Reaffirming our Baptism

Today at University United Methodist Church in Madison, Wisconsin we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord by using the rite for congregational reaffirmation of the baptismal vows that appears in the United Methodist Hymnal. Although I am sure that our Pastor appropriately chose this for today's worship because of the theme for this day, I found it particularly timely because our baptismal vows have been at the center of the latest "blow-up" in the United Methodist Church over the presence of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) persons in the United Methodist Church.

You see, the debate last year shifted suddenly from the exclusion of lesbian and gay persons from the ordained ministry and from marriage to the exclusion of lesbians and gays from the sacrament of Baptism and membership in the church. You see, the first vow in our baptismal rite calls us to "renounce evil . . . and repent your sin." Certain so-called "evangelical" pastors seem to think this excludes what they call "unrepentant homosexuals." Of course, they seem somehow to overlook the fact that not all United Methodists believe that all homosexual practice constitutes sin--if we did there would be no thirty-year long debate in the church. They want not just to require us to take the vow (as every lesbian and gay Methodist is willing to do), they want to make the judgement as to whether we are properly able to take the vow.

One of the lay speakers at University Church, a younger gay man, was asked to speak about the meaning of baptism to him. He spoke movingly of the deep spiritual meaning the sacrament has for him. He did not explicitly refer to the recent flap in the denomination, but he affirmed his faith that the sacrament of baptism is a sacrament of inclusion and not exclusion. This is also the consensus of United Methodist Bishops, but in our polity Bishops are excluded from our "judicial branch." Fundamentalists have found the church's Judicial Council to be the easiest branch of church government to take over, and now that they are in charge they will "legislate from the bench" and banish "unrepentant homosexuals" from the church altogether. They forget that our baptismal vows are made to God and not to the controlling evangelical faction on the nine-member Judicial Council.

This post could use a little more "fleshing out" so I will revise and republish this at a later date and provide some links to pertinent websites regarding this issue. In the meantime I need to go take a walk for the sake of my health.