The United Methodist Church and Declining Democracy

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.

Last week, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance released their annual report, “The Global State of Democracy Report 2021 - Building Resilience in a Pandemic Era." For those who support democracy, the report was not encouraging. The title of the accompanying press release put it bluntly: "Democracy Faces Perfect Storm as the World Becomes More Authoritarian."

As I read through the report, I was struck not only by how democracy in general is imperiled in 2021, but how much that is true for countries that contain significant numbers of United Methodists. Out of countries that contain at least 100,000 United Methodists, the report called out the United States, the Philippines, Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe for recent declines in democracy, though Zambia was also the one bright spot in the report, after the opposition party successfully won elections there this year.

According to the report, the DRC, Burundi, and Zimbabwe are all classified as authoritarian regimes. Angola, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia are all classified as hybrid regimes and not full democracies. The only strongly United Methodist countries where democracy existed and was not in recent decline, according to this report, were Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, all classified as weak democracies.

A number of other countries with historically-related Methodist bodies, including Brazil and India, have also seen notable recent declines in democracy, and several countries in Eastern Europe with small United Methodist populations (Poland, Hungary, Serbia, and Russia) have also seen recent declines in democracy. Russia, home to a small population of United Methodists, was also just declared by the US State Department to be a significant violator of religious freedom.

The challenges to democracy can be bemoaned for political reasons, but these trends also raise a religious question: What is the impact of declining democracy likely to be on Methodism as a religious system and on The United Methodist Church in particular?

The relationships between Methodism and democracy has been historically complicated, and especially early in its history, Methodism tended towards populist authoritarianism, the direction of much of the world today.

John Wesley was a noted royalist and opposed the American revolution, a stance which caused Methodists in the American colonies some considerable difficulties. Nathan Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, identifies Methodism as one of the religious traditions that really embraced a form of populism in keeping with the democratic spirits of the new United States, while at the same time he notes the authoritarian style of Francis Asbury as a leader of the movement.

David Hempton, in Methodism: Empire of the Spirit, notes that Methodism globally was all too happy to ride the coattails of expanding British political empire and American commercial empire, systems which boasted of the benefits of democracy while largely withholding the opportunity to participate in democracy from those in its subjugated territories.

By the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the situation had changed. By then, Methodism, especially American Methodism, had emerged as a system of promoting democracy around the world.

In my book Mission as Globalization: Methodists in Southeast Asia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, I argue that through mission, "Methodist polity spread modern, American ideas about democracy as a means of collective self-determination" (p. 66). At the same time, as Robbie B. H. Goh notes in Sparks of Grace: The Story of Methodism in Asia, "The work of Methodism in Asia was significantly hampered in certain areas by totalitarian politics" (26).

In 1918, the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States published Christian Democracy for America and The Christian Crusade for World Democracy. Commenting on these books in Methodist Evangelism, American Salvation: The Home Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1860-1920, Mark Teasdale writes, "Both sets of authors argued that by the beginning of the twentieth century this Methodist-forged nation [the United States] needed to take leadership in spreading its Christian American civilization to the rest of the world in the form [of] democracy" (227).

In more recent years, it is noteworthy that the early 1990s were both a surge in democracy world-wide and a boom time for The United Methodist Church globally. While I know of no systematic work exploring that connection, in some specific instances, such as the revival of Methodism in Russia and Eastern Europe, the connection is obvious.

The UMC's Social Principles currently state, "While our allegiance to God takes precedence over our allegiance to any state, we acknowledge the vital function of government as a principle vehicle for the ordering of society," and assert, "The strength of a political system depends upon the full and willing participation of its citizens," a strong endorsement of democracy without directly using the term.

Much of recent United Methodist attention to democracy, however, has been to questions about our own internal democratic systems, including issues of representation, access, voting credentials, and of course, the uncertainty over when General Conference will next meet.

But if mission history teaches us anything, it is that contexts matter for the success or struggles of religious systems. Internal factors matter, too, but focusing entirely internally misses half the picture.

Therefore, issues surrounding democratic decline or the related issue of religious freedom are issues that should matter to United Methodists. The state of the world and the societies within which the church operates have an impact on the church, and the system of government in those societies is one component of that societal impact.

While I know that declining democracy will likely affect the UMC, at this point, I cannot tell you what that effect will be. That is too far beyond my field of expertise. But if you have a take of 700-1200 words on how declining democracy is likely to impact The United Methodist Church, please share it with me at dscott (at) umcmission dot org, and it may be published here on UM & Global.

