David W. Scott - United Methodist Disciplines: Possibilities and Anomalies

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.

Inspired by upcoming work on the General Book of Discipline during this quadrennium of the UMC, I have been examining over the past couple of weeks how United Methodists understand the concept of discipline and what it means to have a Book of Discipline. Thus far, I have looked at the relationship between discipline and discipleship and examined rules vs. norms and boundaries vs. ideals as ways of influencing behavior.

I’d like to conclude this series (for now, at least) but looking at one more pair of concepts, related this time to when rule making is necessary: possibilities and anomalies.

Much rule making occurs in response to a specific situation. Something happens, and then rules are put into place to make sure there’s consistency if a situation happens again or to avoid a bad situation happening again. Certainly, rules can arise in response to theoretical issues or for other reasons, but this approach to rule making is a common one. Something happens, someone says, “That might happen again, so there ought to be a policy about that,” and a policy is created.

This is not a bad approach. It is good to have consistency and to avoid bad situations if we can. Many would argue that we have a moral imperative to do so. Yet behind this approach to rule making are some assumptions about risk or recurrence that are worth delving into.

One of the assumptions behind this “there should be a policy” approach to discipline is the judgement that the possibility of a situation recurring is realistic and significant – that it is common enough and important enough that it justifies the effort of making and carrying out a policy.

Thus, for instance, the Book of Discipline states in ¶256.1, “Local churches or charges are strongly encouraged to develop policies and procedures to provide for the safety of the infants, children, youth, and vulnerable adults entrusted to their care.” The consequences of abuse or harm to children and youth are so severe and, unfortunately, such an occurrence is frequent enough around the world that it is important for the Book of Discipline to set this policy. Sadly, child abuse is a realistic risk, and it would be irresponsible of the church not to try to prevent it.

On the other hand, General Conference hasn’t recommended a policy about what to do if a plane crashes at your church before worship, though this is something that happened to a Baptist church in North Carolina last year. https://www.baptiststandard.com/news/baptists/plane-crashes-near-nc-church-before-sunday-services/ That possibility is seen as too remote to be worth worrying about, even though we could imagine the situation having an impact on worship and pastoral care. And in the North Carolina incident, thankfully, the pilot was okay and church services continued, so the situation had few major consequences. Planes crashing into churches are not seen as a realistic, significant possibility. Instead, the incident can be chalked up as an anomaly.

An anomaly is something abnormal, peculiar, and unexpected. It is unlikely, and it may even be a singular occurrence – something that has only happened once. There is generally no need to make policies to avoid anomalies because they are seen as rare (and therefore not worth worrying about) and unpredictable (and therefore unable to be controlled).

So, when United Methodists are considering when to embed policies into the Book of Discipline in response to something that has happened, the question is, “Could this situation likely happen again? Or was the situation an anomaly?”

The challenge is that determining whether something is a realistic and significant possibility or an anomaly is a judgment call, and different people’s judgments will be influenced by a whole host of issues, including personal experience and relevant information they possess. Critically, that judgment can also be influenced by cultural context.

Cultures involve assumptions about what phenomena are salient and significant in the human world. Set aside for a moment that the statistical likelihood of a plane crashing into a church varies from one context to another based on the prevalence of planes, churches, and aerial safety measures. If planes were to crash into two different churches in two different cultural contexts, the members of those churches would make sense of those crashes in two different ways. They would derive different theological and social meanings from the events.

And, crucially, they might have a different sense of whether another plane crash was a realistic risk and/or how significant an event it was for a plane to crash into a church. Thus, they would have a different sense of whether something was a possibility or an anomaly.

To bring this discussion back to the Book of Discipline, there are, for instance, several paragraphs in the current Book of Discipline on Ecumenical Shared Ministries, ¶207-211. In the United States, the possibility of an ecumenical congregation formed by combining United Methodists and Christians from another denomination is both realistic and significant. There are many such congregations, meaning that this is more than just a singular occurrence. And given the challenges in integrating differing denominational governing structures, the UMC sees these instances as significant enough for there to be rules surrounding them.

But this might not be the case in all other contexts. In other contexts, such ecumenical congregations may be unheard of or even unthinkable. Or they may exist, but they may be seen as mere anomalies – unusual circumstances, but not significant enough to make general rules around such occurrences.

Thus, part of the work that will need to be done around the General Book of Discipline is not just cross-cultural discussion of theological, educational, and legal systems. It will also involve cross-cultural discussion of risks, possibilities, and anomalies – deep level investigations into how different cultures understand the patterns and significance of occurrences within the life of the church.

David W. Scott: Why the Book of Discipline Matters More in the US

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.

