c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A United Methodist pastor with an occasional taste for aged port and Cuban cigars finds himself before a church court on charges he knowingly, willfully disobeyed church admonitions against the use of alcohol and tobacco.

The penalty: a stiff and very public rebuke. Worse yet, he’s booted from the pulpit.

Is this a likely scenario now that the highest court in the United Methodist Church, the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination, has ruled a statement in its guideline Social Principles is equivalent to church law?

It’s a question many United Methodists may be asking.

Earlier this week, the 8.5 million-member church’s Judicial Council ruled a 1996 statement barring ministers from conducting gay union ceremonies is, as many conservatives had argued, not a behavioral guideline for clergy but an explicit prohibition of a specific act. Now, pastors who defy the directive face penalties ranging from a formal reprimand to defrocking.

The debate _ and in some cases confusion _ has been triggered by the statement’s strong prohibitive language and its placement in the Social Principles rather than the Book of Discipline, the church’s formal rule book.”Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches,”the statement cautions.

However, the self-described intent of the guideline-like Social Principles, first adopted in 1972 and revised periodically at the quadrennial General Conference, the church’s top policy-making body, is to be”instructive and persuasive.” Most Methodists understand them as such.”There’s a long tradition of the church including things in the Social Principles which people have been encouraged to take seriously in terms of guiding their behavior … and they have been by and large understood as that _ guidelines,”said Kathryn Johnson of Methodists for Social Action, a national group of progressives in the church that work on justice issues.

Indeed, in contrast to the prohibition on gay unions, the 34-page booklet is peppered with less nonconfrontational phrases such as”we affirm,””we support,””we believe,””we recognize,”and”we encourage.” It includes the church’s position on a variety of topics, including the environment, marriage, divorce, abortion, racism, media violence, gambling, poverty, genetic engineering, and alcohol, drug and tobacco use.

Only in one other instance do the Social Principles employ language as forbidding as that found in its gay marriage ban:”All forms of enslavement are totally prohibited and shall in no way be tolerated by the church.” Observers say it’s the statement’s”shall not”language directed to the clergy that prompted the council to rule it a law.”I think they are what they say,”Patricia Miller of the Confessing Movement, a group of traditionalist Methodists, said of the Social Principles.”If they say `we affirm’ or `we support’ than that’s what that means. If they say `shall not’ then that’s what that means.” Although the Judicial Council is prohibited from discussing its decision-making process, a current council member admitted that language”was part of it.””It was a prohibitive statement of the General Conference in regard to clergy function,”said the Rev. Theodore H. Walter. The only other prohibition in the Social Principles”stated in that way”bans slavery, he said.

Bishop William B. Oden of Dallas, who supports the recent Judicial Council ruling, agreed that because of the statement’s wording the council had to rule as it did. And since the General Conference adopted the statement with language reflecting a prohibition rather than a guideline, Oden said the ban holds regardless of its placement in church documents.”Shall and shall not are mandatory and prohibitive in our discipline,”he said.

So how did a prohibitive statement on clergy function wind up in church guidelines rather than its book of law?”Compromise,”said Oden, who did not care to elaborate.

Miller agreed.”There is a good deal of give and take in committees and on the floor (of the General Conference),”she explained.”It’s a legislative process … and compromise does occur.” But, added Miller, who is also a Republican state senator in Indiana,”my expectation would be that in the next General Conference, you will see an attempt to place (the gay marriage prohibition) elsewhere in the discipline … to erase any question.” In its ruling, the council addressed the broader question of whether all statements in the Social Principles can be interpreted as church law by saying it was”unable to render a definitive decision on all the specific provisions … (in the) Social Principles without a reference to a specific paragraph.” To some Methodists that means the council has left the door ajar that in the future other Social Principles could be ruled church law.”What’s established is that any of the Social Principles are now available for people to bring charges on,”said the Rev. Gregory Dell of In All Things Charity, a movement within the church that supports same-sex unions.”Any clergy person, or lay person for that matter, could be charged with disobedience to the order of the church”if they act upon or disagree with one of the church’s guidelines, he said.

But Oden said such concern in unfounded because of the wording of the vast majority of the Social Principles.”We can’t predict the future,”he said.”But my sense of it is that that is not going to be an issue.” Still, progressive Methodists see the ruling as a creeping”shift”in the denomination _ from”how the church understands a faithful response to a declaration that this is the only faithful response,”said Dell, pastor of Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago.”That changes the whole character of our denomination.” Johnson agrees, believing ultimately the change will hurt the church.”Traditionally, the United Methodist Church is not a church that has been legalistic in terms of these kinds of issues,”she said.”Are we becoming a church where we get mandates that in order to be a United Methodist we must do this or that? … For the church to take a strict stand, I think, weakens the institution.” Bishop Oden, however, choses to look on the up side.”I think the ruling will go a long way to unifying our church,”he said.

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