Interview with Paul Chilcote, Don Saliers, and Steve Harper

I was honored with a conversation on my new book with three people I look up to, Paul Chilcote, Don Saliers, and Steve Harper. This is segment #3 of UMsConnected, a new resource for those of us moving forward together as part of the United Methodist Church.

 

What if Someone Says Something I Don’t Like?

I get tired of having the same conversation over and over (haha). Somebody tagged me in a post about something an episcopal candidate in another Jurisdiction said, taken out of context to conclude that she didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ (which of course is not what she said).

First, I untagged myself from the post. Second, I wrote this. I share it with you, friends.

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I don’t know her and she’s not a bishop, but here’s my comment. Every denomination has outliers and envelope pushers and extremists. If you leave the UMC, you are not leaving the outliers and extremists. You are leaving the main body of a wonderful denomination, for another denomination that will also have outliers and extremists. It’s human nature. If you shake a religious tree in America, a nut will fall out. In a 12.5 million person denomination, somebody somewhere is going to say something I don’t agree with. So?

It’s not new, and we work it out in the messiness of Christian community. It doesn’t bother me that somebody I don’t know somewhere believes something differently than me. Unless I’m willing to go have coffee with her, I let it go. Since this was given to me third hand and out if context, I do not fall prey to the hysteria. 

It bothers me that these little anecdotes and sound bites and half-truths get spread around the internet used as justification when the real reason people are leaving is over their fundamental intolerance of our differences. It’s nothing more that witch hunting. I choose love.

You asked, so I answered.

This is an excellent example of the method of rhetoric that involves taking an extreme example, spreading it as a anecdote out of context and perhaps even exaggerating it, wrapping it into a narrative of the infidelity of the whole, and using it to justify leaving. I’d rather just focus on making disciples.