black and white congragations have a different theology for each type of congregation? It seems to me that you incur in the problem of confusing correlation with causation. Yes, there is a correlation between white evangelicals and racism, historically. But that doesn´t prove that being evangelical is what caused that correlation.
Third, you seem to imply that evangelicals now are against racism and slavery simply because that´s not acceptable in today´s society, but if they were coherent to the biblical hermeneutics they still cling to, then they should admit that they still support racism and slavery. However, liberal christians who changed their views on social issues haven´t necessarily changed their hermeneutics either. Lutherans, presbyterians and episcopalians 30 years ago wouldn´t in their right minds accept gay marriage in the church, for example. Now they do. Yet they haven´t demonstrated why their hermeneutics have changed to the point that something that was considered sinful 30 years ago now is being blessed by the church. Why do you have to single out evangelicals inconsistencies (which are many, I know), when in fact that happens with every other religious group? Is it possible that you are singling out a particular group that you don´t like, when you could acuse christians in general of all the things you acuse evangelicals (suporting slavery, being racist, not acepting LGBT marriage, etc)?
Finally, with this debate about the UMC decision, and how does that relate with other mainline denominations, I´m not interested in determining if the decision was right or wrong. I´m interested in seeing the results. Because I´ve read many news articles pointing to this decision as suicidal for the UMC, implyng that many people will leave and the denomination will shrink. They didn´t seem to take notice that denominations who took the opposite way have lost hundreads of thousands of members because of this particular issue, and have continued to shrink even after the loosing party has departed. So what is the UMC up to?
Re: white evangelicals and racism, I was watching a conference of African-American bishops in the UMC. It was interesting because the people in the room were generally supportive of LGBT inclusion but were not necessarily on board with the white liberal United Methodists. One woman who attended the conference spoke of being cornered and verbally attacked in the hotel bathroom by some white liberal Methodists who assumed she was a delegate from Africa. A pastor spoke about how the white liberal UM's seemed eager to jettison the entire body of United Methodists in Africa over this issue, which, to say the least, rubbed him the wrong way. And one of the bishops made the point that white liberal racism is real and in some ways worse because it comes with an attitude of being enlightened and therefore more impervious to self-reflection.
I think some white, liberal mainliners think that by proclaiming a message of inclusion and diversity, putting Hawaiian or Swahili songs in the hymnbook, or getting more people of color into clergy or administrative position, the church makeup will start to conform to their aspiration. But a church full of anti-racist white people is still a church full of white people and walking into these congregations as a rare specimen of "diversity" can be quite a foreboding experience.
Increasing the number of non-white members would naturally lead to the increase of non-white people in clergy and positions of power. But artificially increasing the number of non-whites in the positions of power trough affirmative policies won´t lead to an increase of non-whites in the pews. In other words, if you are a denomination made up of descendents of europeans, and you want to have bishops outside of your ethnic background, you better start working on evangelism to people outside of your ethnic backgrounds. So that some of these people might one day become ministers, and then one day become bishops.
But mainline denominations suck at that. Because it takes evangelism, and that is not politically correct. How dare you suggest other people what to believe? Evangelicals are better at that because conversion fits their theology well. So their congregations tend to become more racially diverse when the surrounding environment does so. While mainline congregations tend to remain the same even if the neighbourhoods are changing.
Tangent alert
The second is really extraordinary from this side of the Atlantic, which is the statement that 38% of US Muslims categorise as 'white'. That's well over a ⅓ and more than either of the Black or Asian groups at 28% each. Where do they all come from?
I can't answer the question about Pew's Anglican/Episcopal division.
I'm not absolutely sure about the Muslims either, but if I had to guess I'd say Pew categorizes people of Middle Eastern and North African origin or ancestry as "white". Their breakdown of nations of origin for Asian-Americans doesn't include any Near Eastern or Middle Eastern nations, so I'm guessing they don't fall into that category. If those groups were considered as part of the "Other/Mixed" category I'd suspect it would come to more than 3% of all American Muslims, so they're probably not there either.
Increasing the number of non-white members would naturally lead to the increase of non-white people in clergy and positions of power. But artificially increasing the number of non-whites in the positions of power trough affirmative policies won´t lead to an increase of non-whites in the pews.
Given the history of Methodism, these sentences carry a bit of irony in them. The AME split from the main body of Methodism specifically because black Methodists were being frozen out of church leadership positions. Perhaps we have learned something in the last two centuries -- but I find it hard to see a lot of growth in the Church over the last two millennia, so I am not convinced.
There´s a lot of problems in your thoughts her[e]. First, you single out evangelicals as supporters of slavery in the past. Truth, but why don´t you bother mentioning that other religious groups were on board as well?
Germaneness and familiarity, for the most part. I'm more familiar with slavery in the American context and the relevance of white Protestantism generally (and white evangelicalism particularly) to maintaining it. Moreover that history is more relevant to the current discussion than other Christian traditions. Spraying a lot of obfuscatory squid ink and whataboutisms seems like a way to avoid discussing the points I've raised.
Why are evangelicals the only ones you require to change their entire theological system to prove that they really regret on what they´ve done, while other religious groups can get along with simply moving on on that particular subject?
You have fairly spectacularly missed my point. It's not about what white evangelicals have done but more about how they think and how they justify their actions. The point I'm making is that white evangelicals today use the same hermeneutic system their theological (and sometimes literal) ancestors used to justify slavery and they don't seem to have spent much, if any, time reflecting on that fact or trying to account for it.
White evangelicalism (and white English-speaking Protestantism generally) developed more or less in parallel with the trans-Atlantic slave system and this seems to have been influential in both directions.
For example, if you're going to engage in an enterprise that involves kidnapping, theft, rape, torture, mutilation, and murder a theology that says none of those things matters can be very reassuring. Hence the white evangelical horror at the idea that salvation is contingent upon anything you do (works righteousness). I'm not saying that this idea was developed to justify the trans-Atlantic slave system, just that such an idea would have obvious appeal to someone operating within such a system. Hence my argument that people didn't become slavedrivers because they were evangelicals, they adopted evangelicalism because they wanted to be slavedrivers.
For centuries, Christians have been arguing over the clobber texts used to deny women’s equality in the church and in society. Those Bible passages — a dozen or so verses selected from the origin stories of Genesis, the laws of Moses, and the epistles of Paul — are hotly contested in an ongoing argument over their meaning and interpretation. Every year we see a new crop of books devoted to the exegesis of those verses, granular studies of first-century Greek terms and their cultural meanings.
