As US 250th nears, bishops discuss democracy

Key points:

• United Methodist bishops and scholars from around the world examined Christian faith and democracy at the spring Council of Bishops meeting.
• The discussions came as the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and as democracy faces threats around the world.
• Bishops and scholars made a distinction between Christian nationalism and the Gospel call for all Christians, no matter their nationality, to be the light of the world.

During the American Revolutionary War, a British soldier interrupted a Methodist service in New York and demanded that the worshippers sing “God Save the King.”

When the singing was over, the preacher called on his fellow Methodists to sing a proper concluding hymn by Charles Wesley: “Rejoice, the Lord is King.”

Ashley Boggan, the top executive of the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History, recounted the incident from the early days of John Street United Methodist Church at the Council of Bishops spring meeting.

“That tension between civic loyalty and theological allegiance has never really left us — not as Methodists, not as citizens of this world,” Boggan told the bishops meeting in Jacksonville and those watching online. “And it’s exactly where today's conversation is going to take us.”

Boggan was introducing two back-to-back panels — one consisting of United Methodist scholars and the other of bishops — about Christian faith and democracy.

The bishops and Boggan organized the conversation ahead of this year’s Fourth of July when Americans will mark the 250th anniversary of the adoption of its Declaration of Independence.

The discussion comes at a fraught time for human rights and representative government around the globe and in the U.S. itself.

Just the day before the April 30 panels, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act — making it harder for racial minorities to challenge maps as discriminatory and potentially reversing strides toward representative democracy that nonviolent protesters braved brutal attacks to achieve. In a joint statement, the United Methodist Commission on Religion and Race and Board of Church and Society denounced the ruling.

“In light of these times that we are in that are marked by profound geopolitical upheaval and growing threats to democracy and in continuity with the work we began in becoming a ‘beloved community,’” said Indiana Conference Bishop Tracy S. Malone, “this is a critical moment.”

Malone, who completed her term as Council of Bishops president on April 30, called on her fellow bishops “to reflect more deeply on the role of the church in strengthening and sustaining democracy.”

Throughout both panels, bishops and scholars stressed the distinction between the Christian nationalism they see rising in the U.S. and Christ’s call for all his disciples — no matter their nationality — to be the light of the world.

“The Christian religion is, by a Wesleyan understanding, inclusive of all nations and concerned with the well-being of all people,” said the Rev. Joey Shelton, former professor and dean of chapel at United Methodist-related Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. “Christian nationalism is an exclusive ideology that hijacks words and confuses their meaning.”

Shelton, the husband of North Carolina Conference Bishop Connie Shelton, now leads workshops on racial healing and the challenges of Christian nationalism.

The Christian nationalist political ideology, he said, easily slips into violating the first two commandments: to not have any other gods but God and to not make idols. In the U.S., he sees the ideology distorting both the Christian faith and the U.S.’s constitutional democracy.

Bishop Héctor Burgos-Núñez, the denomination’s first Puerto Rican bishop who leads the Upper New York and Susquehanna conferences, agreed.

“Christian nationalism is not an expression of our faith. It is an abomination to the Gospel,” he said.

Burgos has personally experienced what happens when government officials put denigrating a person’s perceived nationality above protecting constitutional rights. While a native-born U.S. citizen, the bishop described being stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while driving with his daughter through central Pennsylvania — part of his episcopal area.

He warned that in today’s polarized climate, anything the bishops say about what’s happening will “sound political.”

“I’m clear that prophetic witness is driven by the conviction that God cares about how people are treated, especially the most vulnerable, those who are harmed or left out,” he said. “Partisan alignment, by contrast, usually and most times, is driven by loyalty to a political tribe or the desire to win an argument, grab power and perpetuate privilege.”

While the U.S. semiquincentennial contributed to the timing of the discussions, the United Methodist panelists brought an international perspective. In addition to U.S. speakers, the panels included church leaders from the Philippines and the African continent including Burundi-Rwanda Bishop Emmanuel Sinzohagera, who has served as speaker of the Senate in Burundi.

