SubordiNation

NATION WITHIN IN A NATION

What Laws Apply to Clergy

Liberty is one of the cherished features of living in America. As citizens of the United States, we are protected by the Constitution from abuses like cruel and unusual punishment and unreasonable searches and seizures. We have the right to face our accusers, trial by our peers, impartial juries, assistance of counsel when facing criminal prosecution, due process, and seek redress. These are all guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments spell them out.

While I could now take off on why I think the current administration has undercut America’s credibility in the world by refusing anything approaching these rights to prisoners in their “war on terror,” I have a very different reason for reminding us of these precious gifts of liberty in our country. I would like to call your attention to the fact that these same individual rights are already being ignored in one of our society's most cherished institutions, the United Methodist Church. The victims are not terrorists; they are pastors.

Local pastors can be removed from office without any chance to defend themselves against whatever accusations caused their being fired in the first place.

Pastors can be refused the right to view the files kept by the Cabinet which the Cabinet then uses as the basis for decisions about appointments of those pastors, incorrect materials and all.

The Cabinet, which has the right and often abuses that right to sign the complaint against the pastor, picks those who make the decision about the guilt or innocence of a pastor in a church trial, a group called the “trial court.” The accuser gets to pick the jury!

Pastors are brought in by a superintendent for an innocuous reason and “ambushed” with a verbal lashing based on an unwritten complaint and coerced into withdrawing from ministry.

The opinion of the bishop about the guilt of a pastor usually guides the deliberations of the groups meant to check the facts and make the judgment.

Bishops often decide to handle a complaint administratively that should have gone to church trial.

Pastors have been suspended just on the word of the bishop without the proper consultation required by the Book of Discipline.

It takes a higher standard of proof to convict a church leader who violates due process rules than to convict a pastor of a chargeable offense.

How can there be such a disparity between the rights we have as American citizens and the rights clergy have within the United Methodist Church?

We clergy live in a different nation. “Subordination!” according to a Minnesota state court examining the right of the church to have secret files on clergy.

Most clergy, trained in a variety of backgrounds and with different jobs, still have the general experience of citizenship. Consequently, we presume that the U. S. Constitution has a higher priority on legal civil rights than anything in the Discipline. That presumption is wrong.

In 1976, the Supreme Court made a ruling on a case from the Syrian Orthodox Church. In their decision, they said that civil courts had no jurisdiction over churches that have a judicial system (as the United Methodist Church does) even if that system is not followed. Yes, you read that right. The Supreme Court allows churches not to have to follow their own judicial procedures.

Civil courts hate having to deal with church cases because judges face re-election by voters who go to church.

But the real problem faced by judges is that to take a case about a church personnel matter would require the court to have to make a judgment about matters as defined by that faith. The doctrine of separation of church and state declares that no court should do that. And so, since 1976, the United Methodist Church has drifted further into counting on that protection. Now the easiest route lawyers representing the church have is to say to a civil court that the case is a personnel matter and judges tend to drop the case.

As a result, any careless or intentional failure on a church leader's part which violates a pastor's rights under the U. S. Constitution AND/OR under the Book of Discipline is seen by church leaders as inconsequential. If they have an opinion about a pastor, they can act on it without reference to church law or civil law!

So if the civil courts can't protect a pastor from abuse by church leaders, why not use church law? Aren't there provisions for a complaint process against bishops? Indeed there are. A complaint against a bishop goes to the president of the jurisdictional college of bishops. No bishop wants to have another bishop interfere in his/her own conference matters and so there is a tacit agreement that anything that is not a sexual misconduct accusation against a bishop is dropped. So bishops have no accountability to anyone for their behavior toward pastors.

Can the Judicial Council be called upon to respond to a challenge of a bishop for procedural problems?

Since 1980, there has been a personnel case before the Judicial Council nearly every year. Sometimes there have been as many as six. There are at least four cases before the Council this October. In 1996, the Council went so far as to say the following:

"It should be emphasized that both the administrative and judicial processes in the Discipline are carefully and specifically designed to protect the rights of clergy and of the church. The steps set forth must be followed carefully and explicitly or injustice results. Lack of diligence, integrity, care, or compassion in dealing with a case almost always results in irreparable harm to both the individual and the church. That has usually happened by the time a case of this nature gets to the Judicial Council."
Judicial Council Decision 777.