When General Conference convenes in just over a month, it will spend most of its time examining legislative petitions to alter the Book of Discipline (BOD), the denomination’s rule book. And the overwhelming majority of those petitions dealing with the BOD come from the United States.

There are many reasons why so much of the BOD legislation at General Conference comes from the US – the relative size of the church there, the historical US-centrism of the denomination, the lack of any other venue for the church in the US to make policy.

But along with these well-documented reasons, there are also cultural and institutional factors for why US United Methodists want and need a Book of Discipline for church governance more than United Methodists elsewhere. That’s not to say that other parts of the UMC don’t use or care about the BOD. It’s just to say that the BOD has a special significance in the US that it doesn’t hold elsewhere.

I’ll briefly survey four explanations:

• An emphasis on the rule of law

• Light government regulation of religion

• A large, distributed, and diverse church

• Significant assets

Each of these factors contributes to the greater emphasis on the Book of Discipline in the United States relative to elsewhere in the UMC.

An Emphasis on the Rule of Law

US Americans tend to place a high cultural value on rules, laws, and formal, impersonal systems. When something goes wrong, the US American attitude is often, “There should be a rule about that!” and US Americans often assume that things will go smoothly if everyone follows the rules.

While this attitude is bred in US Americans primarily by our secular legal system, this preference for formal rules carries over into many other arenas, including the church. Having a book of church laws as the central text for a denomination reflects a particularly American veneration for law.

In this veneration of the rule of law, US Americans reflect a general trend withing Western modernity. Yet the large and active lawsuit culture in the United States that is not present elsewhere in the Western world also turbocharges a reliance on formal rules as a way of avoiding bad scenarios.

Not all countries in the world share the same high cultural value on the rule of law as Americans do. Other countries may emphasize personal preferences of a leader, interpersonal or collective systems of arbitration, or implicit cultural standards to tell people how to act and what to do when something goes wrong. These are all alternatives to formal laws and thus alternatives to relying on the BOD for questions of church governance.

Light Government Regulation of Religion

This may seem paradoxical in connection with the above point about the emphasis on the rule of law, but it’s not. One of the foundational concepts in the system of American laws is the separation of church and state. That is not true everywhere, even in other Western countries with a similarly strong sense of the rule of law. The standard in much of the world is for the government to regulate people’s religious practices and organizations.

If the government is not going to regulate religious groups in the US and there’s a desire for those religious groups to be governed by a system of laws, that means the religious groups have to come up with their own laws, since the state isn’t going to do it for them. The BOD is an expression of the US American church’s desire to self-regulate in the absence of much government regulation.

In other countries with a UMC presence, it may not be necessary to put so many rules into the Book of Discipline because the matters addressed, including employment and pensions, may already be covered by government regulation. Thus, having separate church regulation is unnecessary.

A Large, Distributed, and Diverse church

Even after disaffiliation, but especially historically over the past half century, the US American portion of The United Methodist Church is large – millions of members within scores of annual conferences led by dozens of bishops spread across five jurisdictions and every US state and territory. Within this group are very large churches and very small churches; urban, suburban, and rural churches; black, white, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic churches; rich churches and poor churches; and many other forms of variety.

This size, distribution, and diversity mean two things.

First, the church is much too large to operate effectively through informal, personal governance. While there are certainly United Methodist insiders, most United Methodists do not have direct personal ties with one another. Most are not even at one degree of removal, where two parties both know someone in common who could serve as a go-between. In the absence of such personal connections between United Methodists, it is more important to have impersonal rules since behavior and conflict management cannot always be addressed through personal means.

Moreover, there is no central head figure of the church in the United States who could serve as an ultimate personal arbiter within the church. Each bishop is co-equal, and there are dozens of bishops. Short of a miraculous revelation, there is no way to adjudicate a dispute among bishops by appealing to their common superior. Without personal regulation, impersonal regulation becomes more important.

Second, the church is too distributed and diverse for there to be central cultural norms that shape everyone’s understanding of how to act as the church and what to do when things go wrong. Different regions of the country, different racial and ethnic groups, even churches at different stages of the organizational lifecycle will have different notions of what the expectations for church are. Without shared cultural understandings, it is impossible to adjudicate between competing understandings of how to behave in certain situations without some sort of external systems of written procedures.

While this lack of personal or cultural regulation in the United States makes the BOD that much more important there, other countries have stronger systems of personal and cultural regulation that make the BOD less necessary there. The small size of the church in Europe and the Philippines means that many systems for running the church can be established through personal connections and a shared culture without the need for formal regulations. In Africa, the strong power of bishops, who often govern all the United Methodist churches in a country, provides a personal focus for church governance. In many places in Africa, this personal approach to church governance is reinforced by shared cultural, ethnic, and kinship ties.

