Strategy for
2004: What the Progressives Hope to Accomplish
By Rev. Tom Lambrecht
This report is based on
information from two observers who attended the Kairos CoMotion event in
Madison, Wisconsin, February 21-23, 2002. One
purpose of the event was to rally the troops on the “liberal” side to work
toward General Conference 2004. The
main speakers were Bishop John Shelby Spong, Bishop Judith Craig, and Bishop
Sharon Rader. Much of the
information in this strategy report came from a workshop led by Rev. Greg Dell
and others.
New Designation
This group now wants to be
known as “Progressive Christians” rather than “liberals.”
I guess they feel this circumvents the political connotations of
“liberal” and enables them to define their movement in a new way.
The movement is based on an
entire worldview that is different from traditional Christianity.
They took pains to clarify that they are not just organizing around the
inclusion of homosexuals, but more basically a view of ongoing revelation that
can supersede Scripture. This is in keeping with the findings of the
liberal-conservative dialogue sponsored by the General Commission on Christian
Unity and Interreligious Concerns several years ago.
New Organizational
Structure
The new organizational
umbrella for the Progressive Christianity movement is “The Church Within a
Church Movement.” They see
themselves creating a new church based on this Progressive Christianity
worldview that can grow within the mainline denominations before separating from
them.
They intend to model their
movement on the Good News movement, which they see as the paradigm for
developing a cohesive alternative structure within an existing denomination.
The multiple other groups would then fall within the umbrella of The
Church Within a Church. These other
groups include the Reconciling Network, the Clergy Alliance, Affirmation, and
the ethnic minority group pushing acceptance for homosexuality.
They intend to use the Open
Hands magazine as their flagship publication, modeled on Good News magazine.
The Church Within a Church
will have four focuses: 1) General
Conference legislation, 2) formation of the shadow church, 3) Radical Obedience
(using that new name instead of ecclesiastical disobedience), and 4) theological
reflection and writing. Some will
work within the system for change, while others will try to break the system.
They are trying to develop mutual support for people working toward the
same goal with different means. Right
now, there is some animosity between those who are trying to break the system
and those who are trying to work within the system for change.
2004
Strategy
They look at 2004 as the
watershed year in their movement. They
plan to again pull out all the stops in attempting to legislate change at the
2004 General Conference. They
actually expect to lose, however, and plan to come to General Conference with a
plan for division in hand. There is
still quite a bit of anger from people who left the UMC after the 2000 General
Conference toward those progressives who stayed.
Some thought everybody should leave after 2000.
In addition to the
organization work outlined above, they plan to hold rallies around the country
similar to the Kairos CoMotion event. They
plan some rather aggressive publicity events, as well as some rather dramatic
disobedience of church law. They
hope to provoke the church into making martyrs of them.
Their goal is to gain public support for homosexuals and make the
institutional church and evangelicals look bad.
They want to portray evangelicals as all being in the mold of Fred
Phelps. They want to make 2000
General Conference protests look like a Sunday School picnic in comparison with
what they do in 2004.
They are linking with
progressives in other mainline denominations, believing (as we do) that there is
more in common across denominational lines.
They are working with Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Roman
Catholics. They see a Progressive
Christian denomination emerging that would cross traditional denominational
lines. I believe this means they
see their progressive theological approach as more important than denominational
distinctives. They also expect the
black Methodist denominations (African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist
Episcopal Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal) to join with them in the new
progressive denomination. (I see
this as unrealistic, but they are trying to cultivate top leaders within all of
those denominations, and they are trying to portray the issue as a racial one.)
They see this as not just a
theological divide between progressives and evangelicals, they also see it as a
north-south split along regional lines. In
that context, they are trying to portray the southern church as a good old white
boys’ network, made up of evangelical rednecks.
They are working with all of the ethnic caucuses except for the Hispanic
caucus.
Of the 300 people who
attended the Kairos CoMotion event, about one-half were from Wisconsin (mostly
clergy), one-third were from Northern Illinois (including large representation
from Broadway UMC, Greg Dell’s church), and the remaining 20% were from the
Western Jurisdiction and from Madison academia (University of Wisconsin
professors and students). (These
figures are very rough estimates.)