Despite that observation, even the Council has not always supported the rights of pastors when they have been violated by Cabinets and Boards of Ordained Ministry. Even the decisions that have supported pastors are ignored across the Church.

So pastors have a real problem. Even though they are United Methodists, they cannot assume that their right to a church trial will be honored.

They cannot assume they will be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a trial. They cannot assume they will be treated with respect until a resolution is developed. They now must assume their own words will be used against them, that declaring innocence will be seen as defensive and all the more reason to judge them as guilty, that they will not see the accusations nor the accuser unless the bishop decides that should happen, among other things.

United Methodist clergy no longer live in the "nation" of the United States and its personnel laws and rights. In fact, they cannot count on living in the "nation" of the United Methodist Church's personnel and fair process laws.

The only "nation" left is "subordination" to the bishop who hopefully understands legal civil rights and fair process protections under church law. Since no bishop is required to have competence in either of those in order to be a bishop, there is a chance a pastor "doesn't have a chance!"

What can be done about this?

First, all pastors need to know their rights as laid out in the Book of Discipline. They should read Paragraph 362.1-3 and Paragraph 2701. Even if they are never accused themselves, they have every right to ask conference leaders to describe what was done so that they could be assured Fair Process was followed or challenge actions that fail to do so. If the pastors are accused, they should immediately go online to .

Second, the General Conference needs to establish a new study commission as they did in 1988 to re-evaluate how church leaders should and actually do handle complaints and suggest new laws for consideration of the next General Conference.

Three, General Council on Finance and Administration and Annual Conference need to report the costs of church trials and civil court actions to the respective Annual Conferences and to General Conference. (Detail of many cases cannot be divulged under confidentiality agreements but those costs need to be added in some reasonable way to what can be reported. There are costs for episcopal autocratic behaviors

Four, General Conference should require a substantive training program for all Cabinet and Board of Ordained Ministry members so that they will understand the concepts of due process in civil law, fair process in church law, and personnel policies required under federal law.

And finally, the General Conference needs to change how complaints against bishops are handled so that those who elect them take responsibility, as Judicial Council Decision 475 required. Similarly, superintendents should not have the "hidey-hole" of Paragraph 429.3.

There is a saying in politics: "If they can, they will." To me, applied to the leadership of the Church, "they" can and "they" already do!

Because clergy do not really live in liberty, protected from abuse, and free to properly defend themselves, it is long past time to open discussion of this grievous state in the United Methodist Church.


(Note: For non-United Methodists, the Book of Discipline is the listing of our denomination's constitution and by-laws. References to segments of law called "Paragraphs" are from the 2004 edition.)

--Shortly after this was written in 2006, Diana Henriques of the New York Times ran a series of articles about how this same kind of injustice is occurring in other major religions and denominations.—

Revised 9/30 07

Thanks, Michael Moore

This Administration, since 2001, has been one of the most astounding in American history.

Those who have tried to follow current events since we were taught to do so in grade school have been on a rollercoaster ride. It seems that every few days, some new bizarre twiist to managing government comes out in the news.

Even though the news covered it quite well, the elections in 2000 had some of the most distatsteful things occurring from the repainting of Max Cleland and John McCain into something they weren't to the practice in many states of minorities being disdallowed to vote because they had the same name as a felon to the attack by a white-shirt-and-tie crowd of Washington-based Republican staffers on poll workers in Florida who were trying to recount the vote.

The rumors that the Clinton staff had removed W from all the computer keyboards to President Bush going on vacation shortly after coming to Washington to being asleep at the switch before 9/11 and then on 9/11 to promulgating a war in Iraq that was irrelevant to fighting the terrorists who did 9/11 were all just opening vollies on our senses and sensibility. Colin Powell was used by the Administration to be their front man at the UN on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (so much like General Patraeus being used by the Administration to keep the war going). Then there was Abu Graib where most of the prisoners were guys brought in because they were Arab guys who were then treated the way the Israelis treat Palestinians in prison. And the occupation of Iraq with too few troops that led to the insurgency. And on and on.