Significant Assets

Finally, the US UMC has large holdings in property and finances. Pre-disaffiliation, those total assets throughout the US connection were somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 billion. All these assets mean that the financial stakes for church governance in the United States are high. If someone embezzles money, tries to leave the denomination with their church’s property, does something to get the church sued, or makes a bad financial transaction, the ramifications for those actions could be large, at least monetarily.

Thus, there is in an incentive for more extensive formal rules to try to handle and protect this large amount of assets. Regulations on church property, pensions, apportionments, church employment, and other finance and finance-adjacent areas of the BOD are there so that US Americans can manage their church’s assets, especially in the context of a well-developed secular US legal system with significant opportunities for lawsuits. Putting rules in the BOD allows US United Methodists to avoid secular courts more often and set the terms for when cases do end up in secular courts.

The church in all places has some assets. But in no other place is there the same combination of wealth and size that the church has in the US. Thus, no other place has the same financial incentives to put in place a system of formal financial rules through the BOD that the US has.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it is neither inherently good nor bad for the US to rely heavily on the BOD or for other branches of the church to rely less heavily on it. What creates a possibility for misunderstanding is when US United Methodists rely heavily on the BOD, other United Methodists rely less heavily on it, but General Conference proceeds as if the BOD has the same significance for everyone. Delegates should be aware when they discuss the BOD at General Conference that delegates from different places will have different understandings about the role of the BOD in the life of the church and may have different things at stake in the discussion.

If General Conference creates some option for the formation of a US region, it will have the benefit that US United Methodists will have a venue in which they can fulfill their cultural and contextual need for an extensive set of church laws and regulations without needing to negotiate all those laws and regulations across international cultures, where the various parties have different understandings of law and different senses of what’s at stake. Such an outlet for US energy around lawmaking would then free up General Conference to focus more on spiritual, relational, and other aspects of what it means to be the church together.

Robert J. Harman: The Current State of Church and State

Today's post is by Robert J. Harman. Rev. Harman is a mission executive retired from the General Board of Global Ministries.

Many in the churches have been watching the grueling efforts in the US Congress to reach a compromise on a second installment of a stimulus bill so very much needed by segments of the population still reeling from the impact of COVID-19. Those who benefitted from the large amounts of funding available to churches in the rollout of the CARES Act Payroll Protection Program may have a special interest in whether a similar provision will be available in any new funding package.

Analysts found that churches benefitted from over $5 billion in the first installment, of which participating United Methodists took in $500 million, much more than the quadrennial budget of the entire denomination. That bonanza occurred without any evidence of a formal consideration of the appropriateness of the legislation ignoring historic standards for honoring the doctrine of separation of church and state. (See my previous article on this topic here.)

In light of those historic standards, is it reasonable to assume that United Methodist church leaders might yet be nudged into a new stance discouraging the acceptance of new government funds? Might United Methodists come out in support of the constitutional separation that assures citizen taxpayers that government funds will not be used to support religion? I hope so, because the silence and accommodation of the churches is having a devastating effect upon the performance of the Supreme Court on church and state cases.

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, legal columnist Linda Greenhouse ponders the direction of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, even before its hold on the court was cemented by the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Greenhouse suggests the court is catering to religious liberty voices within a growing constituency, which she identifies as grievance conservatives. Their influence upon the court has risen by claiming to be an overlooked, silent majority that has been treated unfairly in a system that is rigged against them. When religious liberty cases cite the cause of their grievances as “overreach of liberal government policies,” a partisan political agenda is advanced.

Their legal philosophy argues that the historic doctrine of separation of church and state actually discriminates against the right of religious-based organizations to participate equally in the benefits of government resources and programs, and its strict observance denies recognition of legal protection to individual religionists in practicing their faith.

At the outset, the founders saw the protection of free exercise of religion as a guarantee of freedom from the oppressive state-controlled churches and religious life from which so many citizens had fled to settle in America. Government would not interfere with individual or communal acts of devotion associated with the doctrines or traditions of faith communities. Further, because they were products of the Enlightenment, the founders believed their experiment in democratic rule required designing a secular state. Thus, Thomas Jefferson could declare in a letter to a Baptist association that his first amendment non-establishment clause would be a “wall of separation between church and state.”

Recent religious liberty decisions of the high court have been fraught with unsavory implications that the founders sought to avoid by enshrining the non-establishment clause. In her NYT opinion piece, Greenhouse illustrates how several cases infringing upon the separation principle produced collateral damage to other well-established rights.