It’s possible that the next volley of books and articles will settle that long-running exegetical dispute over the meaning of those clobber texts, but I rather doubt it. That argument is older than the English language, and I don’t see it being resolved any time soon.
Recent generations have seen another, similar dispute over another set of biblical clobber texts — those that are regarded as prohibiting all same-sex affection. This is a smaller collection of verses, but they are drawn from the same sources — the origin stories of Genesis, the laws of Moses in the Pentateuch, and the Pauline epistles. This newer argument is following the pattern of the earlier one. Exegetical claims and counter-claims fly fast and furious, and of the making of many books there is no end.
Given the apparent insolubility of those battles over clobber texts, it’s strange to consider that another similar argument — one far more heated and contentious — has simply vanished entirely. This was a fierce argument over biblical interpretation that split denominations and congregations, shaping and reshaping America’s churches, American culture and, ultimately, America’s Constitution. And then, abruptly, it just ended. It was settled, once and for all, and no credible person living today regards it as even slightly controversial.
I’m talking about slavery. The “peculiar institution” was, for centuries, upheld and defended by American Christianity.
<snip>
[ Albert ] Barnes was a biblical scholar whose works included An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery. You can view the table of contents from that book here. If you’re at all familiar with the contemporary clobber-text battles over women’s equality or the status of LGBT Christians, then you’ll recognize the pattern of Barnes’ argument.
Barnes’ outline is remarkably similar to what you’ll find in a host of so-called “liberal” books today discussing the anti-gay clobber texts. Barnes recognized that the pro-slavery clobber-texts provided the foundation of Christian support for slavery. No challenge to the American institution of slavery could ignore that Christian support, and so Barnes chose to contend with those clobber texts head-on. He methodically engages those texts, asking whether they really said and meant what the defenders of slavery interpreted them to mean. And then he concludes with an appeal to the Golden Rule as a kind of trump-card over all clobber texts: “The principles laid down by the Savior and his apostles are such as are opposed to slavery, and if carried out would secure its universal abolition.”
You know, that bit. That thing where we so-called liberals appeal to the Greatest Commandment and to “love is the fulfillment of the law” as a lens for the interpretation of everything else in the Bible. That bit where we talk of trajectories and the direction in which biblical principles are pointing.
The so-called conservatives in our day never buy this so-called liberal argument and it doesn’t seem to have been any more persuasive back in Albert Barnes’ day. Barnes, after all, was a leading “New School” Calvinist, meaning he was supposed to be a disciple of the theology of Jonathan Edwards. Yet here he was explicitly rejecting the way that Edwards himself read these biblical passages and thus explicitly rejecting the way that Edwards taught us to read the Bible. Barnes was advocating a break from the past — a change. And that change required a more complicated way of reading Bible verses that didn’t seem to require any such complication. The clobber texts were clear and plain. Liberals like Barnes were just trying to weasel out of them.
A century and a half later, it might seem like Barnes’ argument was vindicated. Apart from the lunatic fringes, you won’t find any credible American theologian, pastor or biblical scholar who would say that the Bible ought to be cited in defense of slavery. Seek out the most belligerent “defenders of the authority of scripture” and “inerrancy” and you won’t find any dispute over this. Everyone agrees that citing the Bible to defend slavery would be wrong. Everyone agrees that slavery itself was wrong. And everyone agrees that the Bible-quoting defenders of slavery back in Barnes’ day must have been wrong. Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and all those other still-influential “eloquent Divines” must have been, somehow, wrong.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone agrees how they were wrong, or why they were wrong. That’s not something we like to talk about.
So Barnes’ “liberal” interpretation of the clobber texts defending slavery did not win the argument. No one today interprets those clobber texts the way Barnes’ opponents once did, but most haven’t embraced his interpretation of them either. Instead, it’s as though those pro-slavery clobber texts have simply … vanished.
It’s as though they don’t exist at all. We mostly ignore them, hoping they’ll just go away.
Italics from the original, bolding added by me. That's a long excerpt of Clark, I know, but it gets to the core of the argument. It's problematic that white evangelical Christianity is able to say that slavery was wrong, but have no explanation for why slavery was wrong. Particularly because the same methodology of Biblical interpretation is still used on various anti-woman and anti-gay passages.
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both. Black evangelicals, for example, tend to embrace social justice and reject the otherworldly indifference of white evangelicals. Historical example: Billy Graham didn't want to engage with the Civil Rights Movement because he thought doing so would distract from the Gospel message. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that advancing equality and justice for all is the Gospel message.
Finally, with this debate about the UMC decision, and how does that relate with other mainline denominations, I´m not interested in determining if the decision was right or wrong. I´m interested in seeing the results.
What I find fascinating is this proud, self-declared indifference to questions of right or wrong in favor of focusing on "results", with "results" being defined solely in terms of denominational membership, not in how it otherwise affects people's lives. For example, I'd be more interested in whether the UMC taking a harder line against homosexuality will give leaders a green light to push for things like Uganda's "kill the gays" bill than whether it's going to put more or fewer butts in the pews. Different priorities, I guess.
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both.
Yes, which I’m sure is one reason why the Pew Research Center’s study distinguished between “Evangelical Protestant” and “Historically Black Protestant.”
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both. Black evangelicals, for example, tend to embrace social justice and reject the otherworldly indifference of white evangelicals. Historical example: Billy Graham didn't want to engage with the Civil Rights Movement because he thought doing so would distract from the Gospel message. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that advancing equality and justice for all is the Gospel message.
Finally, with this debate about the UMC decision, and how does that relate with other mainline denominations, I´m not interested in determining if the decision was right or wrong. I´m interested in seeing the results.
What I find fascinating is this proud, self-declared indifference to questions of right or wrong in favor of focusing on "results", with "results" being defined solely in terms of denominational membership, not in how it otherwise affects people's lives. For example, I'd be more interested in whether the UMC taking a harder line against homosexuality will give leaders a green light to push for things like Uganda's "kill the gays" bill than whether it's going to put more or fewer butts in the pews. Different priorities, I guess.
I'm not sayng i'm indifferent to what's right or wrong. I'm sayng that my main purpouse in this topic is not this. It's a huge strecht of your imagination to think a denomination not marryng gays means they support killing gays. Do you think the same about catholics, orthodox christians and muslims? Why you have to single out evangelicals in this issue? It looks like they're target of a very ugly kind of hate from you.
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both.
Yes, which I’m sure is one reason why the Pew Research Center’s study distinguished between “Evangelical Protestant” and “Historically Black Protestant.”
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both.
Yes, which I’m sure is one reason why the Pew Research Center’s study distinguished between “Evangelical Protestant” and “Historically Black Protestant.”