Then there was the Swift Boat ads and Jack Abramoff and Republicanizing K Street and Tom DeLay and Vice President Cheney saying the most awful things as if they were true and the President making sure dissenters were not allowed anywhere near where he was speaking and then allowing in only those loyal to him. And Alberto Gonzolaz Republicanizing the Justice Department. And on and on . . . .

I firmly believe that the strategy was intentional to pull so many bad stunts so that they kind of disappeared behind each other and fed the premise that government is bad so people would not vote or even care about what happened in politics. The voices of those outraged by everything as it happened soon were on television so much that they lost the uniqueness of their challenges. And reporters and netwoirk news executives were intimidated and the whole belief that there was news which could be unbiased becoming the "liberal press" compared the the "fair and balanced" stuff at Fox News so that now no news is given any credence because it is all boased anyway!

Into this kind of crazy setting comes Michael Moore. He picked a subject and he has stayed with it. His website has always been a source of news about some of the craziness but he has, like Al Gore, focussed on one topic among all that have flowed from the political gatling gun of this Administration and kept us focussed on something specific and have fought hard for that so that it does not get lost in the swirling absurdity called governance and news these days.

Future Americans will look back on this eight year period and wonder how we could let those people get away with so much in such a short period of time. I hope they see the evil genius in that strategy and not allow it to occur in the future. And I hope they have a Michael Moore to jump all over one subject and move toward action that helps us regain our true nature.

Empire America

Not all prophets have long white beards, wear sandals, and live in the desert . . . or even the Middle East.

Barbara Wendland is a housewife who went to seminary and writes the most prophetic commentaries on religion and the church, which carries her into seeing things most of us are too busy to see or think about.

You can find her observations at www.connectionsonline.org.

You should find her observations! This time, she is looking at American imperialism in the second of a three part series. Her observations about how empire operates should shake even our most conservative people.

It won't because, as she says, Empire suffuses the air we breathe and we just assume it is God's wish for us.

Her next observation will be about how Jesus and Paul resisted imperialism.

This prophet wears a dress and lives in Temple, Texas.

The Cabinet's primary task

During my forty or so years of experience as a pastor in te United Methodist Church, I have watched my superiors in office change from fellow ministers to distant bureaucrats.

I'm told by clergy friends from larger conferences they always saw the Cabinet (bishop and district superintendents who make the decisions to which church ministers are appointed in our system) as distant bureaucrats to be avoided at all cost!

Having had three superintendents who are friends to this day and having met a number of superintendents who are not caught up in the general tendencies I'll describe below, I still have hope that my earliest experiences can be brought back into the present day church.

Here's what I saw happen in this transition that I experienced. Bishops no longer chose superintendents as teachers and mentors for the pastors they supervised (what else does supervise really mean?).

The bishop chose pastors who were compatible with him (it was a guy in that case). They were younger, ambitious, and more willing to be "yes" men (again, in that case it was all guys). He then assigned them to be his extension on the program committees of the conference in order to have more influence on the missions and ministries those groups carried out across the state. That gave the bishop bragging rights over successes that brought attention.

The bishop saw to it that superintendents also got onto national boards and agencies so they would have the chance to become a bishop like himself, since he had succeeded by going that route.

Suddenly, friends of mine who became superintendents stayed friendly but no longer listened to my ideas or concerns. THEY WERE TOO BUSY! And they really only saw each other between jaunts all over the state and nation working on their programmatic responsibilities and meeting those who could help them advance in the Church.

Because they really had only each other as their core relationship, being unable to sustain friendships they'd had before becoming superintendents, they began to suffer from what Irving Janis called "Group Think," taking all their views of what was going on from each other. They were in a "bubble" long before George W. Bush came along.

The old timers that were superintendents for the last six years of their careers before retirement and knew all the tricks of the trade and all the wise ways to deal with conflict and all the sanity saving activities that had helped them survive, wonderful things to pass on to the newer pastors, were quickly gone from the scene.

In their place were good pastors who got swept up into a completely different model of superintending. They were no longer the mentors and support staff to help the pastors of their district. They were the "up-and-comers" serving as the right hand of the bishop.

