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Archive for February, 2019

The United Methodist Divorce

Posted in Uncategorized on February 26, 2019| 2 Comments »

So much for the welcoming, open arms of The United Methodist Church.

United Methodist delegates from around the world voted for a divorce because of irreconcilable difference on sexual orientation.

After decades of conflicts and dialogue and debate on top of more conflicts and more dialogue and debate on matters related to sexual orientation, my beloved United Methodist Church voted Monday for schism.

(Mind you …. UMC delegates are still in conference in St. Louis as of this writing, wrangling over whether and how to split the church. That global church meeting won’t be over until evening, but the essence of what I have to say in this post will undoubtedly be unchanged.)

This amounts to an ecclesiastical divorce between church progressives and conservatives. With the strong support of United Methodists in African nations where homosexuality is a crime, American conservatives “won” in the long theological conflict (in which nobody really wins), all because of irreconcilable differences over issues of sex and sexual orientation.

LORD, BLESS THIS SNAKE
As an ordained United Methodist deacon, I can come into your home and bless your pet snake and turtle and cat and dog. But I’m not allowed to so much as bless the union of a same-sex couple who love each other. In spite of gay marriage being legal, I sure as hell can’t preside at the wedding of that couple.

A THREAT TO TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE? REALLY???
Years ago, a fellow progressive United Methodist clergywoman, was anguished over her inability to do the wedding of two lesbians, one of whom was a lifelong friend she had been raised in the United Methodist Church with. In fact, both lesbians were raised — and baptized — in United Methodist churches.

In a horribly tragic twist, on the day after the couple’s wedding, they were killed in a car wreck involved multiple casualties while traveling on their honeymoon.

My clergy friend, who by United Methodist law was not allowed to marry the couple, was allowed to bury them. She did their funeral at the request of both families.

At the risk of sounding bitterly cynical, I have to say that conservative “church traditionalists” in my beloved UMC are fine with we who are ordained clergy doing funerals of married gay couples, because married gay couples who are dead no longer pose a threat to “traditional marriage.”

That’s a whole lot of the problem, according to conservatives — the “threat to traditional marriage” by LGBTQ folk.

I have to wonder how many American United Methodists who’ve succeeded in essentially sweeping us progressives out of the church are down with what I call “Trumpianity.”

(*For more on Trumpianity,” scroll down and follow the link.”

THE UMC’s LAW AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS IN MINISTRY
We progressives in the church have for decades opposed the ban on homosexuals serving in ministry or performing same-sex marriages. Here is the church rule banning the ordination of gays:

    “While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. [My italics for emphasis.] Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.”

CONSERVATIVES DON”T DIVORCE, OF COURSE
The practice of many things, like divorce, are commonly “practiced” (being a good heterosexual takes no practice at all) by United Methodists around the world. Yet NOBODY IN the United Methodist Church has ever called for the exclusion of divorced folks (like me) from ministry or any kind of leadership in the church. (If you’re not familiar with teachings on my Lord Jesus Christ on divorce, trust me when I tell you he was radically conservative on the issue — according to the Bible.)

I’m heartsick not only for the pain of this impending, denominational divorce, but more so for friends like a fellow retired clergyman, who came “out of the closet” a few years ago and married a partner of many years.

My friend wrote this on his Facebook page Monday night after the vote to hand the keys of the church over to conservatives opposed to the church’s full inclusion of gays and leave us progressives without a church we can live in and with:

    Right now I’m grieving, angry, and maybe in a bit of shock that the church that baptized me, raised me, ordained me has made it clear today (& will probably make it official by a vote tomorrow) that in the denomination’s eyes I’m a sinner in my very being in ways that straight people are not, that I never should have been ordained or should probably have been ousted by a witch hunt as a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” years ago, that my marriage is not blessed by God. All of these contentions are untrue. It pains me that, while I have many friends and colleagues who are allies … there are some whom I have known and worked beside, some I attended seminary with, including at least one bishop, who advocated for the traditional plan and my demonization. I don’t know where my spiritual home will be going forward; perhaps it will be something that grows out of the ashes as a better and more inclusive Methodism, maybe even the reborn and reforming form of a congregation that has to come out of its own “United” closet and become truer to itself. But … I know one thing. My days as a United Methodist as it was died today. Because that once beautiful thing has become ugly … and in fact was murdered today on the floor of the General Conference. Tomorrow will likely be the signing of the death warrant. But even if something unexpected happens, I fear the damage is done. The wounds inflicted today are almost sure to be mortal.