On the particular matter of this topic, black evangelicals usually have the same views as white evangelicals or catholics and muslims. The African Methodist church also don't marry LGBT couples and is not seeking to do so in the near future. And when you mention"black protestants", you put in the same group people with very different theological views. Black protestants can be liberal or conservative. To put all black protestants in the same category is the same as putting liberal episcopalians in the same category as conservative pentecostals, just because they're of the same colour. Black and white are not theological categories.
There´s a lot of problems in your thoughts her[e]. First, you single out evangelicals as supporters of slavery in the past. Truth, but why don´t you bother mentioning that other religious groups were on board as well?
Germaneness and familiarity, for the most part. I'm more familiar with slavery in the American context and the relevance of white Protestantism generally (and white evangelicalism particularly) to maintaining it. Moreover that history is more relevant to the current discussion than other Christian traditions. Spraying a lot of obfuscatory squid ink and whataboutisms seems like a way to avoid discussing the points I've raised.
Why are evangelicals the only ones you require to change their entire theological system to prove that they really regret on what they´ve done, while other religious groups can get along with simply moving on on that particular subject?
You have fairly spectacularly missed my point. It's not about what white evangelicals have done but more about how they think and how they justify their actions. The point I'm making is that white evangelicals today use the same hermeneutic system their theological (and sometimes literal) ancestors used to justify slavery and they don't seem to have spent much, if any, time reflecting on that fact or trying to account for it.
White evangelicalism (and white English-speaking Protestantism generally) developed more or less in parallel with the trans-Atlantic slave system and this seems to have been influential in both directions.
For example, if you're going to engage in an enterprise that involves kidnapping, theft, rape, torture, mutilation, and murder a theology that says none of those things matters can be very reassuring. Hence the white evangelical horror at the idea that salvation is contingent upon anything you do (works righteousness). I'm not saying that this idea was developed to justify the trans-Atlantic slave system, just that such an idea would have obvious appeal to someone operating within such a system. Hence my argument that people didn't become slavedrivers because they were evangelicals, they adopted evangelicalism because they wanted to be slavedrivers.
I can't believe you seriously believe your own argument. If someone wanted to choose their religious views just to justify their slave owning, then they could have picked almost any other theological view available at the moment, since all of christianity was very comfortable with black slavery. Including the ancestors of today's mainline christians. Wasn't Jonathan Edwards a presbyterian? It's very ridiculous that tou have to single out evangelicals for things they have in common with most of christianity. Looks like you're only rationalising your hate.
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both.
Yes, which I’m sure is one reason why the Pew Research Center’s study distinguished between “Evangelical Protestant” and “Historically Black Protestant.”
A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations at[t]ract more people of colour then mainline denominations.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both.
Yes, which I’m sure is one reason why the Pew Research Center’s study distinguished between “Evangelical Protestant” and “Historically Black Protestant.”
On the particular matter of this topic, black evangelicals usually have the same views as white evangelicals or catholics and muslims. The African Methodist church also don't marry LGBT couples and is not seeking to do so in the near future. And when you mention"black protestants", you put in the same group people with very different theological views. Black protestants can be liberal or conservative. To put all black protestants in the same category is the same as putting liberal episcopalians in the same category as conservative pentecostals, just because they're of the same colour. Black and white are not theological categories.
It was the Pew Research Center study you cited that included the category of people who identify as “Historically Black Protestant.” I assume by this they meant identify as members of historically black Protestant denominations—the AME Church, the AME Zion Church, the CME Church, the National Baptist Convention, etc.
There´s a lot of problems in your thoughts her[e]. First, you single out evangelicals as supporters of slavery in the past. Truth, but why don´t you bother mentioning that other religious groups were on board as well?
Germaneness and familiarity, for the most part. I'm more familiar with slavery in the American context and the relevance of white Protestantism generally (and white evangelicalism particularly) to maintaining it. Moreover that history is more relevant to the current discussion than other Christian traditions. Spraying a lot of obfuscatory squid ink and whataboutisms seems like a way to avoid discussing the points I've raised.
Why are evangelicals the only ones you require to change their entire theological system to prove that they really regret on what they´ve done, while other religious groups can get along with simply moving on on that particular subject?
You have fairly spectacularly missed my point. It's not about what white evangelicals have done but more about how they think and how they justify their actions. The point I'm making is that white evangelicals today use the same hermeneutic system their theological (and sometimes literal) ancestors used to justify slavery and they don't seem to have spent much, if any, time reflecting on that fact or trying to account for it.
White evangelicalism (and white English-speaking Protestantism generally) developed more or less in parallel with the trans-Atlantic slave system and this seems to have been influential in both directions.
For example, if you're going to engage in an enterprise that involves kidnapping, theft, rape, torture, mutilation, and murder a theology that says none of those things matters can be very reassuring. Hence the white evangelical horror at the idea that salvation is contingent upon anything you do (works righteousness). I'm not saying that this idea was developed to justify the trans-Atlantic slave system, just that such an idea would have obvious appeal to someone operating within such a system. Hence my argument that people didn't become slavedrivers because they were evangelicals, they adopted evangelicalism because they wanted to be slavedrivers.
I can't believe you seriously believe your own argument. If someone wanted to choose their religious views just to justify their slave owning, then they could have picked almost any other theological view available at the moment, since all of christianity was very comfortable with black slavery. Including the ancestors of today's mainline christians. Wasn't Jonathan Edwards a presbyterian? It's very ridiculous that tou have to single out evangelicals for things they have in common with most of christianity. Looks like you're only rationalising your hate.
Presbyterian and evangelical are not mutually exclusive, particularly historically. You have yet to engage with the fact that "bible-believing" evangelicals used to proof-text their way to supporting slavery, and now use the exact same methods to oppress women and LGBT folk. The distinction between historically black and white evangelical churches is theologically and politically important because it is the latter that prioritises using the force of law to impose their reactionary social views on the country as a whole while ignoring the economic and social justice imperatives of the Gospel. It is not black evangelical leaders who are clustering around Trump and excusing his every failing because he'll get their judges where they want them (right in every woman's uterus).
I'm not sayng i'm indifferent to what's right or wrong. I'm say[ i ]ng that my main purpouse in this topic is not this. It's a huge strecht of your imagination to think a denomination not marry[ i ]ng gays means they support killing gays. Do you think the same about catholics, orthodox christians and muslims? Why you have to single out evangelicals in this issue? It looks like they're target of a very ugly kind of hate from you.
