Why Annual Conference Should Take Oppression 101: Thoughts on Yesterday

I'm about to get all United Methodist in here.  I'm an Annual Conference right now (the yearly meeting of all the clergy and non-clergy representatives from the Oregon-Idaho area.)  Amazing stuff is happening.  Mark Miller is our featured speaker and he's getting us to be (a) noisy during worship and (b) actually dance.  It's spectacular.  We are also making bold statements about inclusion and our rejection of the hateful actions at General Conference. I'm glad I came, it has been more renewing than I ever thought it could be. However, there is just one little thing I needed to get off my chest.

(Oh, also, about the title: At Drew, we are required to take a class called Religion and the Social Process that examines systems of oppression and our role in perpetuating them.  It's often called Oppression 101.  And everyone really should have to take it.  But that's another post.)

Yesterday afternoon, the Oregon Idaho Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation that urged all churches to adopt statements that make clear our open doors for all persons, regardless of sexual orientation. It passed with a fairly wide margin, which was heart-warming to see.  However, the opposition speakers irritated me more than I had expected, and I’ve been wrestling with why I was so annoyed with the statements made against the legislation.  I am not unable to hear dissension, even about issues I care passionately about, but I wasn’t able to articulate why THIS dissension tugged at me. 

The first speaker against, a pastor with churches in very small towns, made it very clear that while he would like to see more LBGTQI persons in our churches, he was concerned about the reception of a statement like this in his home churches.  Fair.  Very fair, actually.  (Although, I would say that if you truly want to see more inclusion, you have to be brave about it.  Yes, it might make your job harder, but since when is this supposed to be easy??)  But he ended the statement by asking us not to “do here to the voices of the minority (meaning, those who are not comfortable with the inclusion of all sexual orientation) what was done at General Conference.”  Shortly after, an amendment was proposed suggesting that the statement make clear that we were not of one mind on the issue.  Again, very fair, and very much mirroring the language from General Conference that was not passed.  My pastor pointed out that it was a good amendment to pass because it showed that we can be a church that disagrees but stays together.  I agree.  But.  This amendment, and the reasons to support it, built upon the same theme: let’s protect the minority here the way the minority was not protected at General Conference.

And this is where I have a problem.

The ‘minority opinion’ at General Conference is made up of LBGTQI persons, and those that love them, who face not just discrimination and exclusion, but who also face incredible violence because of who they are and what they stand for. They are an oppressed minority who are pushed out of churches, jobs, and communities.  They are beaten.  They take their own lives because their world – too often spearheaded by their churches – tells them that everything they are is wrong. 

The minority opinion here doesn’t face those risks.  So fine, we will use the same language, but I cannot let it go without pointing out that co-opting the language of the oppressed to protect privilege has a long history, and it is an ugly history.  We need to not let this protection of privilege go unquestioned, even if the end results are still an important move towards progress.