In the midst of a controversial war and a hotly contested election year, the global leaders of President George W. Bush's church will gather today in Pittsburgh for their first legislative conference in four years.
Delegates to the United Methodist General Conference say they are determined to send a strong message about terrorism and the war in Iraq to their church's most famous member before they adjourn May 7.The White House still is negotiating with church leaders on whether the president or first lady Laura Bush will make an appearance.
The question that has journalists and political analysts closely watching the conference is: How will this cross section of Americans work out issues that are bedeviling the whole world right now?
Interviews with many United Methodists in Michigan on the eve of the conference reveal a denomination as deeply divided as the voting public on issues from homosexuality to Iraq.
"The Methodists are fascinating to watch because they have the whole diversity of American opinion -- left, right and center," said political scientist John Green, one of the nation's leading experts on religion and politics. Green, who teaches at the University of Akron in Ohio, plans to go to Pittsburgh to watch delegates work out these hot-button issues.
This is a church that embraces U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., as well as Vice President Dick Cheney. Four years ago, then-first lady Clinton addressed the last General Conference. A postelection study in 2000 of voting patterns among United Methodist clergy showed them evenly split between Bush and Al Gore, Green said.
"If you take Methodists as a group, they're very close to the middle of American politics, while at the same time reflecting the country's diversity: North to South, rural and urban, black and white, rich and poor," Green said.
Michigan's 20-member United Methodist delegation to the Pittsburgh conference ranges from Lew Tibbits, a camp director in Sebewaing on Saginaw Bay, to the Rev. Charles Boayue, the Liberian-American pastor of Second Grace United Methodist Church in Detroit.
Both say they are passionately committed to forging a prophetic statement on war and terrorism.
Tibbits took a break last week from organizing an upcoming fishing derby at his Bay Shore Camp to talk about the agonizing moral dilemmas Americans are facing.
"I feel very strongly that we've got to do something, but as I look at our choices, well, it feels like our pond has gotten pretty muddy," he said. "It's so cloudy now that it's hard to see."
A self-described conservative who has strongly backed Bush, Tibbits said: "This is very emotional for me. I've got good Christian friends who've told me, 'We shouldn't be over there in Iraq.' And other good Christians are telling me, 'We need to be there. Hats off to our president.' "
In Detroit, Boayue (pronounced boy-AY-you) said: "I hope the president does come to Pittsburgh. This is such a crucial time for the world that it would be a great opportunity for the president to meet with leaders of his church.
"Of course, because I was born in Liberia, I must look at these conflicts from a global perspective," he said. Boayue came to the United States in 1983 as a student and was ordained a United Methodist minister in 1993. He became a U.S. citizen in 1998.
He didn't support attacking Iraq, but Boayue doesn't think the United States can pull out now. "It would be immoral for us to have destroyed Iraq's institutions, then to abandon these people."
Thinking of relatives in Liberia and friends in many poor countries around the world, Boayue said, "The issue that is more important, now, is the way we are creating a new world with a devastating rift between the wealthy and the poor. If we fear terrorism, we must realize that this rift is the recipe for terror."
In Pittsburgh, American delegates will hear a broad array of international viewpoints. The seats in the conference, 500 for clergy and 500 for lay delegates, will include 188 men and women from Africa, Asia and Europe.
Delegates from Asia and Africa are expected to play a major role in defending their church's existing bans on gay clergy and on blessing gay unions.
"In the United States, people seem to be divided on these issues, but I can tell you that those coming from Asia and Africa will be 99 percent opposed to changing these positions," Boayue said.
About 8.3 million United Methodists live in the United States, including 200,000 in Michigan, and 1.9 million live overseas.
When compared with other churches, United Methodist numbers may seem low. The largest religious group in the United States, the Catholic Church, reports 64 million members, but that is a rough estimate of baptized Catholic children and adults, including families who have been inactive for years. Methodists count only teens and adults who have taken membership vows and remain active as gauged by attendance or donations.
Since 2000, Bush has visited many churches but remains active in his home congregation, Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. His 2003 tax return reports donations to Tarrytown, St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., and a chapel at Camp David.
When it comes to church membership, Bush has a huge advantage over his chief opponent in November, Green said. Unlike U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has been dogged by complaints that a practicing Catholic is forbidden to publicly support abortion rights, Bush's church practices a nearly wide-open policy on taking communion.
Bush has been free to disagree with his church's teachings and, at the moment, is at odds with United Methodist positions that call for sharply limiting handguns, keeping abortion legal and opposing the death penalty. All those positions are up for review in Pittsburgh, however.
Established in 1784 just after the American Revolution, Methodism's founders borrowed from the democratic institutions that were springing up around them. The church's hallmark is its system that entrusts its church law to the review of delegates every four years.
Bush could learn some valuable lessons in Pittsburgh, Green said. "This is a church that's been successful over many years in embodying the divisions in American society and struggling to find a middle ground on which to move ahead."