In a case challenging a state subsidy for private-school tuition, the court ruled that funding must include parochial schools in the program. It ruled that religious organizations may exclude a substantial category of employees from the protections of federal civil rights laws under a “ministerial exception” that goes well beyond members of the ministry. It found that employers with religious or even vague “moral” objections to contraception can opt out of the federal requirement to include birth control in their employee health plan coverage. These cases found their precedence in more publicized Supreme Court cases such as Hobby Lobby, Masterpiece Cakeshop, and Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Missouri—all cases in which persons / organizations with religious claims were all granted anti-discrimination protections.

The court’s decisions are celebrated by religious liberty activists but are questioned as discriminatory by advocates of church-state separation, organized labor, women’s health, public education, civil rights, and LGBTQ rights, who are all concerned that religious exemptions will deprive their constituents of constitutional rights and equal access to vital services.

Only a firm endorsement of the separation doctrine will place all matters that have potential for endorsement of religion beyond the purview of the court. Jefferson’s promise should offer a foundational legal principle for churches today, as conservative advocates focusing their grievance arguments on alleged violations of the free exercise clause find sympathetic jurists willing to define what is and what is not authentic religious belief and practice. Can judges accurately read the heart of a plaintive to ascertain the true foundation of faith s/he represents in a legal claim? Or can a judicial body arrive at an appropriate remedy for alleged social damages in a case-by-case review of alleged infractions of individuals’ freedom of religion?

Churches should be found among the more active court watchers and legal advocates with standing in cases that exploit religious liberty for individual / corporate advantage or political gain. While grievance conservatives can find safe harbor in well-financed conservative legal societies/lobbies like the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, they must no longer take comfort in silence from ecumenical and mainline churches. The free exercise and non-establishment clauses deserve the defense of communities of faith that understand these principles to be part and parcel of the common good and defend justice for all.

Unfortunately, the current silence of the churches may have been bought and paid for by the billions of dollars they received through participation in the PPP funding.

The conservative legal argument that established the victories for the religious right cited above prevailed in the legislation enabling churches to apply for loans/grants during the hardship experienced in the initial phase of the COVID pandemic. If receipt of these funds leads to ecumenical and mainline silence on issues of separation of church and state, conservatives will have won a double victory.

Churches must re-assert the separation principle that provision of taxpayer funds for direct support of those in preparation for, or engaged in, the teaching and preaching of religious doctrine is an arbitrary violation of the non-establishment clause.

This complacency of churches is especially egregious because it is happening at a critical moment in history. The rise in the United States of nationalist behavior behind the America First political theme is being hailed by autocratic leaders worldwide and undermining trust in democracy at home. Must we recall the tragic history of how populism begets authoritarian rule when conspiring with representatives of state-sanctioned religion?

The religious right’s successful embrace of religious liberty causes and its growing favoritism among conservatives in the judiciary must be countered before it assumes by default the mantle of establishment. It is late, but hopefully not too late for an urgent correction.

A Primer on UMC Assets: Concluding Thoughts

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology 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. Dr. Scott is neither a lawyer nor an accountant, and thus the following should not be interpreted as legal advice.

Over the past three months, I have examined the assets of The United Methodist Church in a series of posts. I have tried to explain what those assets are, who owns them, what restrictions apply to these assets, and what might happen to them under a variety of scenarios for the future of the denomination.

Having done all this investigation, I would like to offer some concluding thoughts about United Methodist assets and how those intersect with the nature of the church.

1. UMC assets are part of a complex system that is strongly tied together and difficult to undo.
This complex system has its roots both in Western law and in Wesleyan tradition. Under Western law, property can only be owned by legal entities. Organizations can be legal entities, but as stipulated in the Book of Discipline, The United Methodist Church itself is not a legal entity. Thus, UMC assets are actually owned by thousands upon thousands of separate legal entities – local churches, annual conferences, jurisdictions, central conferences, church-related institutions, and general boards and agencies. This creates a complex system of property ownership in the UMC.

That complexity is further compounded when one considers the various forms of assets – money, property, intellectual property, etc. – and the various legal restrictions that the Western legal system places or allows individuals and groups to place on the use of these different forms of assets. These restrictions include endowments and donor-designated gifts.

Finally, all this complexity is tied together by the trust clause, which binds all these assets to the UMC. The trust clause, in combination with legal restrictions on how various assets can be disposed of, makes it very difficult to simply untangle the present system of UMC assets. This difficulty is in part exactly what Wesley wanted when he instituted the trust clause and in part a function of how institutions and financial systems developed over the course of the 20th century.

2. The chances for lawsuits abound in any attempt to undo the system of UMC assets.
Because the present system of UMC assets is difficult to undo, any attempts to undo it run the risk of being challenged in court. This danger reflects in part the role of Western law in holding together the system. But it also reflects two other factors:

First, different actors in the UMC have different incentives and goals when it comes to undoing the current financial system. Thus, there is no consensus about how to undo the system, leading different actors into conflict with one another.