They no longer visited their clergy. They were never home if the pastor happened to be in their town of residence. If the superintendents showed up at a church function, it was because their busy schedules were open that day when the invitation came.

The worst symptom of superintendents' distance was their willingness to believe the first complainer who came to see them when they assumed the office . . . or worse, when they had been superintendents a long time and still immediately believed the complainers.

No matter what the facts of the situation were, an oral complaint against a pastor was an interruption to their busy schedules and the pastor should never have let something get bad enough that it turned into a complaint that ended up on the superintendent's desk!

Experienced old-timers, even in their first week as superintendents would rarely think that way. They'd have too much respect for the training and years of experience the pastor had. They'd remember when antagonists in their churches had tried to pull that kind stunt.

On top of this dynamic change, the Church gave superintendents a new power. In 1980, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a law that allowed superintendents to initiate a complaint against a pastor.

In conferences where the bishop or superintendent felt they could go see a pastor, demand his credentials, and have him on the street by nightfall, this new law seemed good. It made the Cabinet member have to write something down first that could then be processed through a committee before the pastor would be out on the street.

In conferences where Cabinet members had been collegial with pastors, this new law brought a terrible wedge that ruptured the covenant of the clergy. The superintendents had a new power. They were sheriff now. And it went to their heads and the pastors did not dare trust them with anything sensitive or difficult.

In all conferences after only a little while, now superintendents not only had the power to appoint them to their next church but also had the power to destroy their ministry.

You can imagine the pressure on pastors to conform, to not take chances that could lead to complaints, to not rock the boat so the next appointment would be a better one, and to avoid the superintendent so as not to disrupt his attention in any way.

Of course, the ambitious ones saw this as an opportunity to play up to the superintendent to gain favor and attention so that s/he'd (there were women superintendents by this time) have a favorable impression when new appointments were being made.

The mix of immaturity, ambition, and fear has given us, relatively speaking, superiors in office who do not think first of the pastor's needs that only an outsider like a superintendent can fulfill.
How can we turn that around to where the Cabinet can change?

There are several things that need to be done. It would be great if they could all be done at once!

First, Cabinets need to see that their first responsibility is TO HELP PASTORS SUCCEED IN THE CHURCHES TO WHICH THE SUPERINTENDENTS APPOINT THEM.

Second, superintendents and bishops must not have the authority to initiate complaints.

If a pastor shoots and wounds a superintendent, of course as the victim, the superintendent has the right to lodge a formal complaint. And if after supervising an ineffective or unmotivated pastor by working together over at least a year on remedial education, finding medical or psychological therapy that could help, and providing support for follow-through, a superindendent would be a witness to the lack of success of those efforts and thus a proper one to initiate a complaint. The file would be thick to back up the complaint.

Any other use of the power to initiate a complaint would be hearsay or power abuse.

Third, the Church needs to pare down what it expects of its Cabinet members. Program in the conference and in the general church should be done by volunteers or those on special appointment so that bishops and superintendents would not have to use their precious time shilling for national programs or sitting in on meetings where they were not needed.

That would mean some kind of watchdog group would have to oversee the national boards and agencies to keep them from becoming feifdoms of charismatic leaders. We currently make bishops be the watchdogs.

Fourth, Cabinets have to appoint experienced pastors near the end of their careers to be superintendents. Ambition would be expressed by effective pastoring for many long years rather than by who one gets to know. And respect for the realities of ministry would replace impatience.

Fifth, bishops and superintendents would all have to take salary cuts until the church could afford to reward them. As it is, we reward them just because they are superintendents, not because they are of any help to the local churches and pastors.

Sixth, we need to elect bishops who do not need the attention which having successful splashy programs provide, men and women who are willing to be content with doing a great job matching pastors and churches and helping them both succeed. Maybe someone needs to establish an award for bishops and superintendents who work on that most primary task.

Will we get back to where superintendents and bishops are there to help the local church and pastor succeed as disciple- and apostle-makers, as "hospitals for sinners," as the vine that nourishes its branches, as the "bread of Christ broken for many"?

Do we have the grace?