Robert A. Hunt: United Methodist Divides as a Site for Interreligious Dialogue

Today’s post is by Rev. Dr. Robert A. Hunt. Hunt is responding to “Love and the Christian Way of Being in the World,” a piece by Don Manning-Miller, which is itself a response to “Lifestyle Evangelism and Moral Convictions” by David W. Scott, which draws on essays by Hunt and by Thomas Lambrecht.

While continued conversation is welcome, Don Manning-Miller’s recent response to David Scott’s piece misses the point a bit – primarily because he’s driving toward a standard of his own, and one long embedded in the conversation of progressives in this regard.

As I read this post, Manning-Miller begins with what seems unassailable: an assertion that love is the fundamental “ethic” that forms Christian ethics. Yet, despite his mischaracterization of Lambrecht’s work, Manning-Miller knows, I think, that the claim of love as an ethic is problematic when everyone claims it.

So, as he ends his post, he acknowledges that making ethical judgments, in particular judgments about those with whom to fellowship is possible, is indeed necessary. Then he offers what seems to an airtight basis for such judgments: Do the ethics of a group cause harm? And of course, he asserts that the ethics of Good News do indeed cause harm.
 
The problem is that the definition of harm is no more obvious and shared among United Methodists than the meaning of love. And this gets us to the real problem. Good News and the WCA operate out of a classical ethic based on attaining the teleos for which each creature, including humans, was created. In this view, that which causes harm is that which prevents a person from reaching the end God has designated for their personhood as a human and as an individual.
 
The progressive ethic, which Manning-Miller expresses, is not teleological, in my view. It is a process ethic in which the name of the process is love and in which there is no particular teleos to be seen. The Reign of God is less an end than a set of values that guide the process. As long as all those engaged in the process of love manifest those values, their behavior is ethical. At best, any discussion of an end or purpose for humankind would be couched in terms of ever-changing forms of human fulfillment. But this fulfillment can’t refer to a true teleos, because it isn’t linked to a genesis.
 
So, Lambrecht could say in perfect sincerity that the ethics of the Good News/WCA/Traditionalist United Methodists doesn’t cause harm, even if it does cause pain. In fact, he could claim their ethic prevents harm by keeping individuals and the church moving toward their divinely appointed teleos, when all those who either refuse their divinely appointed end or hinder others, that is (to quote scripture) “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Rev. 21:8)
 
But for Manning-Miller, this approach certainly causes harm because harm is anything that interferes with the discernment and realization of human fulfillment. Put another way, the concept of harm is embedded in the concept of fulfillment, and a classical and a process understanding of fulfillment are fundamentally different, as are their understandings of the Reign of God.

This fundamental difference between these two perspectives demands the hard kind of dialogue, the kind that is met in real inter-religious dialogue, the dialogue between groups that do not begin at the same place in understanding the nature of reality. Schubert Ogden and Mark Heim recognized this back in the 80’s.
 
The question remains whether those holding the classical view of reality and those holding a process view of reality can find a way within their distinct worldviews to accommodate some kind of cooperation with the very much other. A fair amount of work has been done on this in the world of inter-religious dialogue, but I see no evidence that either the WCA or UM Progressives have thought of one another clearly in these terms.

Thus, neither group has formulated a sensible and internally coherent approach to dialogue with the other, and as a result, both engage in polemic primarily intended to shore up the support of their own faithful while wondering why they keep talking past rather than to each other.

Lifestyle Evangelism and Moral Convictions

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

As a different approach to recommended readings, I (David) would like to put two pieces into dialogue with each other: a recent blog post by Tom Lambrecht entitled "Lifestyle Evangelism" and a somewhat older blog post by Robert A. Hunt entitled "Moral Convictions - the Wrong Start in Human Relations."