If only it were my imagination instead of a well-known reality. As for "singling out" evangelicals, that's largely on grounds of relevance to this thread. One could find Catholic examples of the same thing, but that's getting off-topic. A bunch of gaslighting and whataboutism is just an attempt to change the subject.
I can't believe you seriously believe your own argument. If someone wanted to choose their religious views just to justify their slave owning, then they could have picked almost any other theological view available at the moment, since all of christianity was very comfortable with black slavery.
What about black Christians — lay people and theologians? There were millions of black Christians in America during the first half of the 19th century — where do they fit in Noll’s scheme?
They don’t.
Noll acknowledges this, almost parenthetically, in The Civil War as Theological Crisis. After laying out all these various views among the disputatious [white] Christians, he briefly turns to consider the voices and arguments made by black Christians at the time. That discussion is brief partly because it provides no contentious debate that needs summarizing. Among black Christians, there were no credible voices arguing the proslavery side.
But the important thing there is not the unanimity of black Christians in their opposition to slavery. The important thing there — what should be, for all Christians, everywhere, the most astonishingly important thing — is that America’s black Christians were right.
We can say this. Definitively. Without qualification.
When it comes to the single largest question in American history — the single largest theological question and hermeneutic question that has ever faced the church in North America — white Christians were squabbling and divided. White Christians were wavering and uncertain and all over the map. White Christians, for the most part, got it wrong.
Black Christians, almost without exception, got it right.
I'm not sure exactly what you object to in the idea that people are often attracted to religious teachings that support their pre-existing inclinations, or the straightforward notion that white evangelicalism grew up alongside the transAtlantic slave trade, which was an influential factor in its development.
You seem to quote patheos articles of liberal christians as if that made it an historical fact. Evangelicalism can trace its roots from german and nordic pietism, and from wesleyan revival in britain. None of these movements had anything to do with slave trades, and they can even be considered less racist then mainstream christianity of their time. Christian conservatives do converge in a lot of topics concerning morality. Just because a liberal who hates evangelicals writes a blog post saying evangelicalism was developed to support slavery doesn't make it a fact. There were already several religious options available for christians who supported slavery.
Back on the issue of this topic, the United Methodist Church upheld the traditional view on sexuality mostly thanks to the vote of black people. The white portion of the church was largely in favour of change. How do you feel about that? Do you think black methodists who supported the traditional stance are as evil as the minority of whites who agreed with them? And what do you think about historical christianity and the vast majority of global christianity today, that still reject same sex marriage? Where does their hermeneutics come from? You seem to talk about conservatism on this issue as if it was something peculiar to evangelicals, while to me it seems almost the whole global christianity, specially black christianity, is on board with usa evangelicals on this particular issue. In fact, liberal protestant stance on this issue is really the exceptional case here. We must ask what type of hermeneutics is leading liberal protestantism to conclusions that are so peculiar in the body of global christianity.
It's a hermeneutic that considers that the church has made mistakes about morality before and should be open to considering that it is making them now, and that if in doubt it is better to err on the side of love. The thing about liberalism is that in the face of evidence it is open to changing its mind. Evangelicalism changes its mind and then continues to insist that its new position is the absolute and unchangeable Word of God, as it has done on divorce, on slavery, on segregation, on abortion and contraception, and probably a host of other issues we could come up with if we looked into it. Roman Catholicism does the same sort of thing but more slowly and with slightly more complex reasoning.
Also, liberals don't hate evangelicals, we love the sinner but hate the sin. If they could just stop acting evangelical and repent of their evangelical thoughts then everything would be ok.
And what do you think about historical christianity and the vast majority of global christianity today, that still reject same sex marriage? Where does their hermeneutics come from?
I'd say that the position of the Catholic church on same-sex marriage, to take one prominent example, doesn't rely their hermeneutics but rather on their particular understanding of what they refer to as "natural law".
It's a hermeneutic that considers that the church has made mistakes about morality before and should be open to considering that it is making them now, and that if in doubt it is better to err on the side of love. The thing about liberalism is that in the face of evidence it is open to changing its mind. Evangelicalism changes its mind and then continues to insist that its new position is the absolute and unchangeable Word of God, as it has done on divorce, on slavery, on segregation, on abortion and contraception, and probably a host of other issues we could come up with if we looked into it. Roman Catholicism does the same sort of thing but more slowly and with slightly more complex reasoning.
Also, liberals don't hate evangelicals, we love the sinner but hate the sin. If they could just stop acting evangelical and repent of their evangelical thoughts then everything would be ok.
That doesn't sound like hermeneutics. It sounds more like doing what one feels like, and latter finding out how we're going to deal with bible and tradition, just in case anyone bothers.
Mind you that finding out what a text means doesn't necessarily means you have to agree with what it says. An atheist can pretty much interpret that the Bible says X, but at the same time believe Y, cause he does not regard any authority or divine inspiration to the biblical text. A christian and an atheist can have the same hermeneutics on the Bible, yet believe very different things, for example.
So when you say "I believe this in the name of love and justice", it doesn't have anything to do with bible hermeneutics, cause the conclusion would have been the same regardless of what the text says. So, maybe your hate for evangelicals is not related to their Bible hermeneutics, but rather to the position that the Bible ocuppies in their belief system. I've heard people criticising evangelicals saying that their approach to the Bible is similar to how a muslim regards the Koran. Yet the same people would come in defense of the muslims in case they were criticized. Do you hate how muslims act concerning the LGBT community? Do you call them to repentence too?
Maybe if mainline churches spent more time reasoning why they believe what they believe, instead of pointing out why evangelicals are wrong, they could atract someone. What is the position of the Bible in liberal protestant circles? What degree of authority it has? How does that relate to their respective confessional traditions? And where do they get their definitions from love and justice from? It all sounds kinda messy right now. It is no wonder that if we can't sort our own house, we can hardly make outsiders interested in coming in.
And what do you think about historical christianity and the vast majority of global christianity today, that still reject same sex marriage? Where does their hermeneutics come from?
I'd say that the position of the Catholic church on same-sex marriage, to take one prominent example, doesn't rely their hermeneutics but rather on their particular understanding of what they refer to as "natural law".
I've heard evangelicals reasoning in similar ways too. But if the conclusion is the same, why do evangelicals get all the hate and catholics, orthodox christians, have a free pass to not marry gays and not ordaining women? Is the problem with evangelicals not what they believe, but the fact that they claim Bible verses in support of their views, while others have more sophisticated reasoning?
I've heard evangelicals reasoning in similar ways too. But if the conclusion is the same, why do evangelicals get all the hate and catholics, orthodox christians, have a free pass to not marry gays and not ordaining women?
