History may look upon our part of Church history as a “litigious age.”
I get that a lot from bishops who resent pastors who raise questions of law to get help from the Judicial Council. Funny, but I don’t hear them complain about litigiousness when bishops bring formal complaints against pastors.
They seem to be glad there is a judicial process set up by the General Conference so there is a way to fire those they think are bad pastors, according to their own evaluations. And pastors are getting a lot more savvy about fighting unfair personnel practices, which is what they feel about how they are being treated. Indeed, with the introduction of the concept of “Fair Process” in 1992, the number of church judicial actions seems to have increased compared with the first 200 years of our denomination.
As I looked back on GC2019, I had a middle of the night revelation. Resorting to law comes from having lost trust in one another.
I can easily argue that the law has always been needed. Jesus quoted law and counted on it even when challenging it. Regarding the first two hundred years in America, we have wedded ourselves to the concept of ordering Church life around a constitution in order to have a fall back position of what to do in case of confusion or perceived harm. If brothers and sisters cannot resolve a disagreement, they could take it to the “Church” with an orderly way of formal debate based on prior agreements about the judicial/appellate process, with an agreement as to who and when and where a final decision could be made to which the contesting parties had to adhere.
But even that formal debate process was not used all the time, as it seems to be nowadays.
And now, thanks to GC2019, I anticipate it is going to get worse. I see two major dynamics at work in our day. One is the impatience of church leaders to do church their own way. The second is the desire of some to have complete control.
Those who follow my writing know immediately the first category is characteristic of the Council of Bishops as well as some individual bishops and other leaders. Law and constitution are important to them only when it serves their purposes. If the Discipline says something different than they want, then they defy or ignore it. I’m talking tendencies here and fortunately not all Council of Bishops’ actions and not all bishops and leaders are like that. But enough have decided they know best and do it their own way. And that triggers the litigiousness about which they complain.
I have watched that phenomenon since 1960 and it never ends. When General Conference votes a hedge against bad personnel practice, certain bishops find a way to get around it. And a new round of litigiousness begins.
But what I have seen in the war to gain control over the denomination, most recently carried on in the passage of the “traditionalist” plan at GC2019 will push the use of courts outside of the denomination and into civil courts. The hard line against homosexuality held by the “traditionalists” will tempt pastors and congregations identifying with both extreme wings of our Church to consider leaving and the terms of their separation will not be “amicable” because of the wide variety of property issues. And the harshness of the new personnel laws guarantee that the litigiousness will veer into state and federal courts. It now will become a matter of civil rights of LGBTQI folks.
While we spend tremendous amounts of energy on that, the global warming crisis goes on unaddressed, the immigration crisis gets worse, and we inadvertently let income inequality become normalized.
As I said above, resorting to law comes from having lost trust in one another.
We Christians have never agreed on everything with one another, even when nascent Christianity was Jesus and his twelve Disciples. The separation of Paul and Barnabas was heart-breaking as was that of Wesley and Whitefield. That the Church even exists is a testament to the fact that Christians have found ways to trust each other anyway.
For all the dynamics that press on us, we set them aside to do missionary work. The strangest theological bedfellows end up working together to serve a county jail. We rediscover that there are things beyond us that we care about despite our differences. There are crises that need all of our varied gifts and experiences in order to be met and that we have to guard each others’ backs. We know that when we have to, we can take on the view that once the hungry are fed, the thirsty get water, the sick are cared for, the naked are clothed, the strangers welcomed, and the prisoners visited, then we can look at our differences and “talk religion.”
We may even discover we can postpone litigation until after that.
Until we regain that level of trust, our litigious age will continue.