Second, especially in the United States, the courts are where many financial conflicts are carried out. When US Americans cannot agree on something involving money, they sue each other. Thus, conflict among US American United Methodists about money is likely to lead to lawsuits.

Of course, while it may not be possible for all United Methodists to come to a consensus on issues regarding assets, well-crafted General Conference legislation that clarifies the financial rights and responsibilities of all parties and that is passed by a substantial majority of delegates can reduce the chances of lawsuits.

3. A variety of parties in the UMC can make legitimate ethical arguments about their claim to UMC assets. These ethical arguments usually overlap with self-interest.
Whether it is local congregations wanting to keep their building no matter what, annual conferences wanting to keep church buildings, United Methodists wanting to leave the denomination, or United Methodists wanting to stay in the denomination, most parties in debates about ownership and control of United Methodist assets are able to articulate ethical arguments that draw upon central moral rhetoric around fairness, equality, etc.

Yet these ethical arguments rarely reach the same conclusion, and the conclusions that different parties draw from their arguments tend to be ones that benefit themselves financially. Thus, ethical reasoning and financial self-interest usually go hand-in-hand in the positions that United Methodists take in these financial debates.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the arguments people make are solely about self-interest. People do use significant and long-standing moral and ethical concepts in their decision-making. It is impossible to reduce the arguments that people make about UMC assets to either pure ethics or pure self-interest.

Instead, we are left with what I hope this series as a whole has shown: the church is a mix of the human and the divine. We pursue heavenly ends, but we use and must use earthly ends to pursue them. Our experience of the church reflects both our deeply held religious convictions and spiritual experiences but also the contentious politics, the drudgery of everyday tasks, the difficulty of gray decisions, and the scrounging for resources that is part of being human.

Part of me wishes that it was otherwise: That the church was a perfect place that reflected only the best of people and was free of infighting and the need to pay the electric bill. Yet part of me recognizes that if the church is to be a place where we work out our sanctification, it must be a place not only of holiness but humanity. Unless we can face the fullness of humanity in our churches and still love our fellow humans as God does, how can we do so in the world? Yet, it is to this very task that God calls us. Let us trust God’s wisdom in arranging it so.

A Primer on Board and Agency Organization

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology 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 recent posts on this blog about apportionments make clear, the uncertainty about the future of The United Methodist Church extends to its boards and agencies. Thus, it seems useful to provide a brief overview of how boards and agencies are organized and governed. This post will examine the variety of authorizing documents and supervising authorities for church boards and agencies.

United Methodists might think that boards and agencies exist because the Book of Discipline says they should exist, right?

That’s true in part, but the Book of Discipline in only one of three or four foundational documents for boards and agencies that also include a legal charter or articles of incorporation and by-laws, perhaps accompanied by a constitution. These three sources – the Book of Discipline, the articles of incorporation, and the by-laws and constitution – cover, respectively, the agency’s status under church law, its status under secular law, and its internal organizational rules. Thus, each of these documents stipulates distinct but overlapping aspects of an agency’s existence, structure, and purpose.

The Book of Discipline recognizes and regulates the existence of the boards and agencies in Chapter 5 of Part VI of the BOD, titled “Administrative Order.” The BOD includes often lengthy descriptions of the purpose, objectives, and responsibilities of the boards and agencies. The BOD may contain additional programmatic stipulations and/or stipulations about the work of certain sub-units of boards or agencies.

The Book of Discipline also stipulates how the members of the board of directors for each agency are to be chosen, including geographic, gender, and other forms of representation. It may also specify how senior agency leadership is to be chosen, including board officers and senior staff. Finally, the Book of Discipline stipulates in general terms how each of the boards and agencies is to be funded.

The provisions of the BOD regarding boards and agencies are, like most of the rest of the BOD, subject to change by a simple majority vote of the General Conference when it is in session. Thus, General Conference has authority under church law to recognize agencies, to prescribe in general terms what those agencies should do, and to indicate where agencies should generally get their funding.

The agency’s charter or articles of incorporation is a legal document filed with a state government. This legal document recognizes the agency as a non-profit corporate entity with the authority to own property and conduct business.

The articles of incorporation tend to be brief and broad. Articles of incorporation spell out the purpose of the agency in very general terms, specify what group or individual has legal authority to act on its behalf (usually its board), and defines the agency’s relationships with other legal entities, including predecessor groups and designated successor groups.

The articles of incorporation may specify the United Methodist General Conference as a supervisory entity for the board or agency. They may also indicate that the members of the agency’s board of directors must be United Methodist. Thus, the connection between an agency and the UMC may be written into secular law as well as church law, even though the legal existence of an agency is not a function of its recognition by church law. Put another way, an act of General Conference could not automatically dissolve an agency under secular law without additional legal paperwork being filed.