Robert Hunt: Religious Freedom and Christian Mission, Part III

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director of the Center for Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology. It is the third of a three-part series.

As I explain in the first post in this series, within the last 25 years, the United States has adopted two laws intended to widen the protection given to the “free exercise of religion”: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA).

Have RFRA and RLUIPA benefited Christian witness to the gospel? No, as I explained in my last post, because there is no biblical or apostolic precedent for Christians advancing their mission by asserting special rights to freedom of religion within a secular political system.

Perhaps, though, these laws might be merely harmless, as long as Christians aren’t overly insistent on their own interests under these laws.

To assess this claim, we need to look at the presuppositions behind the law, not just the law’s impact. How does the framing of religious freedom in RFRA and RLUIPA compare to Christian understandings of the exercise of religion and the invitation to Christian discipleship?

Religion Freedom and Community
In scripture, Christian faith in God is always located in both a community and its tradition. The same is true of virtually all religious traditions. In Christian scripture, the first religion, to use the term anachronistically, is that of Abraham and his family, followed by the religion of Israel established at Sinai. In the Old Testament, it is communities, whether families, clans, tribes, or nations that possess what in modern terms we call religion. Similarly, the first Christians are Christians in community, a community so tightly bound that its members’ personal financial decisions and family relationships are a matter of community concern. "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Matthew 18:20 NRSV)

Moreover, this Christian community continually locates itself in the longer tradition of Abraham and Israel, to the extent that Jewish scripture becomes its scripture. And it locates itself in the traditions of Jesus and the apostles, which become the normative basis for all its teaching. Finally, these “Old and New Testaments” give birth to a tradition of teaching that ultimately gives birth to the communal creeds and liturgies of the Catholic and Orthodox churches and their offspring.

In terms of freedom, the first Christians and their successors asserted their freedom by both choosing to be followers of Christ, joining in the tradition and community of Christ, and by both expressing their faith in public and by expressing it in ways the benefited the public. They never claimed personal exemptions from the law or serving the public good.

Matthew 5:38–42: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

The RFRA and RLUIPA advance an understanding of religion, and religious freedom, that undermines this traditional understanding of religious faith and replaces it with one that is individual, idiosyncratic, and unconcerned with the public good. These laws ratify a cultural environment in which the fundamental invitation of the gospel, an invitation into community that will be a light to the nations, is undermined.

What To Make of Modern Religious Freedom
For more than 200 years, Christianity thrived in the United States. Christians have every reason to be grateful for, and supportive of the first amendment and the Bill of Rights. It not only affirms the fundamental freedom and equality of human beings taught in scripture, it has given us the freedom to witness to Jesus Christ without coercion and without dependence on the powers and principalities of the world.

In situations where free expression of the gospel conflicts with the law, it has provided a legal basis for Christians to be part of a discourse over the role of religion in society. Most importantly, its understanding of freedom of religion in relation to the public good is consistent with a Christian understanding of both religion and the public good.

The aforementioned legislative efforts to strengthen or extend the right of freedom of religion in the Constitution (RFRA and RLUIPA), however, actually undermine a Christian understanding of religion, weaken the Christian witness to the gospel, and undermine the rights of others.

It is strange in our time that religious people and communities that claim to serve an omnipotent God should feel threatened by social change. But stranger still is an assertion that the religion of Christ crucified will be rescued from the corrosive effects of secularism by pleading a special privilege for Christians to humiliate others and harm their neighbors based on laws that ratify a secular understanding of religion.

Robert Hunt: Religious Freedom and Christian Mission, Part II

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director of the Center for Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology. It is the second of a three-part series.

As I explain in the first post in this series, within the last 25 years, the United States has adopted two laws intended to widen the protection given to the “free exercise of religion”: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA).

Given their claim to protect religion, have RFRA and RLUIPA benefited Christian witness to the gospel?

From the standpoint of measurable church growth, it appears not. Since these laws were passed the number of Christians relative to the US population has declined steadily and has dropped precipitously among Americans under the age of 35.

There is some evidence that high profile court cases allowing Christian religious schools, social services, and businesses to discriminate against women and LGBTQ persons have played a role in alienating younger Americans from Christianity. 49% of the Nones report that the positions churches take on social/political issues is a reason for their disaffiliation with religion.

In the context of COVID, high profile cases of Christian churches defying social distancing orders and Christian schools refusing to close on the basis of a right to religious freedom have played a similar role in alienating those who believe these gatherings put their lives at risk. In short, appeals to religious freedom have come to cast Christians as socially irresponsible and more concerned with themselves and their rights than with the welfare of others.