There is so much more I could say on all this, and I do believe with my friends that a new and more inclusive and welcoming church of people with open hearts, minds and spirits and arms will grow out of the ashes.

But right now I just need to try to process it and pray to God to help us all.

* For my definition of Trumpianity, go here.

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Pretty Church, Ugly Church/Good Church, Bad Church

Posted in Uncategorized on February 16, 2019| 1 Comment »


The universal church is impossible to defend, and extremely difficult to hang with.

I don’t know how many times a week — sometimes even a day — I feel like quitting the church and so-called “organized religion” and doing my own things with God and Jesus.

Vatican Reforms

I don’t know how many times a week somebody scoffs and looks at me like I’m a 3-headed version of Gomer Pyle when I tell them I’m a retired United Methodist deacon.

I’ve had two especially hurtful encounters in the past two weeks with American expat acquaintances who never knew I’m a retired clergyman and member in good standing of, uh, “organized religion” (i.e., a ghastly church denomination!).

Small wonder that the number of church haters expands as revelations of more atrocities in the Catholic Church are brought to light every are endless.

And now comes a similar scandal in the Southern Baptist Church, which two Texas newspapers (including my former employer of many years The Houston Chronicle) joined forces with the San Antonio Light to expose. (And good for them for their great journalism — in spite of print journalism being on life support, there is still some terrific print journalism being practiced on occasion outside of New York and Washington.)

All that said, I want to share with you something that the great Carlo Carretto wrote about his love-hate relationship with the church, reflective as it is of my own love-hate relationship. Carretto was a member of The Little Brothers of Jesus, a contemplative community of lay Catholics who lived in the desert. Read more about this joy-filled ascetic and superb writer here.

And I commend his Collected Writings book to you, still in print available for order online.

This is adapted from the book Carlo Carretto: Essential Writings, which is still in print and available online.

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!

“And that is where the mystery lies. This mixture of good and bad, of greatness and misery, of holiness and sin that makes up the church… this in reality am I.” — Carlo Cattetto

How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!

I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.

You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is.

I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful.

How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. . .

No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? I would not be able to establish it without the same faults, for they are the same faults I carry in me. And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else.

The Church has the power to make me holy but it is made up, from the first to the last, only of sinners. And what sinners! It has the omnipotent and invincible power to renew the Miracle of the Eucharist, but is made up of men who are stumbling in the dark, who fight every day against the temptation of losing their faith. It brings a message of pure transparency but it is incarnated in slime, such is the substance of the world. It speaks of the sweetness of its Master, of its non-violence, but there was a time in history when it sent out its armies to disembowel the infidels and torture the heretics. It proclaims the message of evangelical poverty, and yet it does nothing but look for money and alliances with the powerful.

Those who dream of something different from this are wasting their time and have to rethink it all. And this proves that they do not understand humanity. Because this is humanity, made visible by the Church, with all its flaws and its invincible courage, with the Faith that Christ has given it and with the love that Christ showers on it.

When I was young, I did not understand why Jesus chose Peter as his successor, the first Pope, even though he abandoned Him. Now I am no longer surprised and I understand that by founding his church on the tomb of a traitor… He was warning each of us to remain humble, by making us aware of our fragility. (…)

And what are bricks worth anyway? What matters is the promise of Christ, what matters is the cement that unites the bricks, which is the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit is capable of building the church with such poorly moulded bricks as are we.

