In reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down a Texas law against sodomy, many United Methodist Church members, leaders and spokespersons are finding themselves at odds. Voices have been raised both in support or dissent of the ruling, and the continuing controversy sheds light on a growing divide.
The president of the Confessing Movement, an unofficial United Methodist group that supports adherence to church law and the apostolic faith, noted that the Supreme Court’s ruling reflects a gap between the church and modern culture. In a United Methodist News Service article, Rev. William Hinson said the vast majority of United Methodists believe the traditional teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Hinson said the temptation is to become a cultural religion, but "we can’t let our culture dictate what we believe."
However, much to the dismay of some more conservative United Methodists, an official from the Church’s Washington, D.C. lobby office commended the Supreme Court ruling.
Kenrick Fealing, program director for civil and human rights at the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, called the court’s ruling "the right decision" based on principles of privacy and equal treatment, which are supported in the United Methodist’s Church’s Social Principles. Fealing said the Texas law was rightly struck down because it was not applied evenly to all people, regardless of sexual preferences.
Other church leaders, however, lament Fealing’s response as indicative of a negative trend. Mark Tooley, who directs the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s United Methodist Committee, said, "As is too often the case, officials of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society are pushing a pro-homosexuality agenda while ignoring traditional Christian teachings on sex and the family."
According to the IRD, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society is well known as one of the denomination’s most liberal agencies. And while the United Methodist Church officially opposes homosexual practice and same-sex unions, the Board of Church and Society routinely lobbies to change the church’s official teachings on homosexuality.
Fealing justified support for the Supreme Court ruling on the basis of fairness. "In the context of dialogue, I would hope that our church and members would see [the decision] as a movement toward equality for all persons and endorse it from that standpoint," he said. "The ruling doesn’t endorse homosexuality or sexual preference, but it supports people’s right to privacy in their own household and the equal treatment of people with different sexual preferences."
Tooley seems to regard such arguments as suspect and their overall effect as damaging to the relevancy of the church. "When a spokesman for the Board of Church and Society endorses the U.S. Supreme Court’s seemingly new understanding of homosexual conduct as a legally protected right, premised on morally dubious notions about privacy and the equality of all sexual practices, it is making itself irrelevant to the church it is supposed to serve, and to the culture in which it is supposed to be a Christian witness," Tooley said.
Tooley noted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion, in which he suggested that the court was following the latest fashion in legal circles by embracing "gay" issues.
"The United Methodist lobby office, in similar fashion, is traipsing after the popular culture in its eagerness to be relevant. But church groups, when they deny the traditions of their faith and compromise with the culture, are ensuring their own eventual irrelevance," Tooley said.