The articles of incorporation can be amended by filing legal paperwork with the appropriate state authorities. Such changes are usually authorized by the agency’s board of directors, with the work carried out by staff and/or hired attorneys. Articles of incorporation must fit within the standards of state law governing non-profit corporations, but beyond those broad parameters, state governments don’t have much of a say in the actual content of the articles of incorporation.

Finally, each agency has by-laws and may also have a constitution. The by-laws and/or constitution will include items such as the name and general purpose of the organization. But most importantly, these documents specify in greatest detail how the agency and its board of directors should be structured to carry out their work.

They indicate what the officers of the board of directors should be and how they are to be chosen. They may specify aspects of the board’s work, including standing committees, timeframes for meetings, criteria for quorum, etc.

They may stipulate the existence of certain senior staff roles such as General Secretary and Chief Financial Officer. They may also specify relationships with other agencies, such as local or annual conference auxiliaries.

The by-laws (and constitution, if there is one) can be changed by the agency’s board of directors. The exact procedure varies and may be different for the constitution, if there is one, than for the by-laws. Generally, a majority of board members, and perhaps a super majority, must vote for by-law changes.

While the responsibility for amending the by-laws and revising the articles of incorporation technically rests with the board of directors, it is worth noting the importance of senior agency staff in suggesting by-law changes and changes to the articles of incorporation. Members of the board of directors sometimes may not be familiar with, may not have strong opinions about, or may not have sufficient time to learn about the technical and legal issues at stake.

Thus, boards of directors will frequently (though not always) defer to senior agency staff who make requests for legal and organizational changes, assuming that senior staff possess the technical expertise and familiarity with the agency necessary to determine how the foundational documents should be changed. Of course, the extent to which this is true depends upon the personalities and abilities of and relationships between senior staff and board leadership.

What does this approach to structure mean for current debates in The United Methodist Church? It means that some changes to how boards and agencies operate could be unilaterally passed by General Conference. However, really substantive changes in how the boards and agencies are set up and their relationship to the denomination (and/or its successors) would likely require agreement among General Conference, the board of directors, and senior staff, or at least a willingness by the board of directors and senior staff to accede to the wishes of General Conference.

If there is significant disagreement between General Conference and the board of directors of an agency on its future, this way of organizing and authorizing the boards and agencies also sets up the possibility of a situation in which the status of the agency under church law and its status under secular law may be in conflict with one another. In that instance, its secular status as determined by its board of directors may (though not necessarily) have an advantage over its church status, since any disputes about the status of the organization and its resources would be resolved in secular courts.

On the Uses of Law in the UMC

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology 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.

I am trained as a historian. Since codes of law are one of the main types of historic artifacts that have survived from the remote past, historians spend a lot of time thinking about laws and specifically about the relationship between law and behavior. The consensus is that laws should be seen not as records of what people actually did but rather what those in power who wrote the laws wanted people to do. As we know from our experiences today, people break laws all the time, in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes.

Even if laws do not represent what all humans always do, laws can still influence behavior in one of two ways. First, they can set standards for behavior that some people then willingly adhere to because they want to act in harmony with the standard out of a basic human desire for social conformance. Second, they can set penalties for misbehavior the motivate people to behave in a certain way out of fear of those penalties, whether or not they are naturally inclined to aspire to behave according to the group standard.

For this second, penalty-based type of behavioral influence to work, there must be a high enough likelihood of penalties being enforced and those penalties must be meaningful to the person experiencing them. People must also be acting in a rational, self-reflective fashion rather than committing a "crime of passion," where they are motivated by present emotion or other factors that preclude self-reflection, for this type of behavioral influence to work.

This historical reflection on the uses of law has been helpful to me in interpreting the Traditionalist Plan, especially now that we know its final form following Judicial Council review.

The UMC has had proscriptions on the ordination of queer people and on clergy performing same-sex weddings for some time. Yet it is clear that these church laws are increasingly ineffective in influencing behavior among boards of ordained ministry and clergy generally in the first way: by setting standards that people will be internally motivated to follow for the sake of conforming to group standards.

Thus, the Traditionalist Plan sought to require stricter and more mandatory enforcement of penalties and to make penalties more severe and thus more meaningful to clergy who would experience them. Traditionalist leaders determined that penalties as structured and enforced were insufficient to prohibit behaviors they opposed and thus it was necessary to revamp the penalty system.

The Traditionalist Plan also sought to set more rigid standards of action for boards of ordained ministry and for bishops (the reasoning being, I suppose, that bishops would be more motivated to follow group standards than rank-and-file clergy) and to increase enforcement of penalties against bishops, using both strategies to try to influence the behavior of the bishops.