Since when are those positions not controversial, both within the Catholic church and among external critics? Seriously, who is giving the Catholic and Orthodox churches a "free pass"? This just seems like a whiny attempt to deflect criticism without having to address it.
Is the problem with evangelicals not what they believe, but the fact that they claim Bible verses in support of their views, while others have more sophisticated reasoning?
The problem, as has been repeatedly stated, is that the white evangelical hermeneutic of context-free proof texts has failed rather spectacularly on the issue of American slavery. There does not seem to be any reckoning with this fact, but rather a self-assurance that whatever went wrong was an isolated incident that certainly would never happen again, an assumption belied by white evangelical Americans' positions on segregation for most of the twentieth century. There's no intellectually consistent explanation as to why "liberalism" is acceptable when it comes to slavery or racial discrimination but it becomes anathema when applied to homosexuality or women's equality.
I am aware of only two hermeneutical concepts raised up by Methodism. The first is the Wesleyan quadrilateral, which identifies the hermeneutical context. It asserts that there are four sources for spiritual insight: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The quadrilateral is an expansion of the traditional Anglican trilateral, which does not include experience. Some more conservative Methodists have insisted that "experience" in Wesley's view was specifically of the Aldersgate sort, but it is most commonly viewed in a more general sense.
The second Wesleyan idea about scripture is that we should interpret the more obscure passages in the light of the more transparent ones. Personally, I reject this as a general principle, because I do not see all of scripture as saying the same thing. To my mind, this principle leads to gross distortion of scripture. The classic example of this is the smushing together of the two nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. Since Christ was born only once, and both Gospel writers were talking about the same event, they must be telling the same story. Thus, there were shepherds and magi in attendance; there was a slaughter of the innocents and a presentation at the temple; a flight to Egypt and a peaceful return to Nazareth, etc.
Alternatively, we can give each writer his own voice, and say that the Gospel writers use their respective nativity stories as something like the overture to an opera, introducing their respective themes by means of a mythic nativity device. Both stories make a lot of sense in that way, and neither makes any sense to me as a very distorted retelling of highly questionable history.
Anyway, if you are looking for Methodist-specific hermeneutics, the above two points are just about it as far as this life-long Methodist can discern.
But in other news, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada considered 4 options for “going forward” presented by a committee of 14 former moderators of General Assembly. Of the 4 options, the Assembly chose “inclusion,” which starts the process for changes to church law allowing for the full inclusion of LGBT+ members.
Which is doubly astounding, as the PCiC received a large contingent from the United Church of Canada after we had the same vote in 1988. I would not have pegged them to go that way.
Comments
I see it thriving. Am I wrong?
And "implacabl[y] homophobi[c]" according to you, so yes. You're trying to claim all (or most) Muslims living in the West conform to your bigoted stereotypes as being filled with implacable hatred of homosexuals when available evidence shows this to be wrong.
This is off topic for this thread. Please take general discussion of Islam somewhere else or for Islam and any Dead Horse issue, start a separate thread on that topic. The next posts on this thread need to be back on topic of the United Methodist Church and its LGBTQ policies.
Thanks
Louise
Dead Horses Host
hosting off
Hell Croesos?
That is correct. Both are official names for the country.
What Stonespring may be referring to is that the Anglican Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand has 3 equal tikanga*, Maori, Pakeha and Pasifika (or it may be called Polynesian -it's a while since I was an Anglican).
*tikanga - I think in the Church this is usually translated as 'houses' but what tikanga is usually translated as is 'rules to be followed' or 'ways of doing things'.
I am too distant now from the Anglican Church to offer any opinion. Zappa would know more about this.
A retired Methodist Minister friend who is gay mentioned in passing to me yesterday that a gay friend of his is due to move on from his current position and there are only a couple of places that would accept his Ministry, which is far fewer than when my friend was in active Ministry.
And about schism... Issues like that usually generates schism in denominations. I know some new lutheran and anglican denominations have emerged in America out of schism in the mainline denominations about same sex marriage. But it´s usually the conservative side that leaves and starts a new denomination, in many cases, buyng or renting new spaces for worship as they have to leave the old denomination´s buildings. But a liberal wing of a denomination leaving to form a new one is unheard of. Do the liberal wing of the UMC has the energy and the will to start a new denomination, dealing with the property issues and starting new mission fields besides their older parishes like evangelicals do?
Not the Episcopal Church in my part of the U.S.! (Nor have I noticed it in the various Lutheran churches around here.)
I haven’t heard much about the status of things in the UMC in the last few months, so I can’t say exactly what the situation is.
But in other news, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada considered 4 options for “going forward” presented by a committee of 14 former moderators of General Assembly. Of the 4 options, the Assembly chose “inclusion,” which starts the process for changes to church law allowing for the full inclusion of LGBT+ members.
This last sentence is not accurate. Granted, it is normally conservatives that withdraw and start new denominations, because conservatives are as a general rule more likely to think that doctrinal purity and fidelity requires it.
But there are cases where it is non-conservatives who have left. The Alliance of Baptists (liberal, currently around 130 churches and 65,000 members) and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (moderate, currently around 1,800 churches and 700,000 members) split from the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1990s, after the “conservative resurgence” in the SBC. There it was the moderates and liberals who thought the conservatives had abandoned historic Baptist principles. At least where I live, moderate churches have continued to leave the SBC in the years since the CBF was founded. (The liberals were all driven out of the SBC decades ago.)
ELCA's presiding Bishop pretty much acknowledges her church is dying and they don't have a clue what to do in the first paragraph of this article: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2019/02/what-is-god-up-to/
By the way, oficial statistics that appeared after the article show that the latest yearly membership decrease have been of more then 90,000. The decrease have not plateaued, but seems to be getting bigger, as the remaining members are getting older.
Statistics for PCUSA and the Episcopal Church are similar. I guess everyone has anedoctal evidence of some congregations that are still strong, but that doesn't change the picture. Larger congregations of course can still survive while loosing members. They can even gain members as smaller congregations around are closing and sending their members to them. But that doesn't change the bigger picture.
This is overstatement. It is overstatement because it suggests things are even worse than they are (structures exist only to manage sale of building as people die), and it is overstatement because it suggests that the reason for membership declines is the liberalizing stands taken on certain dead horse issues. That is part of the picture, but it's simplistic (and inaccurate) to suggest that's all that's going on. There are a variety of factors at play, many of which have more to do with national demographics generally than with specific positions of denominations.
The most recent statistics for the PC(USA) show that while there is still decline, the decline appears to have slowed. The number of congregations leaving the denomination dropped significantly. And new members by profession/reaffirmation of faith was up by around 80%.
