One Utah

Pastor Dan at Street Prophets has a great post about the issues involved.

The weird thing about the UCC is membership occurs at the local church level; you are a member of a UCC congregation which makes you a member of the denomination. Its safe to say there is no uniformity in the UCC.

As a member, of a UCC congregation in Salt Lake, I cannot imagine my congregation doing something that would force me to resign. Holladay UCC has taken some stands that some people might find controversial. During the Vietnam War, the pastor led protests. Almost ten years ago, the Congregation took a public stand to embrace GLBT people. It is working hard to be a “Whole Earth” church and provide consistent education about green issues. Our Pastor is frequently asked to comment on the controversial issues of the day and she does so with extraordinary insight and conviction. I know there are circumstances under which she would lead protests and I would support her because I trust her judgment.

I imagine the Obamas felt the same way about Trinity and its pastoral leadership. I’m sure they felt the same way about Rev. Pfleger. I’m also certain the Obamas feel Trinity has failed to live up to the trust they placed in it. That’s a tough place to be. The leadership at Trinity didn’t manage to walk the tight rope that appeared before them.

Pastor Dan, though, I think gets to the crux of the issue from a pastoral perspective:

You. Do. Not. Embarrass. People. It is not pastoral.

So while it’s easy to say that Wright and Pfleger might be naive when it comes to the cutthroat politics of the national stage - and Lord knows they wouldn’t be the first pastors to be politically naive at a crucial moment - it’s not so easy to let them off the hook for being fearless in their pursuit of the gospel.

Yes, the gospel is divisive by its nature.

Yes, preachers are required to pursue the gospel in their preaching.

But Christians are to hold love above all things. Number two is the community. And for crying in the night, how difficult is it to figure out that it’s not very loving to embarrass a prominent member of the congregation who hasn’t done anything wrong? How difficult is it to understand that it’s not very helpful to that parishioner - or to his community - to leave him no choice but to hand in his letter of resignation?

Pastor Dan is a UCC pastor and in his writing he reminds me of my own pastor, Rev. Erin Gilmore. I can picture her in the conference room at HUCC saying, “You don’t do that. It’s not pastoral. It’s not right. It hurts the church community. It hurts individual members and it hurts the church.” The Obamas have long been members of Trinity. As a congregation it has nurtured them. I think throughout the Jeremiah Wright episode, the media has consistently misunderstood what it means to be a UCC member. Freedom of the pulpit, the right of pastor’s to preach as they see fit, is a bedrock principle in the UCC. As a member, however, I have the freedom of conscience, freedom to disagree with my pastor, vehemently. UCC theology doesn’t require you to agree to some set of theological assertions. It doesn’t require you to agree with every word your pastor says; in fact, I sometimes feel the UCC expects us to disagree with each other, to argue, to struggle, debate passionately, within the bonds of a covenantal relationship.

The membership covenant is an agreement that says we don’t have the answers and we’re here together to form community in which we can find answers, to form community in which we are strengthened to serve others. The gospel as preached by so many in the UCC is not about where you go when you die or a set of rules you live by. Instead, it is a gospel that says we serve others because we are called to do so. We serve in our community because we are called to do so. We serve God best by serving God’s people where there is hurt and need of healing. Trinity UCC has a long history of doing exactly that - of creating a community in which the members organize themselves and go serve others. But . . . but . . .

If i were the Obamas I would feel Trinity UCC broke its covenant with me. Trinity’s leaders failed to live the pastoral side of the membership covenant Pastor Dan talked about. You do not ever embarrass a member, you do not ever mock another pastor’s member. Leaders at Trinity probably didn’t realize untili too late what was happening. Jeremiah Wright probably didn’t realize until too late he was failing one of his members. His integrity was under attack and he defended it, but in doing so, he reflected badly on the Obamas. It was unintentional which to my mind makes it all the more painful. It was also foolish of Trinity’s leadership to not prepare Rev. Pfleger - Trinity is under a microscope these days and they should have said to him, “Watch yourself.”

Pastor Dan points out:

FoxNews is not going to stop pointing to Trinity UCC as an example of dangerous black radicalism. Neither are the pinheads around the right blogosphere. They might lay off Obama for having the good sense to leave before anything else blew up in his face. But Trinity UCC just became the stalking horse for every racialist bedwetting night terror out there. Who needs Ward Connerly anymore? Barack Obama just agreed that his congregation is too damn radical, and the irony is that it was a white minister with his heart in the right place who made him do it.

Pastor Dan is missing something though. UCC members are becoming increasingly comfortable in the public square, due to Barack Obama and Howard Dean (I’m not dissing the other UCC members in national leadership, just pointing to these two as the most prominent and in many ways, most UCC). They are outspoken leaders, proud to fight for their values. And the UCC’s national leadership is doing a good job at providing public witness for the denomination and its values. I think we’re going to see more attention paid to the UCC as a whole and we may not be ready for Prime Time. We are a messy, at time radical, at times confusing denomination which is doing its best to embrace the diversity that is America.

The UCC wants to encourage dialog and that is a risky process. Pastor Dan:

As stupid and pathetic and dangerously naive as it seems, the basic organizational principle of the United Church of Christ is not and never has been assent to a particular creed or statement of beliefs or theological principles, not even transubstantiation or consubstantiation, but the notion that we are all fellow pilgrims walking the way of Jesus Christ, and what binds us together is the conversation we share as we walk. In that, we are closer to the Unitarian model of spiritual-mutual-aid society than perhaps even the Unitarians know. Even they lose the bead some times, given how much they love to fight.

Obama’s entire political thrust to bridge the divides of society, to bring them together in healing, in mutual care, and in work for the common good, is more UCC than anyone suspects. It’s been there all along. He may not have originally developed it in the UCC, but meeting a fierce, impressive pastor like Jeremiah Wright certainly didn’t hurt it. If we didn’t invent it, we sure nurtured it, and now, for better or worse, it’s our spiritual gift to the world through Obama.

UCC values when lived honestly are the enemy of fundamentalism. You can’t be a fundamentalist and engage in real dialog - and I don’t just mean religious fundamentalist. Dialog, discussion, debate, honest engagement require and sustain mutual respect. Once you start down that path, there’s little turning back.

This entry was posted Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 7:37 am and is filed under 2008 Election, 4th Estate (Media), Religion, This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.