The Judicial Council essentially allowed the more rigid standards of action for boards of ordained ministry, bishops, and those involved in hearing complaints against clergy (Petitions 90032, 90036, 90043, 90044, and 90045). It also allowed increased penalties for clergy performing gay weddings and then convicted by a trial court (Petition 90042).

What the Judicial Council largely rejected, however, were the provisions of Traditionalist Plan that would have required a particular approach to enforcement of laws regarding homosexuality. Certifications that ordinands, boards of ordained ministry, and annual conferences will enforce LGBT exclusions were ruled unconstitutional. The ability of the Council of Bishops to impose penalties on its members without right of appeal was ruled unconstitutional.  Instructions to boards of ordained ministry and cabinets on how to carry out their enforcement of laws were ruled unconstitutional. The only element related to enforcement that was declared constitutional was allowing appeal if complainants thought the laws had not been followed.

What seems clear at this point is that Traditionalists have the legislative power within the church to set laws but not the constitutional power to require enforcement of those laws.

Thus, in annual conferences with progressive and/or centrist leaders who are uninterested in enforcing these laws, it will continue to be possible for clergy to disobey the laws regarding performing gay marriage and for boards of ordained ministry, clergy, and bishops to disobey the laws regarding the ordination of queer people, all without risk of penalties actually being imposed.

Yet here is where the first way in which laws influence behavior comes back in. In the present situation of the UMC, it is possible that laws as group standards would influence people's behavior, not by motivating them to conform to the group's standard, but by motivating them to leave the group. Portions of the UMC that are not interested in conforming to the UMC's ever more strongly worded standards regarding the place of LGBT people in the church, could choose to leave, even if they are able to continue within the UMC without fear of penalties. In essence, people could desire to leave to avoid the sense of cognitive dissonance and identity mismatch they perceive between themselves and the group, even if the group norms didn't directly impact their behavior.

Thus, remain and resist will continue to be a valid option for many within the UMC, but the desire for progressives and centrists to leave grows with each more forceful reiteration of the church's Traditionalist stance.

What are laws and views on homosexuality in Europe and Eurasia?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology 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.

After examining the variety of laws and views regarding homosexuality in Africa and the Philippines, this post will examine such laws and views in Europe and Eurasia, the third region of United Methodist presence outside the United States.

As in Africa, Europe and Eurasia is a large region with multiple countries and cultures, so laws and public opinion vary. Moreover, both laws and public opinion are continuing to change, so please excuse any recent developments overlooked by this post.

On the legal side, no countries in Europe criminalize homosexuality. Instead, most of the variation is in the recognition of same-sex relationships, where countries range from banning gay marriage to recognizing same-sex civil unions to recognizing same-sex marriage. As of last year, 17 European countries recognize same-sex marriage, and an additional 11 recognize same-sex civil unions. Romania is moving the direction of recognizing civil unions after a referendum to ban same-sex marriage there failed. Same-sex marriage because legal in Austria on Jan. 1st of this year.

According to a 2017 Pew Research report, supplemented with additional online information, European countries with a UMC presence where same-sex marriage is legal include Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, and Norway. European countries with a UMC presence where same-sex civil unions are legal include Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Switzerland.

European countries with a UMC presence where there is no legal recognition of same-sex relationships include Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Same-sex relationships are also not legally recognized in the central Asian countries where the UMC has congregations. Some European and Eurasian countries that do not permit same-sex marriage have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, while others encode such bans in elsewhere in their legal system.

This list of laws reflects an overall trend in public opinion: the farther east one goes in Europe and Eurasia, the more opposed people are to same-sex marriage and homosexuality in general. This result even holds up across age ranges. Large majorities in Northern and Western Europe are in favor of societal acceptance of homosexuality and governmental recognition of same-sex marriage. Opinion on both issues is split among central European countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. Eastern European countries are likely to view both same-sex marriage and homosexuality negatively.

This is one of the ways in which The United Methodist Church in Europe is in a unique position in the denomination: it includes people of widely differing views on sexuality living in countries with different legal stances on sexuality, yet at the same time unity is a strong value for European United Methodists. Unity is seen as essential to survival for what is in Europe a small denomination which is often viewed with suspicion.

I know they have struggled themselves and had many difficult conversations in preparation for General Conference 2019, but perhaps European and Eurasian delegates can teach the rest of the denomination something about how to balance strongly held convictions, deep differences in opinion, and the recognition that we still need each other.

What are laws and views on homosexuality in the Philippines?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology 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.

After examining last week the variety of laws and public opinions regarding homosexuality in countries in Africa with a United Methodist presence, this post examines the same set of questions for the Philippines, the only country in Asia with an established United Methodist presence.