Lambrecht's piece draws on the book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider to argue that the growth of the early church "was not primarily due to missions or evangelism" but was instead due to early Christians' "distinctive, lived-out faith that becomes attractive over time to people unfulfilled by the world’s pleasures and possessions." In illustrating what that practice of faith looked like, Lambrecht cites a variety of what might be termed moral practices by both the early church and early Methodism: business integrity, sexual purity, respect for life, inclusion of all peoples, care for the poor, etc. Lambrecht concludes:

"Evangelism programs and missional strategies are good and helpful. But people will not buy what we are selling unless they see that it works in making our lives different and more fulfilling than theirs. Otherwise, why make the sacrifices that being a Christian entails?"

Lambrecht's article helpfully questions the value of top-down initiatives to grow the church, and his emphasis on living out one's faith in practical ways that impact one's treatment of others represents an important and central affirmation of Methodist theology.

As I read Lambrecht's piece, though, I thought about the challenges that cultural diversity and cultural polarization represent to the type of lifestyle evangelism Lambrecht commends. While morality is not the entirety of lifestyle evangelism, it is centrally connected. For Christians' lifestyle to be attractive involves, on some level, non-Christians being able to see the attractiveness of the moral system lived out by Christians or at least the outcomes thereof, as Lambrecht's examples suggest.

Yet, in our culture today, understandings of morality are deeply polarized, at least on some issues. While people from all background generally agree that stealing and murder are bad, some of our country's most deeply polarizing topics have been framed not just as political or social issues, but as moral issues. Thus, the treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, responses to racism, views of the police, climate change, treatment of national symbols, and more are debated in moral language. Each side sees its approach to these issues as moral and the other side's approach as immoral.

This raises a question for the practice of lifestyle evangelism: Can it only be effective among those within the same politico-cultural sphere? Can Christians in the 21st century United States practice lifestyle evangelism in a way that is genuine attractive to those on the other side of the country's polarizing issues? And if not, if morality is so tied to politico-cultural identity, will non-Christians attribute Christians' practice of morality to their faith or to their political views? If their morality is seen as a function of their political views, then a lifestyle lived in accordance with that system of morality will not be seen as a testament to Christianity.

Here is where Robert Hunt's piece is useful. Hunt raises a strong caution about morality as a starting point for Christians' engagement with the world. He argues that "[t]he traditional church has imbued us with a set of moral convictions, and indeed a moral order, that only grudgingly makes way for genuine diversity and inclusion" and because of that "a diversity of cultures and customs is all too quickly mapped onto the distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous." Thus, if we as the church are too focused on morality, then we run the risk of shunning rather than attracting those who disagree with us on moral issues (whichever side we are on), and some must inevitably disagree with us in contemporary American society.

For Hunt, the solution is to focus on Jesus as "the one who leads us into the questioning of our own moral convictions" and the one who presents a new law of love. We must practice love for our neighbor "not merely when, but particularly because he or she is puncturing our posture of moral confidence." This is especially important in "a time of deep divisions, exclusion, and hatred."

This juxtaposition of Lambrecht's and Hunt's articles is not meant as a refutation of Lambrecht's piece. I am sure that Lambrecht would affirm that an evangelistic lifestyle is one that involves love of one's neighbor, and love of neighbor is present in the examples Lambrecht gives of what such a lifestyle looks like.

My intention is, instead, to encourage us as we are reflecting on Lambrecht's piece to think of those attractive aspects of the Christian as stemming from love, not from a system of morality. It is love that has the ability to reach across divisions, polarization, and boundaries, because love respects the integrity of the other. Love incarnated in our actions is what makes Christianity both credible and attractive.

Recommended Reading: Tom Lambrecht on Big Picture Status of United Methodism

Rev. Tom Lambrecht has written a three-piece series for Good News Magazine, explaining what recently released membership numbers from GCFA reveal about the "Big Picture Status of United Methodism." It this series, he examines trendlines for United Methodism around the world. Rev. Lambrecht's interpretations parallel and extend the interpretations of these numbers previously published on this blog. Here are the three pieces of his series:

Africa

United States

Europe and Asia