I was not sugesting a causation between liberalizing stands of these denominations on human sexuality and their membership decline, but only a correlation, which clearly exists. That´s why I said I am curious about the outcome in the UMC, cause it is an exception among USA mainline denominations. Will their ongoing decline be even worst then what their sister denominations are experiencing? Or will it slow down? Or maybe this matter doesn´t make any difference at all? Nobody knows.
Of course, the number of congregations leaving has to drop some time, because it was clearly motivated by the liberalizing stands on human sexuality (while we cannot know for sure the reason why individual members are leaving, there´s obviously a causation between the new stands on human sexuality and the departure of whole congregations). But the organic decline, which consists of individual departures of members, is still going strong. 62,000 members less for a denomination that counts 1.5 million is not a sign of hope by any stretch of the imagination.
My suspicion is that the correlation between liberal views on sexuality and membership decline is not one of causation, but rather these 2 factors are being caused by something else. People with lower religious commitment are much more likely to leave a denomination then very commited people. All research shows that denominations in decline also have low levels of religious commitment among their members. People in these denominations are less likely to take part in weekly services, pray or read the bible on a daily basis then people in growing denominations (regardless of their "orthodoxy": mormons and 7th day adventists are growing churches, for example, with very commited members). And people with higher levels of religious commitment also tend to be a lot more conservative then the average population. Therefore, denominations with less religiously commited members tend to move on quicker with social trends and lose members faster then the denominations with highly commited people. But of course, that´s only a ***suspicion*** of mine.
An intersting research also shows the political preferences of members of different religious groups in USA:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/
Note that in most mainline denominations, members are more likely to lean republican more then the average population. Even the United Church Of Chirst (which is liberal to the extreme) still has more then 30% of members leaning republican. You can bet that these people are not happy with the direction their denominations are taking!
Bigots or not, I suppose they are not happy going to a church were the minister most likely preaches political views opposed to theirs as if that was "the gospel".
One presumes that if they were experiencing that, and were unhappy about it, they would have gone to a different church. There's hardly a lack of churches preaching hatred of gay people and love for Trump for them to choose from.
I wonder if this can be seen as a rough guide for current debates over "liberalism"? Here's a quick capsule history of PCA's break with PC(USA)'s liberalism on the issue of racial integration.
So what does this teach us about possible denominational trajectories? Well, the initially pro-segregation PCA is growing while the integrationist PC(USA) has been shrinking for decades (though it still has about four times the number of members as PCA). So if membership growth is your sole metric the best strategy seems to be opposing liberalism at first, gradually getting quieter and quieter in opposing liberalism, and then several decades after it would have made any difference release a statement saying "Oopsie, it turns out what we said was 'liberalism' (and therefore bad) was actually a 'gospel imperative'. Our bad." That seems to be the best path to padding out the membership rolls, provided that's your main goal.
There are several reasons why people might stay in a church even when they are unhappy. And this is particularly expected of elderly people who lived most of their lives inside a church tradition. They´re not easily going to look for another one just because they are unhappy with how things are at the moment.
Anyway, statistics show that people ARE leaving these denominations by the flocks. But with this being a harder move for elderly people, who cherish the building and community they lived so many years with, it´s no wonder why statistics also show that most of the remaining members of these churches are elderly people!
Yes, that is what makes it so peculiar, and the reason why I´m curious to watch what happens next.
I think a similar example is the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the clergy in North America and Europe is very liberal, but since they are a global church, they have to stick with the majority, and not even ordain women priests!
On a side note, pew research has very interesting data on USA denominations. It also shows that mainline denominations are the least ethnically diverse churches. While evangelicals, who acording to all sources are supposed to be racist, have flocks of black and latinos in their pews. Could it be that they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are racist because they are white? And if you singled out white people in every other religious tradition they can be as racists as "white evangelicals"?
It can't be that interesting if you're not willing to provide a link.
Does it? I can find data on diversity by denomination at Pew, but nothing on how that applies at the level of individual churches or congregations. A denomination can be both racially diverse at a denominational level and racially segregated at the level of individual congregations.
[ citation needed ]
Alternatively it could be asked if they are not racist because they are evangelical, but are evangelical because they are racist? A fairly strong case can be made that the white evangelicalism hermeneutic was invented to justify slavery and repurposed to justify segregation. Part of the problem is that these denominations claim to have a Biblical hermeneutic of simple literalism and this hermeneutic has led them to support slavery and segregation. They claim to have abandoned support for those things, but I've never seen any indication that they've examined or come to grips with the way that this hermeneutic, to which they claim to still adhere, led them to these conclusions they now believe to be wrong or the process by which they changed their minds.
(Okay, that's a lot of Fred Clark links, but he's a white evangelical native who's done a lot of thinking and writing on the topic.)
Yes, I acknowledged as much earlier when I said that most PC(USA) congregations inclined to leave had already done so. You said statistics for the PC(USA) and TEC are similar to those for the ELCA. I was just trying to put a little more meat on the bone. I don’t know specifics of ELCA or TEC statistics, beyond the few specifics in the article up which you linked.
Do you recall exactly how that was phrased? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they found that evangelicals as a group are much more diverse than mainliners. Evangelicals are a very large and diverse group. I don’t know, though, the degree to which the diversity is visible in individual evangelical congregations, or even denominations/associations.
ETA: Sorry, didn’t see Crœsos’s post before I posted.
I think some white, liberal mainliners think that by proclaiming a message of inclusion and diversity, putting Hawaiian or Swahili songs in the hymnbook, or getting more people of color into clergy or administrative position, the church makeup will start to conform to their aspiration. But a church full of anti-racist white people is still a church full of white people and walking into these congregations as a rare specimen of "diversity" can be quite a foreboding experience.
Looking at the links in @Crœsos's last post, two queries about things that appear curious to this foreigner
The first is about the separate categories for "Anglican Church" and "Episcopal Church"? Do sociologists really distinguish between schismatic and non-schismatic versions of what has until recently been the same denomination? And is there really a sociological difference? Or am I missing something else altogether?
The second is really extraordinary from this side of the Atlantic, which is the statement that 38% of US Muslims categorise as 'white'. That's well over a ⅓ and more than either of the Black or Asian groups at 28% each. Where do they all come from?
There are ethnic groups in the UK from the eastern Mediterranean that are Muslim and white but they are relatively small communities here. Most Muslims here are descended from people from south Asia or sub-Saharan Africa.