However, being popular isn’t the same thing as being a faithful witness to the Gospel. Is there then a theological rational for appealing to RFRA and RLUIPA to protect Christian claims of religious freedom?

The claims for exemptions from the law made by Christians have hinged on three types of claims. The first is that laws mandating non-discrimination in providing services, or in hiring, or in provision of birth control in company insurance policies force Christians to act in a way that is contrary to their closely held beliefs, or conscience. Their claim is that such laws force them to be supportive of behavior they find immoral.

A second claim is that religious schools have a right to discriminate against teachers who do not hold their religious belief. In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that teachers in religious schools are the same as ministers in a church, and that matters of their appointment and dismissal are protected by the First Amendment. Basically, for the courts to interfere would violate both the freedom of these institutions and the establishment clause. Only a few weeks earlier the same court ruled that Religious schools should have equal access to state funding for private school scholarships, in essence allowing the government funding of religious schools through scholarships to pay tuition.

The third claim is that restrictions on public gatherings during the COVID pandemic violated the right to religious expression in public worship and communal religious gatherings.

Taken together these claims define the right of free exercise of religion, expanded under RFRA and RLUIPA, as allowing religious institutions to receive public funds for the propagation of religion while being exempt from democratically enacted laws designed to serve the public good. As Bob Harmon has already argued, this is unwise. Is this theologically defensible?

Religious Freedom and Christian Witness
Paul, in his letter to the Romans, chapters 12 - 14, urges that Christians place themselves in the place of servants to others and in particular (13:1-7) to be obedient to the law as a matter of conscience. Whether they are 1st century emperors or 21st century legislatures, God has given us laws for our own good, and even when these laws are burdensome, we should follow them.

Paul, like the early church, acted first out of obedience to Christ’s command even when it met resistance by local authorities and their laws. But it is noteworthy that Paul never asked for an exemption from those laws. Rather, Paul invariably surrendered his rights to the greater good of sharing the gospel without offending others.

First Corinthians 10:23 and onward: “’All things are lawful,’ but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other. . . . So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.” (NRSV)

The theological reason for this is clear: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2, NRSV) The church is called to "in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Philippians 2:3-4, NIV) It would appear that Christians asserting their own rights against the rights of others on the basis of human laws is the exact opposite of both what Christ did on the cross and the witness of the apostles and the early church.

This does not normalize acceptance of immorality on one hand or the abuse of human rights on the other. Jesus does not accept immorality, nor does Paul. What both do is assert that judgment belongs to God. As importantly, Jesus did not withhold either his fellowship nor his ministry from those who were regarded as immoral. Instead, he taught that individuals are to remove the log in their own eye before trying to remove the splinter in the eye of their neighbor.

Jesus was also a staunch defender of the rights of the poor, the weak, the sick, and the imprisoned over against laws under which they were oppressed. What makes his witness to God’s love unique is the combination of his ministry to and for the rights of the weak and marginalized and his surrender of his own rights. Indeed, it is his surrender of his rights that emphasizes that his kingdom is not of this world.

In placing himself totally in the service of others, even to death on the cross, Jesus reveals the nature of God’s love. He thus provides us the content of the gospel that we are to proclaim. Witness to Christ begins and ends with the defense of the rights of others, even at the cost of giving up the rights of the Body of Christ, as Christ gave up his rights on the cross.

This is not, it must be noted, a pragmatic political program, because its intention isn’t to reform society, but to initiate humans into God’s reign. There are arguments to be made that Christians should engage in such pragmatic political programs. But there is no precedent in scripture or the apostolic church for doing so by asserting a Christian claim to the right to either freedom of religion or a claim on public funds.

Recommended Listening: Robert Hunt podcasts on religious freedom

The complete Season 2 of Robert Hunt's podcast series, Interfaith Encounters, is now available for download and online streaming. The season consists of 11 episodes of interviews with national experts about the theme of religious freedom. As befits the title of the series, the interviewees are from a variety of religious backgrounds, including United Methodist. The podcasts, released over the course of the fall, vary from 15 to 30 minutes in length.

Robert Hunt: Religious Freedom and Christian Mission, Part I

Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director of the Center for Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology. It is the first of a three-part series.

Let’s begin with an axiomatic statement: The purpose of the Christian religion is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the world. The Church was not given rights by God, it was given a mission. So, a central question for Christians is whether the right to freedom of religion, as understood in the context of the United States, benefits the mission of the church.

