John Hamer on his First World Conference

Over at By Common Consent, John Hamer has a great first installment on blogging about his first World Conference.

Frizzell on Veazey

Matt Frizzell presents a more appreciative entry than I did. Plus Matt's entry seems to be more poetic.

A Pragmatic and Prophetic People?

Sunday night at world conference is a little bit like the state of the union. It is the chance for the church's president to make his appeal to the delegates. In general, there was nothing new in Steve Veasey's address, except perhaps for the announcing of a $4 million gift to help fund to continue to fund bi-vocational ministries (quite a major thing in these tough times).

Steve formally submitted his counsel to the church and went on to talk about some of the key passages. Seeking inspiration from Galatians, section 5 of the counsel says:

It is imperative to understand that when you are truly baptized into Christ you become part of a new creation. By taking on the life and mind of Christ, you increasingly view yourselves and others from a changed perspective. Former ways of defining people by economic status, social class, sex, gender, or ethnicity no longer are primary. Through the gospel of Christ a new community of tolerance, reconciliation, unity in diversity, and love is being born as a visible sign of the coming reign of God.

It is truly a lovely notion and worthy of us to live up to. And while there are some significant exceptions, the Community of Christ is still largely governed by middle to upper-class whites from the United States. And while the conference shows many multicultural elements, it is the church in US and Canada that is financially supporting the remaining international presence of the church. Significant power dynamics still exist between the haves and have-nots and it seems like little effort is being made to change those dynamics.

I also still struggle on how to understand how "former ways of defining people . . . no longer are primary." Does the reality of living in post-earthquake Haiti suddenly not become primary to church members living there? Or perhaps just as important, do nominally US Christians, who are hyper-active consumers move from being passing members of the Community of Christ to fully engaged in the prophetic call?

Then there is the part of the document that deals with "ethical behavior and relationships" with homosexuality being the issue not mentioned, but clearly at the forefront. The document presents a pragmatic approach that allows different areas/nations of the world to deal with issues at a different pace. There does seem to be some wisdom in this, but how one deals with major differences within a single geographic area then is unclear (in the KC metro area, some congregations are already open & affirming to GLBT, many are not).

Steve noted that we have been ordaining women for 25 years in the Community of Christ. Could the approach advocated in the current document had prevented the schisms from happening? And are there some issues where we can't afford to go slow? We never had much of a presence in slave-holding parts of the US, but could slavery had been tolerated by parts of the church in the Nineteenth Century? And when we consider the civil rights movements of the 1950's and 1960's, the RLDS Church's record is horrible. So the challenge is when to be pragmatic and when to be prophetic and can they co-exist?

Places to Watch in CyberSpace

The collaborative blog, Saints Herald will no doubt contain a number of items related to conference this week, including Matthew Bolton's thoughts on the importance of passing the Anti-Nuclear Weapon resolution.

Beware of the Chicken has some of the best writing I have seen lately on the reality of increasing power of the church leadership.

Velton Peabody, has a very helpful Facebook group called Community of Christ in the News.

Are there other must read places you are finding?

Required Reading Before Conference.

One should read the best, pre-conference theological reflection, What Might the Apostle Paul Say to the Community of Christ by Rich Brown, former Herald editor and emerging publisher.

Updated: Rich continues with another the blog post, Apostle Paul Thought Everybody Was Straight.

Thoughts on the Community of Christ World Conference

Tomorrow (Saturday, April 10) the Community of Christ World Conference will begin. For many the activities have already begun. Yesterday and today, the Restoration Studies Symposium has been held over at Graceland University, Independence Campus. Scholars of both Community of Christ and LDS persuasions (and others) are joining together to reflect on a variety of theological and historical issues facing the movement.

The International Leader's Meeting is also going on. Delegates from around the world have arrived early and participate in these pre-conference classes and workshops. It makes sense from a logistical point of view because the travel expenses are so high that one needs to really use the time wisely when these leaders are here, but one also wonders if this is a subtle way for Church Leadership to shape the opinion of the international leaders.

Because of the increasing size of the international church and the fact that financially and logistically, it is impossible to field a full slate of delegates from most countries, the international delegates will cast weighted votes giving them voting power much greater than a typical US delegate.)

On the numerous questions before the conference on full inclusions of gays and lesbians in the church, it is understood that the strongest opposition comes from the so-called Third World (countries in Africa, Haiti and others). Yet the challenge for these international delegates is that they are largely financial dependent on the US Church for their existence.

In general there does seem to be an increasing movement of more and more control to the top levels of leadership in the Church, even though the church theologically is moving, more and more liberal. I made this point when I spoke with a writer of the KC Star today. I don't see any thing on the conference agenda to move that trend, though I believe it is largely not helpful for the church.