Sinzohagera sees democracy as in line with Methodism founder John Wesley’s teaching that the Gospel of Christ knows no holiness but social holiness.

“So, holiness is not really a private spiritual achievement.” Sinzohagera said. “It’s formed in relation with others. It is expressed through love in action. Therefore, if we are really to understand democracy in line with social holiness, democracy should be understood as mutual accountability in shaping a moral community.”

He added that democracy is also in line with the Wesleyan belief that God extends prevenient grace to all people.

“If God’s grace is already at work in everyone,” Sinzohagera said, “then every voice matters, especially those we are tempted to ignore.”

While in no way sympathetic to the Americans’ Revolutionary cause, John Wesley back in England did support democratic practice and engaged in political advocacy. Throughout his ministry, he called for the abolition of slavery — writing his last letter to encourage William Wilberforce, the famed abolitionist member of Parliament.

He also championed voting. According to a 1774 journal entry, he urged Methodist Society members ahead of Parliamentary elections: “(1) To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy (2) To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and (3) To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.”

Likewise, American Methodists have engaged with their national leaders going back to when Bishops Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke — at the behest of the John Street congregation — sent a formal greeting on behalf of the Methodists to newly inaugurated President George Washington.

“The letter that the Methodists wrote at the time offered fervent prayers and intercession to God on behalf of the Methodists for the nation’s new president, wishing him success in his endeavors,” the Rev. Rob W. Lee IV told the bishops. Lee is the connectional coordinator for Archives and History as well as a scholar of presidential history and public theology.

“President Washington was moved by this, and he responded in kind, offering his first official interaction with the religious community in his capacity as President of the United States.”

Critically, Lee said, Washington’s response assured the Methodists — who began as an offshoot of the Church of England — that they had a place in the new republic.

But by far, the U.S. president who gave the most backing to the Methodist cause, Lee said, was President William McKinley, who served from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. After the U.S. swiftly defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898, McKinley — a Methodist himself — supported Methodist missionaries’ push to become the first Protestant denomination in the Philippines. The U.S. takeover of former Spanish colonies marked the moment the country became an imperial power on the international stage.

“We emphatically, of course, give thanks for the presence of Filipino United Methodists in our midst,” Lee said. “But we also recognize that the initial presence of Methodists in the Philippines was a form of colonialism that took presidential and government power to new levels — the likes of which we had not seen in this country. It was wielded by a Methodist and used for gain and profit in his realm.”

Bishop Israel Painit, who leads the Davao Area in the Philippines, spoke of the lived realties in his country that has won its independence but also faced different political environments.

During the 1972 to 1981 martial law under Ferdinand Marcos, Painit said, “Democratic institutions were weakened; freedoms were restricted, and fear was real.”

Yet, he said, churches did not disappear but became more alive. “Churches became spaces of courage, where truth was spoken, where communities gathered, where hope was sustained,” he said. “Some chose prophetic resistance; others chose quiet resilience. But together, the church continued its mission. That moment reminds us that the life and witness of the church are not dependent on any single political system.”

At the same time, he said democracy can be a gift. “It should enhance governance,” he said, “and if it is a moral good, it should always uphold dignity, peace and justice.”

In the U.S., The United Methodist Church and its predecessors have a history that includes both Republican and Democratic elected officials among its membership. Both Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and U.S. secretary of state, and former President George W. Bush remain active United Methodists.

As it happened, the panel discussions in Florida coincided with the Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of Resurrection, a United Methodist Church, announcing in Kansas his run for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat.  

Bishop LaTrelle M. Easterling, who leads United Methodists in the U.S. capital, said United Methodists should resist both complete passivity in the face of injustice and complete cooption for political gain.

“Love cannot remain silent in the face of suffering, injustice or dehumanization,” said Easterling, bishop of the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware conferences. “A Gospel that does not move our feet, has not reached our hearts.”

Yet, she added, United Methodists should remember the church does not belong to any one party or ideology.

“Our allegiance is to the reign of God,” she said. “When asked to identify ourselves, our first response should always be, ‘I’m a child of God,’ long before we consider ourselves as Democratic, Republican, Independent or any other lesser identity.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.