To answer this question, we must first understand just what freedom of religion has become in the American context.

The United States constitution, in its Bill of Rights states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” We know from the writings of those who crafted the Bill of Rights that their concerns emerged from the history of church-state relations both in Europe and in the American colonies. But it is notable that the founders didn’t use the word “church” but instead the word “religion.” In doing so they fixed in law a concept, that of generic religion, that emerged only in the modern era.

The meaning of the term religion as it emerged in the modern era referred to a community of individuals bound together by freely chosen beliefs and practices. Religion, as understood by the founders, was thus both communal and personal. By dis-establishing all religions, and protecting the freedom exercise of religion, the first amendment guaranteed the right of individuals to form communities of shared beliefs and practices.

Yet these words, taken by themselves, obscure a complex reality. Just because a government doesn’t establish a religion doesn’t do away with the fact that religions, particularly Christianity, have an established place in the culture and society. It would remain for the courts to define the extent to which government entities could support or hinder the work of religious institutions in the interest of the public good. Those decisions were based on an understanding that the free exercise of religion took place in the context of an established religious community, and this provided a basis for determining what constituted the legitimate exercise of religion.

A Change in the Status Quo
A change in the long-standing status quo occurred with two laws intended to widen the protection given to the “free exercise of religion.” The first of these was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The second was the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000.

The first of these laws, RFRA, stated that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.”

The effect of RFRA was that persons could be excused, on the basis of free exercise of religion, from laws limiting their religious expression even if the laws were religiously neutral and didn’t target their particular religion.

In 1997 the Supreme Court overturned much of the first RFRA. However, proponents of RFRA quickly sought to have identical bills passed at a state level, and 21 states passed such acts. Further litigation would determine the meaning of “substantially burden” and whether specific laws were genuinely of “general applicability."

The second of these laws (RLUIPA) sought to further define the meaning of religious freedom by allowing legitimate claims to the exercise of religion “whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” The Act made clear that it was to be "construed in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise to the maximum extent permitted by the terms of this chapter and the Constitution.” This would allow, for example, for religious claims to exemption from zoning ordinances, or claims by inmates that their personal faith demanded practices not generally allowed in prison.

In other words, individuals and religious organizations could make a claim to the free exercise of their religion even if their beliefs were idiosyncratic and lacked support by a recognized religious tradition or community. And again, the term “maximum extent” would be defined by litigation.

A Cultural Shift
Taken together, these laws ratified a major shift in American culture. Previously “religion” focused on communities and their established traditional teaching, something equivalent to a “church” but more generic. A person had a religion because they were part of a religious community.

With RFRA and RLUIPA, the focus became individuals and individual congregations and their idiosyncratic self-understandings. Religious individuals and congregations were a religious law unto themselves, and whatever they determined was the exercise of religion had a legitimate claim to protection.

Much has been made of the bi-partisan nature of RFRA and RLUIPA, as if this somehow indicated that rather than being merely a partisan, presumably conservative, effort to defend religious liberty, they amount to a fulsome recognition of the liberties owed all Americans.

But a sociological analysis would suggest that the bi-partisan nature of the legislation is more indicative of the political establishment reflecting the political will of a thoroughly secular society. What these laws ratify is the kind of religious identity described by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, an identity that emerges in a cultural environment that offers autonomous individuals a “supernova of religious options.”

Whatever the conscious intention, these laws amount to the secularization of religion as a political construct. The idea of being religious has been un-moored from belonging to or being responsible to either a religious tradition, a religious community, or the wider society. It is a concept of religion the writers of the Constitution would have never recognized.

The same, incidentally, can be said of the concept of patriotism, as fully manifest in the Trump era and supported by his administration and its allies. But it began earlier as presidents became less representatives of policy or ideology than celebrity embodiments of inchoate hopes, dreams, and fears associated with identity. As I write in late 2020, the claim to be a patriot has become detached from being part of the American people and serving the good of the nation and has been relocated to a personal relationship and loyalty to an individual (or hatred and fear of an individual): in this case the President.

The impact of these laws (RFRA and RLUIPA) on all religions and religious individuals has been increasingly defined by cases recently and now before the Supreme Court. However, the question for Christians is whether these laws actually benefit Christian mission. More specifically: does having the right to the free exercise of religion as defined by RFRA and RLUIPA actually help the Christian church in its mission? I’ll address this question in my next two posts.