There´s a lot of problems in your thoughts her. First, you single out evangelicals as supporters of slavery in the past. Truth, but why don´t you bother mentioning that other religious groups were on board aswell? Think, for example, the Roman Catholic Church in latin America, or even the Episcopal Church in USA, which had many priests and bishops owning slaves? Why are evangelicals the only ones you require to change their entire theological system to prove that they really regret on what they´ve done, while other religious groups can get along with simply moving on on that particular subject?
Second, there´s nothing specific about evangelicalism relating to slavery. Many evangelicals in history were abolitionist. A further proof of that is that you have to single out "white evangelicals", ignoring the simple facts that: a) black americans are more likely to be evangelical then any other demographic group; b) conservative evangelical denominations atract more people of colour then mainline denominations. Why would people of colour choose to join or remain in a theological system that, acording to you, was created to segregate them? Surely, there are many theological problems in evangelicalism, but I don´t see anything specifically making them more likely to be racists then christians of other theological preferences. Being white is not a theological point of view. So you cannot examine evangelicals belief system by singling out only "white evangelicals". Do mixed race congregations have different theologies for each member, or do denominations that have black and white congragations have a different theology for each type of congregation? It seems to me that you incur in the problem of confusing correlation with causation. Yes, there is a correlation between white evangelicals and racism, historically. But that doesn´t prove that being evangelical is what caused that correlation.
Third, you seem to imply that evangelicals now are against racism and slavery simply because that´s not acceptable in today´s society, but if they were coherent to the biblical hermeneutics they still cling to, then they should admit that they still support racism and slavery. However, liberal christians who changed their views on social issues haven´t necessarily changed their hermeneutics either. Lutherans, presbyterians and episcopalians 30 years ago wouldn´t in their right minds accept gay marriage in the church, for example. Now they do. Yet they haven´t demonstrated why their hermeneutics have changed to the point that something that was considered sinful 30 years ago now is being blessed by the church. Why do you have to single out evangelicals inconsistencies (which are many, I know), when in fact that happens with every other religious group? Is it possible that you are singling out a particular group that you don´t like, when you could acuse christians in general of all the things you acuse evangelicals (suporting slavery, being racist, not acepting LGBT marriage, etc)?
Finally, with this debate about the UMC decision, and how does that relate with other mainline denominations, I´m not interested in determining if the decision was right or wrong. I´m interested in seeing the results. Because I´ve read many news articles pointing to this decision as suicidal for the UMC, implyng that many people will leave and the denomination will shrink. They didn´t seem to take notice that denominations who took the opposite way have lost hundreads of thousands of members because of this particular issue, and have continued to shrink even after the loosing party has departed. So what is the UMC up to?
Increasing the number of non-white members would naturally lead to the increase of non-white people in clergy and positions of power. But artificially increasing the number of non-whites in the positions of power trough affirmative policies won´t lead to an increase of non-whites in the pews. In other words, if you are a denomination made up of descendents of europeans, and you want to have bishops outside of your ethnic background, you better start working on evangelism to people outside of your ethnic backgrounds. So that some of these people might one day become ministers, and then one day become bishops.
But mainline denominations suck at that. Because it takes evangelism, and that is not politically correct. How dare you suggest other people what to believe? Evangelicals are better at that because conversion fits their theology well. So their congregations tend to become more racially diverse when the surrounding environment does so. While mainline congregations tend to remain the same even if the neighbourhoods are changing.
I can't answer the question about Pew's Anglican/Episcopal division.
I'm not absolutely sure about the Muslims either, but if I had to guess I'd say Pew categorizes people of Middle Eastern and North African origin or ancestry as "white". Their breakdown of nations of origin for Asian-Americans doesn't include any Near Eastern or Middle Eastern nations, so I'm guessing they don't fall into that category. If those groups were considered as part of the "Other/Mixed" category I'd suspect it would come to more than 3% of all American Muslims, so they're probably not there either.
Germaneness and familiarity, for the most part. I'm more familiar with slavery in the American context and the relevance of white Protestantism generally (and white evangelicalism particularly) to maintaining it. Moreover that history is more relevant to the current discussion than other Christian traditions. Spraying a lot of obfuscatory squid ink and whataboutisms seems like a way to avoid discussing the points I've raised.
You have fairly spectacularly missed my point. It's not about what white evangelicals have done but more about how they think and how they justify their actions. The point I'm making is that white evangelicals today use the same hermeneutic system their theological (and sometimes literal) ancestors used to justify slavery and they don't seem to have spent much, if any, time reflecting on that fact or trying to account for it.
White evangelicalism (and white English-speaking Protestantism generally) developed more or less in parallel with the trans-Atlantic slave system and this seems to have been influential in both directions.
For example, if you're going to engage in an enterprise that involves kidnapping, theft, rape, torture, mutilation, and murder a theology that says none of those things matters can be very reassuring. Hence the white evangelical horror at the idea that salvation is contingent upon anything you do (works righteousness). I'm not saying that this idea was developed to justify the trans-Atlantic slave system, just that such an idea would have obvious appeal to someone operating within such a system. Hence my argument that people didn't become slavedrivers because they were evangelicals, they adopted evangelicalism because they wanted to be slavedrivers.
Italics from the original, bolding added by me. That's a long excerpt of Clark, I know, but it gets to the core of the argument. It's problematic that white evangelical Christianity is able to say that slavery was wrong, but have no explanation for why slavery was wrong. Particularly because the same methodology of Biblical interpretation is still used on various anti-woman and anti-gay passages.
I single out white evangelicals because they're not simply evangelicals who happen to be white but evangelicals who see their evangelicalism through the lens of their whiteness. In other words there are significant differences between white evangelicalism and black evangelicalism (as they exist in the United States) to such a degree that treating them as the same does a disservice to both. Black evangelicals, for example, tend to embrace social justice and reject the otherworldly indifference of white evangelicals. Historical example: Billy Graham didn't want to engage with the Civil Rights Movement because he thought doing so would distract from the Gospel message. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that advancing equality and justice for all is the Gospel message.
What I find fascinating is this proud, self-declared indifference to questions of right or wrong in favor of focusing on "results", with "results" being defined solely in terms of denominational membership, not in how it otherwise affects people's lives. For example, I'd be more interested in whether the UMC taking a harder line against homosexuality will give leaders a green light to push for things like Uganda's "kill the gays" bill than whether it's going to put more or fewer butts in the pews. Different priorities, I guess.
Yes, which I’m sure is one reason why the Pew Research Center’s study distinguished between “Evangelical Protestant” and “Historically Black Protestant.”