On the legal side, the Philippines does not have laws criminalizing homosexuality. Same-sex marriage is not currently legal in the Philippines, though there has been an effort in the country's legislature over the past two years to pass a bill that would create same-sex civil partnerships. The Philippines Supreme Court also heard a case last summer that would legalize same-sex marriage, though they have not yet issued a ruling on it. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has changed his position on same-sex marriage several times, but currently supports it. If the Philippines legalizes same-sex marriage, it would become the second Asian country to do so, after Taiwan.

On the side of public opinion, Filipinos as a whole are rather accepting of homosexuality. In a 2013 Pew Forum survey, 73% of Filipinos said that society should accept homosexuality. That is a higher percentage than in the United States, and the results led to the Philippines being labeled "among [the] most gay-friendly in the world."

Religiosity does affect view of homosexuality in the Philippines, as elsewhere. Not only The United Methodist Church, but the Catholic Church, to which the great majority of Filipinos belong, views homosexuality as a sin. Yet in forming their views on homosexuality, Filipinos draw not only on religious teachings, but also on long-standing Southeast Asian cultural traditions in which gender is a more fluid category and sex roles and sexuality are not as rigid.

Despite the overall favorable views of homosexuality, Filipinos may be less accepting of the idea of same-sex marriage. The most widely distributed survey of public opinion on same-sex marriage found that only 22% of Filipinos supported it, while 61% were opposed. Yet, as in South Africa and Taiwan, it is possible for same-sex marriage to be legal in a country even when the majority of the population has expressed opposition.

What are laws and views on homosexuality in Africa?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology 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.

In his series of "Seeing a Way Forward" videos, Rev. Forbes Matonga makes the claim that the Traditionalist Plan is the only "legal" plan for Africans, since gay marriage is illegal almost everywhere in Africa. On one level, Rev. Matonga is incorrect in that it would be possible for the One Church Plan or Connectional Conferences Plan to pass and Africans to maintain prohibitions against gay marriage and gay ordination, nor much church policy and state policy always coincide. Yet it is worth exploring the range of laws about and views regarding homosexuality in Africa.

On one hand, Rev. Matonga is right about the legality of gay marriage in Africa. South Africa is the only country in Africa where gay marriage is legal. It was legalized by an 80% pro vote of parliament in 2006 after previous marriage laws were struck down as unconstitutional.

On the other hand, there's much wider variation on the legality of homosexual practices in Africa. It's true that some African countries, including some where the UMC is located, have criminalized gay sex, making LGBTQ+ people who are out vulnerable to arrest, detention, and other legalized harm. But there are also African countries, including those where the majority of African United Methodists live, where there are no laws prohibiting homosexuality, even though gay marriage is not legal.

The following lists come from a 2018 Amnesty International infographic:

Those countries with United Methodists in Africa where homosexuality is legal include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Central African Republic. Collectively, these countries make up about 69% of UMC membership in Africa.

Those countries with United Methodists in Africa where homosexuality is illegal include Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria, Malawi, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. These countries make up the other 31% of UMC membership in Africa. The severity and enforcement of these laws vary. In Kenya, the Supreme Court is in the process of deciding a court case that could legalize homosexuality there.

Beyond the issue of legality is the issue of public opinion. The most commonly cited source for African views on homosexuality is a 2013 Pew Forum study which covers several but far from all African countries. It does not include the DRC or Cote d'Ivoire, but does include South Africa. African countries, Muslim countries, and Russia stand out as the places least accepting of homosexuality. Even in South Africa, where gay marriage is legal, public opinion runs against homosexuality, and LGBTQ+ persons still routinely face discrimination and even violence.

One caveat to these results that I have heard from Africans themselves is that Africans do not talk about sex, even straight sex, publicly. It is treated as a taboo subject. This makes it difficult to have conversations about homosexuality. When those conversations do happen, views are perhaps less cut and dried than a yes/no question on a Pew Forum survey would suggest.

Recommended reading: The US Supreme Court on trust clauses

While a Supreme Court case decided in this summer's spate of rulings did not gather much national notice, it may be the one most relevant for the future of the UMC. In a dispute between the Episcopal Church's South Carolina diocese and breakaway churches over control of property, the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the breakaway churches. This leaves in place a lower court ruling that upholds the Episcopal Church's version of the trust clause, in which all property belongs to the denomination, not individual churches.

For more on this case, read this Religion News Service article.

The case could have significant implications for the UMC, since the number of similar property disputes within Methodism could increase significantly over the next two years if more congregations try to exit the denomination without permission. This Supreme Court ruling will make it harder for them to do so and take their property with them.