And that is where the mystery lies. This mixture of good and bad, of greatness and misery, of holiness and sin that makes up the church… this in reality am I. (…)

The deep bond between God and His Church, is an intimate part of each one of us. (…) To each of us God says, as he says to his Church, “And I will betroth you to me forever” (Hosea 2,21). But at the same time he reminds us of reality: ‘Your lewdness is like rust. I have tried to remove it in vain. There is so much that not even a flame will take it away’ (Ezechiel 24, 12).

But then there is even something more beautiful. The Holy Spirit who is Love, sees us as holy, immaculate, beautiful under our guises of thieves and adulterers. (…) It’s as if evil cannot touch the deepest part of mankind.

He re-establishes our virginity no matter how many times we have prostituted our bodies, spirits and hearts. In this, God is truly God, the only one who can ‘make everything new again’.

It is not so important that He will renew heaven and earth. What is most important is that He will renew our hearts. This is Christ’s work.

This is the divine Spirit of the Church.

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Mantra Rock (With Super Buddhist Tina Turner)

Posted in Uncategorized on February 3, 2019| 1 Comment »


I have many and very many friends who share this belief about the Super Bowl. They’re more into green tea, herbal and food gardening, cleansing music and spiritual conversation. May their tribe increase.

— From the Sanskrit mantra in the Tina Turner video below.

Om Sarveshaam Svastir-Bhavatu |
Sarveshaam Shaantir-Bhavatu |
Sarveshaam Purnnam-Bhavatu |
Sarveshaam Manggalam-Bhavatu |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

Meaning:
1: May there be Well-Being in All,
2: May there be Peace in All,
3: May there be Fulfilment in All,
4: May there be Auspiciousness in All,
5: Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

So you’re put off by today’s latest edition of the Super Bowl of American Excess & Vulgarity.

That’s understandable. I don’t think I’ve missed a Super Bowl game in my life, but my interest in it — and in football in general — wanes more every year.

I’m not even sure I’ll watch tonight’s game.

Super Bowl fans this year — including those with no taste for football but who watch for commercials or the halftime performances — are now being entertained to a ludicrous controversy over the halftime act. As a friend of mine opined about the flap on Facebook, “For God’s sake just get a marching band!”

So if you’re as put off as I am about the whole Super Extravaganza to End All Super Extravaganzas Until This Time Next year, I recommend you take a few minutes to bathe yourself in the sights and sounds of some great Mantra Rock on videos with that force of cosmic love and positive energy Tina Turner.

Come to think of it, Tina’s cleansing mantra music and movement could bring some class and dignity to the Super Bowl Halftime Shows and put some much needed harmony-and-love vibes out in the broken world. But then, American consumerism left class and dignity in the dirt a long time ago.

We’ll never see a Super Bowl of Love & Harmony as long as there are beer and pizza and insurance to sell.

Longtimers here at The Cult of the Jitterbug know that I, a Christian minister,

One of the many books by my former World Religions professor Ruben Habito, professor at Perkins School of Theology, SMU.

have had an abiding interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions for about half my rather long life. It’s not that I want to leave my Christian faith for Buddhism or Taoism or Hinduism or anything else. The interest is in all the congruity with the other great religions.

Many illuminating books have been writ about those intersections in faith traditions. A number of those were written by my friend and former seminary professor Ruben F.L. Habito, a former Jesuit priest who keeps one foot planted firmly in his Christian faith and the other planted in the Buddhism of which he’s a world-renowned master.

He’s one of the most calming people I’ve ever known and was one of the best and kindest teachers I ever had. I commend his books to you.

But back to Tina.

When I was young and wild, I was wild and crazy about sexy Tina Turner. And what American male lover of rock wasn’t wild about the primal rock of Tina Turner?

But there has always been so much more about Tina than her rock life. She went from being a rock superstar to being a true American hero when she shared the story of her escape from her hyper-violent rock-legend husband Ike Turner.

Her legend grew as the world became aware of her full conversion from her traditional Baptist-Christian faith to Buddhism.

You won’t get much hyper-thrill watching these vids, but you might get some hyper-chill.

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