I'm not sayng i'm indifferent to what's right or wrong. I'm sayng that my main purpouse in this topic is not this. It's a huge strecht of your imagination to think a denomination not marryng gays means they support killing gays. Do you think the same about catholics, orthodox christians and muslims? Why you have to single out evangelicals in this issue? It looks like they're target of a very ugly kind of hate from you.
On the particular matter of this topic, black evangelicals usually have the same views as white evangelicals or catholics and muslims. The African Methodist church also don't marry LGBT couples and is not seeking to do so in the near future. And when you mention"black protestants", you put in the same group people with very different theological views. Black protestants can be liberal or conservative. To put all black protestants in the same category is the same as putting liberal episcopalians in the same category as conservative pentecostals, just because they're of the same colour. Black and white are not theological categories.
I can't believe you seriously believe your own argument. If someone wanted to choose their religious views just to justify their slave owning, then they could have picked almost any other theological view available at the moment, since all of christianity was very comfortable with black slavery. Including the ancestors of today's mainline christians. Wasn't Jonathan Edwards a presbyterian? It's very ridiculous that tou have to single out evangelicals for things they have in common with most of christianity. Looks like you're only rationalising your hate.
Presbyterian and evangelical are not mutually exclusive, particularly historically. You have yet to engage with the fact that "bible-believing" evangelicals used to proof-text their way to supporting slavery, and now use the exact same methods to oppress women and LGBT folk. The distinction between historically black and white evangelical churches is theologically and politically important because it is the latter that prioritises using the force of law to impose their reactionary social views on the country as a whole while ignoring the economic and social justice imperatives of the Gospel. It is not black evangelical leaders who are clustering around Trump and excusing his every failing because he'll get their judges where they want them (right in every woman's uterus).
If only it were my imagination instead of a well-known reality. As for "singling out" evangelicals, that's largely on grounds of relevance to this thread. One could find Catholic examples of the same thing, but that's getting off-topic. A bunch of gaslighting and whataboutism is just an attempt to change the subject.
All of Christianity? That seems inaccurate in a particularly telling way.
I'm not sure exactly what you object to in the idea that people are often attracted to religious teachings that support their pre-existing inclinations, or the straightforward notion that white evangelicalism grew up alongside the transAtlantic slave trade, which was an influential factor in its development.
Back on the issue of this topic, the United Methodist Church upheld the traditional view on sexuality mostly thanks to the vote of black people. The white portion of the church was largely in favour of change. How do you feel about that? Do you think black methodists who supported the traditional stance are as evil as the minority of whites who agreed with them? And what do you think about historical christianity and the vast majority of global christianity today, that still reject same sex marriage? Where does their hermeneutics come from? You seem to talk about conservatism on this issue as if it was something peculiar to evangelicals, while to me it seems almost the whole global christianity, specially black christianity, is on board with usa evangelicals on this particular issue. In fact, liberal protestant stance on this issue is really the exceptional case here. We must ask what type of hermeneutics is leading liberal protestantism to conclusions that are so peculiar in the body of global christianity.
Also, liberals don't hate evangelicals, we love the sinner but hate the sin. If they could just stop acting evangelical and repent of their evangelical thoughts then everything would be ok.
I'd say that the position of the Catholic church on same-sex marriage, to take one prominent example, doesn't rely their hermeneutics but rather on their particular understanding of what they refer to as "natural law".
That doesn't sound like hermeneutics. It sounds more like doing what one feels like, and latter finding out how we're going to deal with bible and tradition, just in case anyone bothers.
Mind you that finding out what a text means doesn't necessarily means you have to agree with what it says. An atheist can pretty much interpret that the Bible says X, but at the same time believe Y, cause he does not regard any authority or divine inspiration to the biblical text. A christian and an atheist can have the same hermeneutics on the Bible, yet believe very different things, for example.
So when you say "I believe this in the name of love and justice", it doesn't have anything to do with bible hermeneutics, cause the conclusion would have been the same regardless of what the text says. So, maybe your hate for evangelicals is not related to their Bible hermeneutics, but rather to the position that the Bible ocuppies in their belief system. I've heard people criticising evangelicals saying that their approach to the Bible is similar to how a muslim regards the Koran. Yet the same people would come in defense of the muslims in case they were criticized. Do you hate how muslims act concerning the LGBT community? Do you call them to repentence too?
Maybe if mainline churches spent more time reasoning why they believe what they believe, instead of pointing out why evangelicals are wrong, they could atract someone. What is the position of the Bible in liberal protestant circles? What degree of authority it has? How does that relate to their respective confessional traditions? And where do they get their definitions from love and justice from? It all sounds kinda messy right now. It is no wonder that if we can't sort our own house, we can hardly make outsiders interested in coming in.
I've heard evangelicals reasoning in similar ways too. But if the conclusion is the same, why do evangelicals get all the hate and catholics, orthodox christians, have a free pass to not marry gays and not ordaining women? Is the problem with evangelicals not what they believe, but the fact that they claim Bible verses in support of their views, while others have more sophisticated reasoning?
Since when are those positions not controversial, both within the Catholic church and among external critics? Seriously, who is giving the Catholic and Orthodox churches a "free pass"? This just seems like a whiny attempt to deflect criticism without having to address it.
The problem, as has been repeatedly stated, is that the white evangelical hermeneutic of context-free proof texts has failed rather spectacularly on the issue of American slavery. There does not seem to be any reckoning with this fact, but rather a self-assurance that whatever went wrong was an isolated incident that certainly would never happen again, an assumption belied by white evangelical Americans' positions on segregation for most of the twentieth century. There's no intellectually consistent explanation as to why "liberalism" is acceptable when it comes to slavery or racial discrimination but it becomes anathema when applied to homosexuality or women's equality.
BTW, I also am curious about your answer to Nick Tamen's question.
The second Wesleyan idea about scripture is that we should interpret the more obscure passages in the light of the more transparent ones. Personally, I reject this as a general principle, because I do not see all of scripture as saying the same thing. To my mind, this principle leads to gross distortion of scripture. The classic example of this is the smushing together of the two nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. Since Christ was born only once, and both Gospel writers were talking about the same event, they must be telling the same story. Thus, there were shepherds and magi in attendance; there was a slaughter of the innocents and a presentation at the temple; a flight to Egypt and a peaceful return to Nazareth, etc.
Alternatively, we can give each writer his own voice, and say that the Gospel writers use their respective nativity stories as something like the overture to an opera, introducing their respective themes by means of a mythic nativity device. Both stories make a lot of sense in that way, and neither makes any sense to me as a very distorted retelling of highly questionable history.
Anyway, if you are looking for Methodist-specific hermeneutics, the above two points are just about it as far as this life-long Methodist can discern.