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By what authority
By George Mitrovich

If Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin, did not perform miracles as witnessed to in the New Testament, and was not resurrected from the dead, he’s not entitled to have authority over your life. He becomes merely one more teacher—albeit a very great one—in a long line of holy men. If the miraculous stories told about him are false, why should anyone trust him to save us from our sins, answer our prayers, or return at the Second Coming?

Any United Methodist minister who preaches in Jesus’ name, who invokes him as Lord and Savior, serves communion, baptizes, marries, or buries, accepts new members into the church—doing all this in his name—while believing that Jesus was something other than the Son of God the New Testament claims he is, then that minister engages in a deceptive, if not dishonest act.

When persons are ordained into the ministry of the United Methodist Church, they vow to uphold its doctrines. One assumes they do so fully cognizant of what they are committing themselves to. Unless it was done under duress, some form of psychological strain or inducement, mental imbalance, or under the affects of mind-altering drugs, they understood the vows they were being asked to honor and uphold.

In fairness one must allow that beliefs evolve and commitments change. Rare indeed is the person who hasn’t changed his or her mind about something. Nevertheless, this isn’t about changing one’s mind, but rather about openness and intellectual integrity.

When you believe certain things and uphold certain values, you have a duty to abide by those standards. And if you find that your beliefs and values have undergone significant change, then you have an obligation to say so.

While I believe that applies to all of us, it most assuredly applies to United Methodist clergy—pastors, district superintendents, and bishops.

In this context, fair being fair, one must say a kind word about Bishop Joseph Sprague of the Chicago area who outlined heretical theological views in a speech not long ago at Denver’s Iliff Seminary. Why? Because he had the courage to say what he believes, and has since, against strong protest, stubbornly stood by his remarks.

However, if the bishop wishes to stay on the integrity track, he should consider the following: 1) Resign as a UM bishop, and 2) seek employment with the Unitarian-Universalists. This would raise the theological level of both.

C.S. Lewis made a similar argument in 1945 when he spoke at a gathering of Anglicans in Wales:

“It is your duty to fix the lines (of doctrine) clearly in your minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests, but as honest men. There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue. Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defense of those opinions they are prepared to suffer obloquy and to forfeit professional advancement. They thus come to feel like martyrs. But this simply misses the point, which so gravely scandalizes the layman. We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing in your ministry after you have come to hold them. We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative Party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist. What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of the other” (Christian Apologetics).

Albert Camus, the great French-Algerian writer, who in 1954 was awarded The Noble Prize for Literature (The Plague was his most famous book), was invited in 1948 to speak by the Dominican Friars at Latour-Maubourg in France. He began his remarks to the Friars by criticizing a notorious Catholic priest who had spoken at a Paris rally organized by Marxists. Camus told them, given Marxism’s denial of God, that it was incongruous for a priest to participate in such a rally and to declare his anti-clericalism. He went on to emphasize to the Dominicans that while he did not believe what they believed, “the world of today needs Christians who remain Christians” (The Unbeliever and Christians).

In his novel, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, Camus asked of Christians, “And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?” By which he meant for Christians to ease the world’s suffering.

In a poll of more than 7,000 mainline Protestant clergy, 60 percent of United Methodist ministers asked, said they reject the validity of the Virgin Birth (the highest of any mainline denomination). If that figure even approximates the truth, we have a massive crisis of intellectual deceit.

How?

If the men and women who stand in UM pulpits on Sundays do not believe the church’s great doctrines, and fail to disclose their beliefs, by that failure they engage in deception.

In politics we want our elected representatives to tell the truth, to declare their beliefs. If that is our hope, our expectation of those who run for and serve in public office, even if it is strained at times to the breaking point, how can we then accept a lower standard for those theoretically responsible for our spiritual well being? Those who have been called to proclaim the gospel? Those entrusted with helping us understand the demands Jesus Christ makes upon our lives?

The gap is huge and growing between what UM laity think our ministers believe—those doctrines critical to the history of our church, the vows they took upon ordination we expect them to honor, the commitment they thereby made—and what they actually believe.

I have written before about the crisis we face—the 3 million members lost, average membership age nearing 60, fewer than 500,000 Methodist youth—and what those figures ominously portend for the future of a once undeniably great church. Just recently the Council of Bishops underscored this mounting crisis by reporting that 40.7 percent of all United Methodist churches in 2001 reported zero growth—as in, not one single person added to the membership rolls! How is that possible? Who’s in charge? Who’s to blame? Who’s accountable? Anyone?

Could it be that this catastrophic situation is the result of too many ministers not coming clean with their congregations? Are many of our ministers verbally proclaiming Jesus as Lord, the sole mediator between God and man, the only means of our salvation, while intellectually denying those very claims? Do many of them just accept Jesus as a good man, an inspired teacher whose parables about life can lift a person up, a man whose examples if followed would make the world a better place, but fail to publicly declare their personal conviction that the Son of Man is not the Son of God? Could this duplicity, this duality between proclaimed beliefs and inner denials, be the source of what threatens United Methodism?

Surely, if a minister holds the view that Jesus was a good man, but only that, then no urgency exists to evangelize. If he’s not the Son of God, the Savior of the world, then he has no power to change us, save us, or spare us from eternity’s endless sweep. So what difference does it make?

United Methodist ministers should tell us what they believe; they should explain what constitutes their theological core. They should trust us, as laity, to then decide whether their beliefs support or conflict with our Wesleyan tradition, with the vows they promised they would uphold, and whether, in response, we consider them worthy of our support, prayers, labors, and financial help.

If a minister, whose standard for truth telling ought to be higher than anyone in this society, is unwilling or unable to come clean, to be forthright about what he or she believes, to achieve, in the operative word of our time, “transparency,” then by what means shall our church be saved from what now looms as its inevitable 21st century demise?

Many considered David Hume, the famed Scottish philosopher, a great enemy of organized religion, but most Sundays he attended church. A friend, noting this curious behavior for a non-believer and critic of Christianity, finally asked Hume, “Why waste your time doing something you don’t believe in?” Hume answered, “Because at least once a week I need to hear a man say what he believes.”

Should we expect anything less?

George Mitrovich is a member of San Diego’s First United Methodist Church. He serves as President of both The City Club of San Diego and The Denver Forum, two leading American public forums. In addition, he is the former President of the San Diego County Ecumenical Council. He can be reached by e-mail: cityclubofsandiego@prodigy.net



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